BBQ:

Our quest for the perfect flame

by Jeff mIller

It’s summer, when Earthlings are consumed with an ancient urge to go outside and burn food.

It’s called barbecuing.

Barbecue is a fancy word for the oldest cooking technique in human history. You know: Slay a wildebeest, toss a haunch on the fire and talk NASCAR with your fellow hunters while waiting for it to sizzle. For such a venerable tradition, you’d think we’d have a handle on it by now, but not so much.

For starters, “barbecue,” I’ve read, derives from barbacoa, maybe mid-17th century Spanish, maybe Arawak, meaning “wooden frame on posts.” See, we’re not even sure where the word comes from. We’re also not sure how to spell it. Barbecue? Barbeque? Bar-B-Que? Whatever, I’m salivating just thinking about it.

My shaky position on barbecuing harkens back to that wildebeest haunch scene presented above. In that scenario, I would be one of the fellow hunters looking on hungrily while the top-gun chef, Bobby Flame, attends to the roasting. That’s because I have issues with many things barbecue.

First of all, I’m leery of gas-fired cookers. This dates back to my first such contraption, whose fire-starter switch worked exactly three days before spider nests blocked the pipettes, or whatever they’re called. So then I had to reach in with a long lighter through an awkwardly placed hole, which required my face to get close to the action just in time for the WHOOSH! that somehow never burned my head off. Yet.

Also, lava rocks?

As a result, I went retro with a kettle type arrangement and good old charcoal. The problem there is, of course, getting the coal to burn. I tried many techniques, including the three-layer pyre (a bed of newspapers topped with a nest of dry twigs and a layer of charcoal, all drenched with half a can of lighter fluid). It worked sometimes, and only rarely caught the surrounding woods on fire.

Then someone introduced me to the chimney, which required only newspaper in the bottom and coals on top. No noxious lighter fluid! One match! But I can still see the faces of children looking up dazed with hunger as the fourth attempt resulted in nothing but well done newsprint.

I thought I was alone in this barbephobia until a friend told me the story of his fifth birthday party, when his father was tasked with grilling burgers for the young celebrants. After some years of therapy he’s come to terms with image of his father hurling the whole kettle into the bushes with a well-aimed curse that I myself have used to good effect.

All of this is tragic because I’m a big fan of the delights that come crackling off the coals. At football games, where the great grillers of the world work their magic in competitive tailgating, I’m secretly in awe. Do they have trouble getting the coals just right? No, they don’t. Do they know when a steak is done without having to cut into it to check? Yes, they do. Do I stand in line pretending I’m one of the chef’s friends?

You bet I do.