Over the weekend I decided it was time to do a full cleaning of my Big Green Egg. Now and then I find it helpful to actually pull out the fire box and fire ring to get all the ash out of every part of the grill. I know that I need to do this if I can’t easily get the temperature on the grill up over 650 °F. The airflow is just being limited. Time to clean out all the parts.

I got it all cleaned out and as I was putting the parts back together I took a moment to think about technique when pulling ash out with the ash tool. I’m right-handed, and I find that I have a much easier time working the ash tool from the right side of the draft door with my right hand. Thus far I’ve always aligned the fire box to be centered with the draft door (per the instructions). This time I tried something new.

Since I work the ash tool from the right hand side, I put the ash tool into the draft door and then put the fire box in so that it was also aligned on the right side. The result is that I have a lot of open space that I can work the ash tool over and am much more effective at getting ash out as needed. (If you are left-handed I would align the draft door and fire box to the left side.) I also have very little need to work the ash tool with my left hand since I can reach most of the chamber from the right.

In these pictures the ash tool is inserted along the right hand side of the draft door and fire box. For a refresher on what the fire box, fire ring are see the Big Green Egg components section of their website.