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By Root 595 0

of Weber Brothers and things must have worked out, because in 1965 the company became Weber-Stephen and has been ever since. Today George occupies a rightful place next to Prometheus on the high throne of fire.

PRE-1951 GRILL Bright red paint job can’t camouflage medieval design. Charcoal goes in the bottom, food goes on the grate. Okay for cooking a thin steak but outside of that, not great.

POST 1951 Brave new grill. George Stephen’s grill was the Volkswagen Beetle of the cooking world—it changed everything.The lid, spherical shape, and air vents made it possible to control heat levels by controlling air flow. Since heat could convect throughout the vessel, indirect-heat grilling suddenly became possible. Lacking vision, the Nobel Prize committee failed to acknowledge Stephen.

In 2004, I hooked a gas-powered blower to a trailer-sized rental grill. Several metal parts melted. It was a beautiful moment.

AB WEBER MODIFICATION V1.0

No one at Weber knows I’ve done this and I’m confident that if they knew they wouldn’t like it. I removed the rotating cover plate from one of the bottom air vents and fitted it with a length of tail pipe and a hair dryer. Essentially, I’ve turned the grill into a blast furnace capable of generating enough heat to please the average blacksmith. I got the idea after seeing a chef in Italy cook steaks over a fireplace grate after whipping the fire into a frenzy with a hair dryer. Why does it work? Remember, combustion is really a chemical reaction in which the carbon in the charcoal (or any coals for that matter) has a thermal fling with air. More air, more combustion, more heat available for radiating to a target food. I’m contemplating a new version utilizing the motor out of an old vacuum. Oh and by the way, if you do this and burn the house down, you’re on your own.

CARDBOARD BOX SMOKER

MY GRILLS

First there’s my hulking Bar-B-Chef, manufactured by Barbecues Galore, an Australian company. This very stout piece of ordnance has an actual coal elevator inside that allows you to crank the coal grate up and down in relation to the food, which sits on heavy, wide, cast-iron grates above. It’s wonderful for direct-heat grilling and for rotisserie work. For all indirect cooking (what I call grill roasting), I have a 22½-inch-diameter Weber 1-Touch Gold (meaning it has an integrated ash catcher). It’s bright orange and I love just about everything about it. Of course, I’ve made some modifications (see illustration, above) that I’m not sure the folks at Weber-Stephen would endorse, but hey, what they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em, right? I’ve also got a couple of Smokey Joes, which look like the 1-Touch’s spawn. They’re great travel grills and capable of some lovely tricks of their own.

CLEAN YOUR MACHINE WHERE IT COUNTS

It may look like a beat-up ’74 Gremlin on the outside, but your grill grate had better be squeaky clean or food will absolutely, positively stick, especially high-protein items like meat. Not only will sticking badly damage the food, it removes those groovy (literally) grill marks. Now, I’m not a very neat person, but here’s my plan: I never clean the grate after I use it; I clean it before I use it.

GRILL TOOLS

Essential

• fire extinguisher

• spring-loaded tongs (long)

• stem-style analog thermometer

• stable table or other work surface

• grill rag: a tied towel for rubbing down grill (see illustration, right)

• clean platter for retrieving cooked food

• for fish or burgers, a grill spatula

• pumice stone for heavy crud (and light rust) removal

• wire brush for general cleaning (the bristles need to be closely clustered and short; otherwise they’ll simply wave to either side of the grate)

• spray bottle or squirt gun for putting out flare-ups

• digital timer

Awfully Nice But Not Essential

• grill light for night maneuvers

• metal skewers

• sauté basket (looks like a giant square metal ashtray with lots of holes drilled in it)

• portable hairdryer (for churning up