Two weeks ago the weather was great as summer began to roll in. So like any man worth his salt, I bought a grill. A charcoal grill. A Weber charcoal grill. Plus all sorts of great accessories. Weber tools, Weber grill cover, Weber hickory chips, etc. Waited impatiently for it all to arrive, because like a good nerd, I ordered it from Amazon.
Dana described it as "A little boy on Christmas." I said something more along the lines of "It's fucking Christmas!"
I even have the stupid Christmas look on my face.Everything but the cover arrived at one time (Including my new knife set. We'll touch on that later. It's in that black box in front.) For the time being it sat inside, nice and dry.
The first chance I had to grill, I did. Had two steaks in the freezer and some corn in the fridge. Awesome. But, first things first. I loaded up the chimney starter with charcoal and stuck some newspaper underneath it. For those with questions, a chimney starter is basically a metal tube that has a divider with holes in it. Mine is made from aluminum and has a coil of heavy gauge aluminum wire dividing it up. Newspaper or a fire starter goes underneath, charcoal on top. Light up the newspaper and in 25 minutes you've got fully lit charcoal briquettes, complete with a light gray coating of ash. Perfect.
Dumped the charcoal into the bottom of the grill and got ready to put the food on. Wait, have to check the temperature. How do you check the temperature of a grill? With your hand. If you can hold your hand comfortably above the grill about where the food will be for, say, five seconds the grill is on low heat. Four seconds, medium. Three is medium-high, and two is high heat. The recipe (if you could call it that) called for medium-high heat, so I spritzed the coals with some water. Then a little more. And a little more for good measure. Threw the corn on (which had been soaking for an hour in cold water.) Turns out, it's pretty easy to put out charcoal. Twenty minutes in, the corn on the cob was not anywhere near where it should have been. Checked my heat and found that I was an idiot. Spent about twenty minutes lighting more coal.
When I finally got the steaks on, it took about twenty more minutes to cook them through. We ate dinner late that night.
Tonight, the rain held off long enough to take the grill out again. Last night we went to Whole Foods for the first time (!!) but I'll save that for another post. We got a lot of really quality meat, including an Atlantic Salmon steak, and a couple of bratwurst. Dana doesn't like either, so she had hotdogs.
Getting the grill ready was much simpler now that I knew what I was doing. Lit the charcoal, got everything together, dumped on the fish steak, bratwurst, and hotdogs. I probably should note that I don't often (read: basically never) cook fish. Dana won't eat it and I'm not exactly a connoisseur. Turns out the grill wasn't hot enough to start with so the fish steak didn't get a crust on the bottom before I flipped it. Disaster. It pretty much fell apart. Blech. Still tasted delicious, though. And the bratwurst was great.
Next food post: The Whole Foods experience and my new knife set.
By the way, did you know that Jim Carrey thinks we should stop giving kids tetanus shots? Yeah.
The first chance I had to grill, I did. Had two steaks in the freezer and some corn in the fridge. Awesome. But, first things first. I loaded up the chimney starter with charcoal and stuck some newspaper underneath it. For those with questions, a chimney starter is basically a metal tube that has a divider with holes in it. Mine is made from aluminum and has a coil of heavy gauge aluminum wire dividing it up. Newspaper or a fire starter goes underneath, charcoal on top. Light up the newspaper and in 25 minutes you've got fully lit charcoal briquettes, complete with a light gray coating of ash. Perfect.
Dumped the charcoal into the bottom of the grill and got ready to put the food on. Wait, have to check the temperature. How do you check the temperature of a grill? With your hand. If you can hold your hand comfortably above the grill about where the food will be for, say, five seconds the grill is on low heat. Four seconds, medium. Three is medium-high, and two is high heat. The recipe (if you could call it that) called for medium-high heat, so I spritzed the coals with some water. Then a little more. And a little more for good measure. Threw the corn on (which had been soaking for an hour in cold water.) Turns out, it's pretty easy to put out charcoal. Twenty minutes in, the corn on the cob was not anywhere near where it should have been. Checked my heat and found that I was an idiot. Spent about twenty minutes lighting more coal.
When I finally got the steaks on, it took about twenty more minutes to cook them through. We ate dinner late that night.
Tonight, the rain held off long enough to take the grill out again. Last night we went to Whole Foods for the first time (!!) but I'll save that for another post. We got a lot of really quality meat, including an Atlantic Salmon steak, and a couple of bratwurst. Dana doesn't like either, so she had hotdogs.
Getting the grill ready was much simpler now that I knew what I was doing. Lit the charcoal, got everything together, dumped on the fish steak, bratwurst, and hotdogs. I probably should note that I don't often (read: basically never) cook fish. Dana won't eat it and I'm not exactly a connoisseur. Turns out the grill wasn't hot enough to start with so the fish steak didn't get a crust on the bottom before I flipped it. Disaster. It pretty much fell apart. Blech. Still tasted delicious, though. And the bratwurst was great.
Next food post: The Whole Foods experience and my new knife set.
By the way, did you know that Jim Carrey thinks we should stop giving kids tetanus shots? Yeah.
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