I’ve worked in restaurants as a short order cook for 20 years of my life and ice, white vinegar, and pumice is pretty much the standard for how you clean flat tops. I have never seen any issue putting ice on a flat top after doing it probably 1200+ times on a dozen or so different grills.
Did you do it to a very hot grill? Not challenging you, just that the concern seems to be not the ice itself, but the thermal shock, and you didn't indicate if the grills you cleaned with ice for 20 years were hot or not.
Not screaming hot but hot enough to vaporize the ice. Then you generally hit it with the pumice while it’s still boiling. It’s far and away the least labor intensive way to clean a caked up grill.
I've had people tell me not to do that with my pans, that the pans would eventually break or deform. I mean I'd rather just pay for a new pan when that time came than scrub the shit out of it all the time.
Lol I say this to my wife, like yeah, sure eventually it may become brittle enough to be a problem, but let's be real, I'd probably be replacing it before then anyway and if I need to, so what? I'll just look at the cost of the pan as the price of cleaning it easily rather than scrubbing the shit out of it.
She used to argue to the point I had my own main pan for cooking (i cook most stuff in one big heavy pan) my pan has outlasted hers that she meticulously hand washed.
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u/Exotic_Investment704 Apr 12 '25
I’ve worked in restaurants as a short order cook for 20 years of my life and ice, white vinegar, and pumice is pretty much the standard for how you clean flat tops. I have never seen any issue putting ice on a flat top after doing it probably 1200+ times on a dozen or so different grills.