Weber Style 6434 Stainless Steel Vegetable Basket


 
Chris Allingham

Chris Allingham

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I recently bought a Weber Style 6434 stainless steel vegetable basket. It does a nice job on fruit and veggies on the grill. It looks beautiful before first use, but kind of hard to keep looking that way with use. I resorted to chemical warfare with oven cleaner and got a good result. My wife went with a soaking of Simple Green and lots of elbow grease and completely destroyed a Dobie scrubber and did alright.

My only criticism is that when running your hands over the bottom side, it feels just a bit like a cheese grater...like if you weren't careful, you could shred your skin. You've been warned!

Sorry for the last pic, kind of lame. I grilled a bunch of pineapple chunks, which looked really impressive, before I scooped out most of them and only had a few left for the photo. :)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000WEIJUW/tvwb-20
 
I have the same pan and it is great for all kinds of veggies. Perfect for peppers and onions when doing fajitas. I gave up on trying to keep it shiny a while back
 
I just got the small version and used it for the first time tonight. I have a large one for fish and stuff, but it takes up the whole kettle. The small one is perfect for side veggie. Used it for chunks of zucchini tonight. Worked great.

For stainless steel get a powdered stainless cleaner and a green 3M Scotchbrite.
 
Harold C said:
For stainless steel get a powdered stainless cleaner and a green 3M Scotchbrite.
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Yeah, you're right, Harold. I don't use many green Scotchbrite around the house because of scratching, but it's probably warranted in the case of this basket. Thanks for the reminder!
 
I use mine for onions mainly. I do half bell peppers on a flat weber topper. Have tried diced potatos in the veggie pan, but I prefer them wrapped in a foil pouch with some diced up onions and bell pepper, seasoned with butter.

The veggie pan is really nice but as mentioned, impossible to keep clean. We find it best to burn off as much residue as possible and provide a quick squirt of grill spray to both the pan and the veggies before using. Veggies never stick, just get some hard to remove burn marks on the pan. Great addition to the arsenal.
 
Yeah, the green scotchbrite can be used to put a brushed finish on stainless steel. It's definitely abrasive. But, it's not like you'll ever keep a mirror finish on a BBQ cooking utensile. Heck, they are all brushed finishes to start with!

If you really want to go at it, the copper version of the Brillo-like scrubbies will cut through just about anything on stainless steel.
 
These are pictures of mine after its first cook last night. The pictures are after scrubbing with Comet powdered cleaner and a blue Scotch pad (did not have any green ones left). As you can see it didn't work very well. It has some baked on grease and a sort of smoke varnish left on it.

So, this morning I hit it with a very strong concentrated cleaner I buy by the gallon to detail my cars. Normally I mix that 12:1 but this time I went 4:1, the max recommend dilution. No dice. Did not make a dent in it. Right now it is soaking in oven cleaner - I will let you all know how it goes.

After trying to clean it last night I figured that I'd use it until it gets really bad and then get another one, it's just $20 bucks. Still it's a pity that it doesn't want to come clean. I've seen stuff like that on my old stainless gasser and I could clean that off.

By the way the vegetables were superb!

Best,

Jose

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I am thinking of getting one of those. My take on the discoloration is not to sweat it. Just wash it up and accept it as the patina of good grilling. :cool:
 
Found the Solution - "Literally"

I wasn't about to give up on this that easily :). I read a lot on the internet today while watching NASCAR qualifying and I found the solution. Now, there are two types of deposits on the pan. One is the dark black fat deposits. Those are the smaller black spots where fat has baked on. The second is a brown varnish like smoke deposit. Those were the biggest areas on the pictures I posted above,

Well, the brown varnish was gone almost instantly. I'm giving the baked on grease spots an hour and see how they do.

Here's the method.

Get a big plastic pan where you can submerge the whole stainless pan. I happened to have one. It's a kitty litter pan that I use to carry two-2.5 gallon chlorine jugs to the house from the pool supply store so that any spills don't ruin the car. Paid three dollars for it a long time ago. I then got water out of the tap as hot as I could get it - 160 degrees is my number there abouts. I added enough water to almost cover the Weber pan and then added about a quarter gallon of white vinegar. We keep gallon jugs of white vinegar around because my wife uses it on our tile floors (now I know why :)). Next time I'll just do it in the kitchen sink.

The varnish disappeared in less than 3-minutes - zero scrubbing! I'm letting it sit to see if it will remove the burnt on grease. I will post the after pics tonight.

Best,

Jose
 
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The results are in...

OK, an hour passed and I still had some black burned fat deposits. But, a very light, less than 30-second scrubbing with a yellow scrub pad took care of those instantly. I'm thinking that an hour wait might not be necessary. I just wanted to see if the burnt spots would go away on their own.

In all honestly, I did have some chemical stains from previous attempts at cleaning this thing (very dark big gray stains - those were unrelated to the cooking process and not present in the original pics) which I became aware of when all the other stuff magically disappeared, and those were removed while in the vinegar bath with 600 grit wet and dry in about a minute. DO NOT USE OVEN CLEANERS - they stain and darken the stainless. If you just wash the thing normally and then set it in the vinegar bath you'll be done before the rest of ther dishes go in the dishwasher!

So here are the after picks. If I had not used all the heavy chemicals first this whole thing would have taken less than 5-minutes of my time (not taking soak time into account, just prep). I'll take this small amount of work every day of the week :)! Please refer to the before pictures in my post above to see the difference.


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Best,

Jose
 
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I'm going to let mine age naturally. I have purchased many tools at the pawn shop and they usually have some wear showing which makes me look like I know what I am doing with the tools...
 
we have 3 or 4 sizes of these weber slotted pans, and they are a huge improvement over other pans which typically have holes (which allow green beans and smaller pieces of onion, etc. slip through).

agree, Chris, the bottoms are a bit strange feeling to your bare fingers. But these pans seem worth it, so far.....grin.
 
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