You’ve been thoroughly enjoying your smoker, right? That’s great! We share with you a cleaning process that won’t take longer than 30 minutes.
Tools Needed To Clean Your Pellet Smoker
Shop Vacuum
Metal Spatula
Drip Pan Liner (optional)
Bucket Liner (optional)
Step 1.
Remove the grate and drip pan from your smoker.
You’ll notice after you remove the grate and the drip pan that a lot of wood pellet residue has accumulated at the bottom of your pellet smoker. You want to ensure that you clean this up in order to avoid fires and to keep your pellet smoker in tip shot shape for future smokes.
Step 2.
Use shop vacuum to clean up the wood pellet residue.
You can easily take a rag and wipe out all the wood pellet residue. We’ve found that it’s even easier to use a shop vacuum. The pellet residue will cause a lot of dust so keep an eye on your shop vac filter to ensure it doesn’t get clogged. we replacing the filter on ours every few months.
Warning: Please make sure that your pellet smoker is NOT hot when you are cleaning it. We once vacuumed up the pellet residue while it was still moderately warm. Our vacuum filter ended up catching fire. Eeek! Learn from our bad decision making.
Step 3.
Use a metal spatula to clean your drip pan (+ alternative “hack”)
This is arguably the worst part of cleaning a pellet smoker. Each time you smoke a meal the drippings fall through the grate and slide down the drip pan into your catch bucket. If you go a few smoked (like you’ll see in our pictures below) it will cause quite a build up.
We recommend using a metal spatula to scrape the burnt drippings into the drum of the pellet smoker. You can then use the shop vacuum again to clean up the mess.
Hack Alert: If you want to avoid this part of the cleanup in the future, line your drip pan with foil and change it out before each smoke. Alternatively, you can buy drip pan liners on Amazon that work really well and you don’t have to worry about making your own.
Step 4.
Washing your smokers grate
Take the pellet smoker great and if you haven’t already, give it a good scrub with your favorite scraper. Then take it in to a large sink. At this point, turn the water on extra hot and use a rag or paper towel to remove the grease. I find that using dawn and a few paper towels gets the job done.
Try This: Depending on the size of your pellet smoker and its grates, you may be able to fit them in your dishwasher. While we tend to wash ours by hand, many have reported having success by putting it through a quick cycle in the dishwasher. Let us know if the comments if this works for you too!
Step 5.
Clean your drip bucket and put everything back together.
The very last step is cleaning out your drip bucket. This too can be done by hand or run through the dishwasher. We try to avoid running grease down our sink so we often invest in drip bucket liners. These make cleanup super easy (take them out and toss them). You then can put your drip pan, grate and drip bucket back in place. Voila, nice a clean pellet smoker!
Try This: Depending on the size of your pellet smoker and its grates, you may be able to fit them in your dishwasher. While we tend to wash ours by hand, many have reported having success by putting it through a quick cycle in the dishwasher. Let us know if the comments if this works for you too!
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should you clean your pellet smoker?
This is a personal question. We user our pellet smoker 1-2 times a week so we find a cleaning is necessary every 1-2 months.
We don’t touch our hopper. Ideally you have a cover that prevents any moister from getting into hit. We’d recommend not messing with the component within the hopper to avoid any mechanical failure.
Can I clean the outside of the pellet smoker?
Absolutely. While we focused on cleaning the inside of the pellet smoker, we give her a hose down (when she’s cold) 1-2 times per year.
Any issues with the shop vacuum with this cleaning technique?
We recommend not spending top dollar on a shop vac for this clean. While we’ve had a lot of success keeping our shop vac in good health by changing the filter frequently, the dust does take a toll on the shop vac as a whole.