We love cooking on our grills, especially in the summertime. Keeping the house cool and avoiding the dish pile up are two major draws – not to mention the flavor of food cooked over fire.
When we saw a glass-topped grill, shining like Cinderella's slipper in a YouTube video posted by commercial glass maker SCHOTT, we were intrigued. But, we wondered, how the heck do you clean it?
First, let's back up. Glass embedded in gas grill lids is nothing new — small windows allowing you to peek at the food on the grate without opening the lid have been around for more than a decade, says Craig Goldwyn. He writes under the name Meathead on his blog about the science of grilling, www.amazingribs.com.
But the glass windows of yore have not been without problems. Due to the buildup of smoke inside the lid, the glass often turns dark and grimy pretty fast, rendering it useless as a food-spying device. Meathead has been using one of these grills with a glass window. It sits next to 11 other grills on his Chicagoland testing site, also known as his deck.
"The front of that lid is brown, and it went within a week," he tells The Salt.
But Ted Wegert, director of applications engineering at SCHOTT North America, says that doesn't have to be the case. His company's large glass grill windows – still in the prototype stage but showing up at trade shows — are very different, he says, thanks to the material.
The Salt
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