Boy Meets Grill
The best product ever manufactured, aside from the ubiquitous church key, has to be the Weber grill. It has no power cord, it has no user manual, and you never have to call India for technical support. If they could figure out how to get it on a key chain it would be perfect.
But best of all, it never breaks. When the world ends, you can be sure that the cockroaches will be slurping beer and grilling something in their Weber kettles—probably on open balconies of rent stabilized apartments.
This summer I taught my older son how to grill. I believe grilling is a right of passage for every man. The art of charring meat over an open fire has been handed down from generation to generation ever since Fred Flintstone fired up the first Bedrock Weber.
Or maybe since beer was invented, I’m not sure. Because as any man knows, beer and grilling go together like hamburgers and hotdogs. Ketchup and mustard. Salt and pepper. Peanut butter and jelly. Gin and tonic. Brad and Angelina . . .
I could go on.
I started my son’s grilling career with hamburgers. I showed him how to make round, flat patties with his bare hands and afterward, when the doorknobs became greasy, how to wash his hands.
We filled the Weber with coals, squirted some lighter fluid, and kaboom, a roaring fire. “It’s a little trick I picked up from Jimi Hendrix” I told him. He didn’t know what I was talking about, so I showed him how to move the flaming Weber inferno from under the eaves.
“Now comes the hard part,” I warned him. “You have to stand here and drink beer until the flames die down and the coals burn glowing red under a thin coat of gray ash.” He wanted to know why this was so hard.
“Because you are not old enough to drink beer.” I told him.
About 20 minutes later the coals were perfect. We spread the smoldering lumps across the bottom of the Weber with a poker so the heat would be dense and even. Then we placed the circular grilling rack over the steel kettle and threw on the seasoned burgers. They popped and sizzled as the aroma of freshly killed meat byproducts filled our nostrils and awoke our buried cavemen senses.
We grunted in approval.
Then we watched the round mashes cook as if we were divining the future. I sipped on my beer and stared into the kettle until my nose hairs flashed. “I wonder what the cockroaches will be grilling,” I muttered out loud.
“How do you know when the hamburgers are done?” my son wanted to know.
This is the art of grilling that gets handed down from generation to generation. And in strict violation of the code of men, I am willing to share it with you now: I have no idea.
Oh I suppose I could have shown him how to use a meat thermometer or look at his watch to time out three minutes a side, but then we might just as well go to a restaurant. Besides, Fred Flintstone didn’t have a meat thermometer or a watch, although, come to think of it, he did have a sundial strapped to his forearm.
“They are done sometime after you throw them on the fire but before they burst into flames,” I told him. Then I explained the accepted gradations of cooked meat: rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, and well done. To be complete the cooking spectrum I also explained the concepts behind sushi and English food.
I explained to him how you should always ask your guests how they would like their meat prepared even though you will probably overcook it anyway.
“It is a matter of feel,” I went on. “You use all of your senses to determine when the meat is done. You smell it, you feel it with a spatula, you look at the color, and you listen to the sound it makes over the coals. It is very subjective, and that’s what makes grilling such a challenge.”
“It doesn’t seem that hard to me!” he boasted confidently as he intuitively flipped the burgers over and artfully placed squares of cheese over the cross hatches seared into the tender meat.
I smiled at his cockiness. “That’s because you are not old enough to drink beer.”
His hamburgers were perfect. And before long he was on to steaks, chicken, ribs, fish and other delicacies that can be burned to a crisp over a hot, open fire by man.
However, there is one grilling tip I didn’t share with him, one that he will no doubt pass on to his own son someday:
Food always tastes better when someone else prepares it.
© 2010 Dadinthebox.com
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