Grill TipsGrills, Barbecues & Food

There are many types of grills, the majority of them being in one of two types – gas-fuelled or charcoal. There is a debate over the virtues of charcoal or gas for use as a cooking method.

Grilling is a tradition in the United States. There are “cook-offs” for steak-grilling and barbecue (Southern and MidWestern style) around the United States with large cash prizes involved in many of them. The majority of people in these competitions use charcoal, usually in large, custom-designed steel or brick grills. Some are simply a couple of large oil drums sawed lengthwise on their sides to make a lid and grill base, whilst others are large, vehicle sized grills made of brick, weighing close to a 1000 Kg !

Gas-fuelled grills normally use Natural Gas (NG) or Propane (LP) as their fuel, with the gas-flame either directly cooking the food, or otherwise indirectly, by heating grilling elements, which in turn emit the heat necessary to cook food. Gas grills come all in sizes, ranging from small, single steak grills up to large, industrial sized restaurant grills which have the capacity to cook enough meat to feed scores of people. Gas grills are manufactured to EITHER use LP or NG, though it is possible to convert a grill from one gas fuel source to the other.

Charcoal grills often use charcoal briquettes as their fuel. The burnt briquettes will transform into embers radiating the heat necessary to cook food. E.G. Kingsford was the major influence behind the American grilling tradition. He was a relative of Henry Ford, who saw that Ford’s Model T production lines were producing a large amount of wood scraps, that were just being discarded. Mr Kingsford proposed a simple idea to Ford, namely to set up a charcoal manufacturing facility next to the car assembly line, and sell the charcoal, with the Ford name, in Ford dealerships. Ford immediately implemented his idea. After Kingsford’s death, the charcoal company was renamed Kingsford Charcoal Co. in his honour.

Another personality in the charcoal grilling arena is George Stephen. The typical American charcoal grill is a metal, hollow hemisphere with three legs & a small metal disc to catch ash, with another grate lower down, to hold the charcoal and an upper grate to hold the food to be cooked. He is credited with creating this hemispherical grill design, jokingly called “Sputnik”, at the time, by his neighbours. Stephen, who was a welder, worked for Weber Brothers Metal Works, a metal fabrication shop, who mainly welded steel spheres together to make life buoys.

Stephen was sick of wind blowing ash onto the food when it was grilled. Luckily, he had an epiphany one day: he took the lower half of a buoy, welded three steel legs onto it, and constructed a more shallow hemisphere for use as a lid. He took it home and within months was selling the grills, first to his neighbours, then to customers who had heard of the grill’s reputation through word of mouth, and finally started the Weber-Stephen Products Company.