Cleanliness is next to grill godliness

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/07/2021 (1795 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The summer grilling season is in full swing, and I have been firing up my beloved propane barbecue like never before.

This is partly because I consider myself to be Canada’s Greatest Amateur Grill Enthusiast, but mostly because my wife says we can’t turn on the kitchen stove due to the fact our central air conditioning died on the day the heat wave rolled into town and the temperature in our house is already hot enough to bake cookies on the living room floor.

Deceased air conditioners aside, I am far from the only Canadian obsessed with the primal joys of cooking over an open flame in the privacy of the backyard.

One of the consequences of this pandemic is that barbecue sales are currently hotter than every (bad word) room in my house, which means there a lot of rookie grillers out there nervously picking up the tongs and spatula for the very first time.

Which makes this the perfect time for me, a 320-pound newspaper columnist with a glorious history of transforming edible foods into industrial-grade lumps of carbon, to weigh in with a few tips on how to operate your new grill without causing a thermonuclear reaction that reduces most of your neighbourhood to cinders.

Fortunately, you don’t have to rely solely on my guidance to keep you and your home from going up in flames. That’s because last week the helpful folks at barbecue-maker Napoleon emailed me a news release entitled: Common grilling mistakes you may not know you are making: Up your barbecue game with some tips from the pros. Before I embellish, here are their top five tips on what to avoid behind the grill:

1. Impatience: “Let the grill get to temperature. Placing food on a cool grill may cause it to stick, and will impede the chances of getting a good char, particularly if you are cooking a good cut of meat like a steak.”

2. Flipping and flopping: “Ideally, when you are cooking meat you only want to flip it once. This minimizes how many times you have to open the lid … and gives a nice, even cook.”

3. Take the temperature: “Don’t make your dishes a guessing game. Know exactly when they are done by using a thermometer to measure the internal temperature.”

4. Clean up: “Don’t wait until the next time you use your grill to clean it; a hot grill is easier to clean.”

5. Impatience, The Sequel: “Let that meat rest; it will still continue to cook for several minutes once it is taken off the heat, and all the juices will seep back into the centre of the meat.”

First, allow me to say those are some mighty fine tips from the folks at Napoleon, some of whose grills cost even more than top-of-the-line air-conditioning units, a fact I am only aware of because of my intense grief over the recent demise of my home’s 32-year-old AC system.

But I am somewhat surprised they did not stress my personal motto for cooking food on a charcoal or propane grill, namely: “Low and slow!”

Seriously, if you are at the controls of a high-end barbecue, “low and slow” should be your watchwords. On the other hand, if you are at the controls of a commercial aircraft, never mind.

The other maxim novice grillers need to keep in mind, assuming they do not want to accidentally burn down their neighbourhood, is this: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire!”

I can attest to the wisdom of this old saying because on the day our AC dropped dead, there I was in the backyard, cooling my internal thermometer with a cold adult beverage and waiting for my beloved propane barbecue to reach the proper temperature.

I began to sense something was amiss when I noticed that, technically speaking, I could no longer see my barbecue because it was now concealed by a thick cloud of greyish smoke spiralling into the otherwise clear air.

Like some kind of inane cartoon character, I shrieked “Yikes!” and raced over to the barbecue to flip up the overheated lid, which caused long tongues of flame to escape from the cast-iron grill and threaten to singe my eyebrows.

At this point, I would refer you to tip No. 4: Clean up your grill. Which is something I had been vowing (and failing) to do for the past month, because my barbecue is filled with flammable crud, such as old hotdogs that now resemble charcoal briquettes.

What with being a safety-conscious grill master, I bravely turned off the propane tank and then screamed at the top of my lungs for my wife to come running, preferably with some water.

Which she did, bravely handing me the watering can she got on Mother’s Day and ordering me to dump its contents onto the grill, which I did, thereby turning the inferno into a cloud of steam so intense it removed all the wrinkles from my golf shirt.

So let me be frank, rookies: If you want to get your licence to grill, take it low and slow, watch out for clouds of smoke, and never cry over a few burned weenies. Because things could always be wurst.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca