Have you ever asked yourself, “why am I doing it this way?” Especially when you are not happy with your results?
I had one of those moments today.
This is something I’ve wrestled with longer than I want to admit (feeling sheepish).
I thought I would share it with you now that I have a better way.
I’ve always cleaned the ashes from my Big Green Egg by bending down the side of a small aluminum pan to make it an ash pan.
But, after using my ash tool to scrape the ashes from the Egg into the pan, a lot of ash always ended up on the shelf of my table – yuck.
My bright idea was to cut the aluminum pan at two places rather then just bend it down.
Now, I can easily slide the resulting flap under the bottom of the Egg and catch all of the ash as I clean it out.
Here’s a quick video I made so you can see what I came up with:
If you would rather have the ‘real thing’ then you should get the official ash pan, and if you don’t already have one, the ash tool:
Ash Tools


It’s often the ‘little things’ that make my day 😏
Hi Mike!
I think you have a great idea! But I just wanted to share how I clean the ash out of my BGE. Once the ash is cool, I scoop the ash towards the vent opening using the ash tool and then use a shop vac to vacuum the ash out. It usually takes me 2 iterations or so to get it cleaned completely. I have a small shop vac that I use exclusively for this purpose. The shop vac can be purchase for about the same price as the ash pan.
I truly enjoy your website and thanks for the post!
Regards,
Joe Jarrell
Hey Joe, thanks for jumping in. The small shop vac sounds like a good idea…now, if only my wife will let me put a weatherproof container on the deck ;)…
Mike