How to maintain and clean a ceramic kamado

No, and it is worth insisting on this because it is the mistake that ruins the most ceramic. The inner wall of a kamado routinely works between 100 °C and 400 °C; at those temperatures, fat and organic residue carbonise and turn into inert ash. That dark layer covering the interior is not dirt: it is carbon, sterilised by the heat itself, and it actually helps seal the ceramic's micropores. Scrubbing it off with a scouring pad means working to make the grill worse.

Kitchen degreaser, soap and caustic oven cleaners are flatly banned inside. Refractory ceramic is porous and absorbs whatever you put on it; an oven cleaner can stay soaked in for weeks and release a chemical taste and smell on your next cook. Plenty of soapy water is out too: if the body soaks through inside and you then jump to 250 °C, the trapped steam can cause microcracks or, worst case, thermal shock. Dry, hot ceramic is happy; soaked, cold ceramic is not.

Our rule at mikamado is simple: nothing goes on the inside. For the few tasks where chemicals do make sense — cleaning a heavily crusted grate or degreasing a steel side shelf — we use something biodegradable and barbecue-specific, such as Weber's 300 ml Grill Cleaner, and always away from the ceramic body. If you have cooked very oily fish and a smell lingers, the answer is not soap: it is a burn-off, which is exactly what we cover next.

The burn-off is the kamado's native cleaning method: take the grill up to high temperature so that pyrolysis turns all the accumulated fat into ash that then falls away on its own. It is exactly the same principle as a domestic oven's pyrolytic self-clean function, except here you do it with charcoal and air instead of heating elements. It is free, uses no chemicals, and leaves the interior and grates like new.

The recipe we use: light the kamado as if to cook, open the bottom vent and the chimney wide, and let it climb to 280-320 °C. Hold that temperature for 20 to 30 minutes with the lid closed. You will see the grease crust on the grates and the dome turn grey and brittle; that is the sign it is done. There is no need to reach 400 °C or leave it for an hour: beyond that you go from cleaning to needlessly wearing out the gasket and the charcoal. We do it every 8-10 cooks, or always after oily fish, a very long cook, or before switching to pizza or bread, where you do not want residual flavours.

Two important warnings. First: never throw the lid open at 300 °C with the chamber full of oxygen; do the burping — crack the lid open a couple of fingers, wait two seconds and then open fully — to avoid flashback, that flare-up that singes eyebrows and forearms. Second: the burn-off punishes the felt gasket, so do not turn it into a weekly routine. Once it has fully cooled, run a dry brush over the grates and open the bottom vent so the ash drops into the tray. Done.

Grates are cleaned hot and dry, not cold and with water. The ideal moment is right when the kamado is still at 150-200 °C after cooking, or at the end of a burn-off: you run a brush over them and the crust flicks straight off. For stainless steel a steel-bristle brush is fine, but if you have cast-iron grates — like the Big Green Egg Cast Iron Grid or the Kamado Joe half-moons — go for a metal-free brush, such as the all-nylon Char-Broil 360 Cool-Clean, so you do not strip the seasoning layer that protects them from rust. Cast iron is cleaned, dried and given a thin coat of oil; it is never left wet.

No dishwasher for cast-iron grates: the detergent and the drying cycle strip the seasoning and rust spots appear within 48 hours, especially on the coast. If a steel grate has genuinely crusted up after months of neglect, then yes, it makes sense to take it out of the kamado, soak it in hot water with a little biodegradable Weber Cleaner and scrub it with a double-sided sponge — but this is the exception, not the weekly norm.

The ceramic deflector — Big Green Egg's ConvEGGtor, the plate setter, the BBQ Future or Vankey half-moons — barely gets cleaned at all. The dripping fat carbonises with the heat of the next cook, so it is enough just to flip it: cook once with side A up and the next time with side B, and the coals themselves burn off the residue. Do not put it under the tap or scrub it: cordierite is porous and, if you soak it and then heat it, it can crack from thermal shock just like the body. When it gets so black it makes you uneasy, a burn-off turns it ash-grey again.

The gasket — that cord of fibreglass felt that seals lid and base — is the kamado's only true wear part and the one most abused by normal use. Its job is to make the dome close airtight: if it is intact, you control temperature with the vents alone and the grill holds 110 °C for twelve hours without budging. When it gets crushed or burned, air leaks in through the gasket, you lose fine control over the oxygen and suddenly you cannot get below 180 °C even with everything shut.

The test for whether it needs replacing is the dollar-bill test: close the lid with a sheet of paper half-tucked between dome and base, and pull. If it slides out with almost no resistance at several points around the rim, the gasket no longer seals. Other clear signs: the felt is black and charred, crumbles when touched, has lost thickness, or the lid goes metal-on-metal when it closes. In normal use an original gasket lasts 2 to 4 years; frequent burn-offs above 300 °C shorten it, and cooking lots of pizzas at 350-400 °C burns it out sooner.

Replacing it is a 30-40 minute tabletop job: with the kamado cold, you peel off the old felt, remove the adhesive residue with a scraper and a little alcohol, stick the new gasket down with its high-temperature adhesive, and let it cure for 24 hours before lighting. There are universal kits like the BBQ Future fibreglass mesh gasket kit that fit almost any brand, and factory-specific gaskets for Kamado Joe or Big Green Egg if you prefer an exact fit. Modern fibreglass versions last considerably longer than the wool felt of the first generations, so if your kamado is a few years old, the new replacement will probably outlast the original.

Ceramic is indestructible outdoors, but a kamado is not only ceramic: it has metal bands, a hinge, the lid spring, vent hardware, the ash drawer and often a steel cart. Those are the parts that rust, and on the Levante coast — Torrevieja, the Costa Blanca, the whole shoreline — salt air speeds the process up. Here the air carries suspended sodium chloride, and a fitting that would last years inland starts pitting within one season on the coast if you do not look after it.

The anti-rust routine takes five minutes. After cooking, once the grill is cold, always empty the ash: damp ash is hygroscopic and acidic, it draws moisture from the sea air and eats the drawer and the bottom grate from the inside out. Use a stainless-steel ash rake or scoop — the Grilliance ash rake-scoop or a Weber Charcoal Rake — and never leave it sitting in the body from one month to the next. Once a season, go over the hinge and spring with a little lithium grease or light oil, and hand-dry any metal band where the paint has chipped. If a spot of surface rust appears, fine steel wool and a drop of oil stop it dead.

Winter on the Levante coast is mild — we rarely drop below 0 °C — so the kamado stays outside all year without issue; ceramic does not suffer in light frosts. What is non-negotiable is the cover: a good breathable cover like the official Kamado Joe Cover, the Onlyfire Universal 76 cm or the Coverstore Premium keeps water off the hardware and, crucially, lets it breathe so moisture does not condense underneath. Always fit it with the kamado cold and dry, never over hot or wet ceramic. If you are storing the grill unused for months, put the analogue lid thermometer inside and leave the bottom vent slightly open so air circulates and moisture is not sealed in. With that, a kamado on the seafront reaches twenty years just as well as one inland.