Thank you for your response. I did consider wrapping them because I had seen videos of other people cooking and theirs were. But after reading all the reply’s I decided not to. It was just lazy me trying to find shortcuts on cleaning. I can tell from your response you are highly knowledgeable about smokers and I truly appreciate the details/advice you were able to give me.
So… now that you’ve done the initial burnoff to remove the the Chinese manufacturing and cutting oils, the raw steel of your drip tray and sear plates will start to rust immediately. That now raw steel of your flame broiler plate/heat diffuser/drip tray will need to be treated/seasoned to prevent it from immediately rusting.
To help protect your investment… IMMEDIATELY AFTER finishing your initial burnoff or any subsequent cleanup burnoff, WHILE THE DRIP TRAY AND SEAR PLATE ARE STILL HOT, coat/spray all that with your choice of vegetable oil.
During the proper treatment or seasoning of the drip tray and sear plate steel of your horizontal smoker, the process of heating the steel up to a high temperature and then adding the vegetable oils causes the oils to physically bond and seal the surface of the steel so it won’t rust … it also makes the surface of the steel slick so it’s easier to clean as things do not stick to it.
I treated/seasoned my smoker’s raw steel with spray Pam canola oil right after the initial burn off. As it was still very hot, I liberally sprayed the steel drip tray and sear plate with a vegetable spray oil (corn, canola or any vegetable oil will do BUT higher the smoke point the better) to coat all the steel surfaces. Slide your sear plate plate to one side, spray underneath it and then slide it back and forth to coat all those surfaces too.
You can use any vegetable oil you choose but you need to know your choice of oils exact SMOKE TEMPERATURE to ensure your smoker temperature actually gets hot enough to actually polymerize (bond) the vegetable oil to the steel or all you’ll do is greasing up the steel and barrel and probably creating a future firestarter.
As the Smoke temperature of the oil dictates, Run it up to rhetorical appropriate SMOKE TEMPERATURE and then coat it well as described above and close and keep the lid closed... Again, The steel temperature needs to be higher than the smoke temperature point of the oil you are using. Ramp the temperature dial down to 200° slowly and then turn the dial to OFF like a normal shutdown procedure. Let it cool completely.
As it cools, the vegetable oils will bond to the steel (polymerization) to keep it from rusting and making it easier to clean in the future. I also occasionally retreat/reseason after a periodic deep clean by doing a "high heat burn off" and reapplying oil to all the steel surfaces.
Sure, the boo birds will tell you It MIGHT season it self ... over time. That last bit is usually forgotten. Unless you do a lot of smoking and your meat drips, copiously, on every square inch of the steel, the drip tray and sear plate will rust very quickly. And even then, those are animal fats and they will eventually burn away as they WILL NOT bond to the steel.
That’s why your smoker was coated with machine oils at the factory...so you would not open the box and see very rusty steel plates. Once you burn off those oils, that steel is now completely exposed to the moisture in the air and it will start to rust immediately unless you season it quickly to seal out the moisture. You’ll not see seasoning the steel mentioned in the manual as the manufacturer is counting on a systematic failure also known as planned obsolescence.
Simply ...
While it’s still extremely hot from the initial burnoff, spraying the steel with vegetable oil chemically bonds the oil to the steel (polymerization) and keeps the moisture from reaching the raw steel and thereby causing rust.
You can use any vegetable oil you choose but you need to know its exact SMOKE TEMPERATURE to ensure your smoker temperature gets hot enough to polymerize (bond) the vegetable oil to the steel or all you’ll do is greasing up the steel and barrel and probably creating a future firestarter.
And ... it’ll need to be retreated/reseasoned regularly to keep it from rusting and make it super slick and easy to clean. You do it ALMOST like you would season cast iron pans.
Please don’t use bacon or bacon grease on your initial seasoning of the raw steel ... not only is it an animal fat and will not polymerize the steel but due to its salt content it will CAUSE the steel to rust ... not prevent it.
it’s the pitboss pitstop onyx
