The minute the temperature
climbs above 60 degrees, the smell of charcoal-broiled food wafts through my
neighborhood.
I’m pretty sure I’m the only
person on my road who doesn’t own a grill, not even a hibachi. It’s because I don’t trust myself around
anything that can self-combust and force me to use the “stop, drop and roll!”
technique I learned back in school.
Every time I think about our
friend, Henry, who squirted lighter fluid onto red-hot coals and ended up
having to wear a toupee for the next three months, I whip out my old frying
pan.
It’s not as if I haven’t tried my hand at barbecuing. One of our neighbors once gave my husband and me his old grill, complete with a big sack of charcoal, when he purchased his new Deluxe Turbo-Flame gas-on-gas grill with a heavy-duty rotisserie big enough to roast a water buffalo.
A few nights after we became the proud new owners of the grill, I decided to surprise my husband by cooking up a batch of juicy cheeseburgers for him. He’d always said that nothing could beat the flavor of burgers cooked outdoors on a charcoal grill, so I knew he would be thrilled when he came home from work and I handed him a plate of burgers with telltale grill marks on them.
Getting the charcoal to light,
however, was another story. Because I
had no lighter fluid, I tried everything short of a flamethrower to get the
briquettes started, but they refused to catch.
And 200 matches later, when one briquette finally did light, I blew on
it until my cheeks hurt and I felt lightheaded…and still the flame died.
I grew so frustrated, I took all of the charcoal out of the grill, lined the bottom with crumpled newspaper and stacked the charcoal back on top of it. Then I set the newspaper on fire. I also threw some dead maple leaves on top of the whole thing. I figured that maple tasted good on pancakes, so it might add a little extra flavor to the burgers.
I’d never cooked on a grill before so the burgers turned out just a tad on the well-done side. Actually, they resembled hollowed-out lumps of coal topped with overcooked, brown rubbery cheese. Not wanting to hurt my feelings, my husband choked them down.
“Well, how were they?” I asked
after he’d finished.
“They had a really…unique flavor,”
he said, then added under his breath, “A flavor that I’m sure will linger with
me for the next few days.”
After that night, I refused to
use the grill again, and for some reason, my husband didn’t want to attempt to
try cooking on it, either. So we left
it standing outside untouched for so long, the next time I lifted the lid on
it, I found a big wasps’ nest inside.
That did it. The grill
mysteriously disappeared the next day.
One of the problems of not
having a grill is that when I’m invited to barbecues at my friends’ houses, I
can’t reciprocate and invite them to a barbecue at my place. But even if I did own a grill, I’m pretty
sure none of my friends would show up to eat my burgers anyway – not unless they
wanted to risk developing an intestinal blockage.
But I’m not the only one who’s not Wolfgang Puck when it comes to grilling. A few of the barbecues I’ve been to over the years haven’t exactly featured gourmet fare. I once was handed a hot-dog that had been burned so badly, it resembled a long cigar-ash in a bun. And at another barbecue, I cut into a chicken breast that was dark brown on the outside and bright pink on the inside. I could swear I saw the salmonella bacteria tap-dancing on it.
I did momentarily consider buying a gas
grill, which I thought would simplify the lighting process, but just as I was
about to go shopping for one, I saw a former neighbor on the evening news.
She’d accidentally set the whole side of her house on fire and turned her vinyl
siding into something that looked like stretched-out taffy, all because she’d
used her gas grill on her tiny balcony. Considering my brief past history with
grilling, I was fairly certain there was a good chance I could burn down all
10,000 acres of Bear Brook State Park, located right behind my house.
And then I saw a warning on TV about a woman
who’d suffered weeks of severe abdominal pain after attending a barbecue.
X-rays revealed she had a piece of wire from a wire brush used to scrub the
grill clean, piercing her colon.
So I doubt there will be a grill in my yard
any time soon, even though every time my dog and I go for a walk and I smell a
steak barbecuing somewhere, my mouth waters and I put my nose up in the air,
like a wolf catching the scent of its potential next meal. I’m always tempted
to find the house and then use my dog to beg for food (believe me, she’s good
at it).
If my craving for a grilled burger or steak
gets severe enough, I just might seriously consider getting one of those indoor
countertop electric grills.
But first I’ll make sure all of my smoke
detectors have fresh batteries in them.
No comments:
Post a Comment