How You Grillin’?

Here's how I like to cook.

Let’s get into grilling and barbecue a bit. How do you like to grill?

Photo by Marek Mucha on Unsplash

I’ll start with where I draw the line. I know a lot of people love them, but I will never buy a pellet grill. The primary joys of grilling, for me, are the simplicity of live-fire cooking and the challenge of getting things done right without modern tools or gizmos. (Except for a thermometer – I don’t have a death wish!) Of course, I often don’t get things done right, but if I always did that would mean there was no challenge, right?

Basically, if I plug a grill in, set a temperature, and let fans do the work, what’s the point?

If you love using a pellet grill you are welcome to read this Substack, and we can even be friends, but there will always be a regrettable divide between us. And it will be your fault.

Grilling with propane comes close to too easy, like a pellet – simple lighting, knobs for temperature control – but I use a gas grill because sometimes you just want to do some grilling but the clock is against you. And sometimes food just cooks better with radiated heat than frying in a pan. (Looking at you, sausages!) Below you can see my Lil’ Gasser – a Cuisinart Petit Gourmet Tabletop grill – which I use for quick grilling sessions. I used to own a Char-Broil four-burner I bought for $200. It was actually pretty fun to use, and it had a convenient side burner for boiling water or heating sauces, but I got what I paid for with the construction – the burner tubes rusted off the body within a few years.

The best grilling, to me, is over charcoal, and I have slowly moved from briquettes to lump. (In a subsequent post, I’ll discuss several of the brands I’ve tried.) Charcoal gives you the challenge of simple live-fire cooking with distinctive grilling flavor. That said, I rarely rely on just charcoal – you can always throw on a hickory, apple, or oak wood chunk to add more flavor. I also once tried cooking by just burning wood chunks. It was a long time ago, but I don’t remember any superior flavor from that versus charcoal-with-a-chunk-on-top.

Below is my workhorse: the classic Weber kettle. For my money (on to which I hold tight) there’s no better grill. It’s just the right size for most night’s meals and I’ve pretty well mastered temperature control. That said, there are many grills I haven’t tried and would love to get suggestions on what might be better for the price.

I also have a couple of little charcoal grills – a ‘50s style camping grill and a Weber Smokey Joe. The former cooks terribly, with horrible airflow because the coals are right on the surface of the grill. It has little side sliders, but really, what’s the point? The Smokey Joe, in stark contrast, is terrific for steaks. It has good airflow and the meat is very close to the coals, which is a must for peppery, dark crust.

Of course, sometimes you want low-and slow, which you can do on the Weber kettle, but if you want to go big you need a smoker. I have two. The first I got when I was just starting with barbecue: the Weber Smokey Mountain water smoker (so-called because of the water pan between the fire and grate that keeps the heat indirect). I still use it, especially for pork butt, because it is just the right size, and once the correct temp is achieved the thing holds it with very little need for monitoring. It does, though, suffer from a horizontal problem: If you want to barbecue something long, like a brisket or side of salmon, the cooking circle just doesn’t cut it.

For the big meats, I have a Yoder Cheyenne offset barrel smoker. If a challenge is what you are after, this will furnish it. It took me numerous sessions just to make sure I burned off any factory coatings as I struggled to get the temperature high enough, long enough. I did not always enjoy that particular challenge, or the temperature and efficiency struggles the first several times I cooked something. But now that I have had a lot of practice, and know that using this most labor-intensive of my outdoor cooking apparatuses will require a lot of sitting outside to keep it steady, I have come to enjoy it, and make some pretty good grub. But don’t try to replicate this exactly – sadly, Yoder appears to have discontinued the Cheyenne, which was its simplest smoker when I bought it.

Finally, aside from the verboten pellet grill, there is one kind of grill/smoker that I have not yet tried: the kamado! I would like to own one and really give it a workout, but these sturdy fellows are awfully expensive – and a full-size one about as immobile as my stick burner – so I’ve not yet convinced myself I absolutely must add one to my collection. I am, however, open to convincing, for anyone who wants to try.

But don’t even try to sell me on a pellet – I value my soul.