Grillery 101 at -30C
November 27th 2010 01:57
I live in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. It gets cold, I mean COLD cold in the winter. We're already in the - double digits! I just got my notification that local skiing starts in the morning! So what do you do if you love (and live off) outdoor grilling?
When we moved into our current house we had natural gas so I got a BroilKing Sovereign XL grill. What a unit. Cast iron, rotisserie, side burner, 78 000 btu (British Thermal Units). She's a hot burning beast with ceramic coated cast iron grills mmmmm. I'm not kidding when I say I cooked 300 days on her the first year. I am a professional cook and instructor but I also cater and that baby has served me well.
If you are paying attention you can probably tell that I'm going somewhere with this, as I reread it I notice wistfullness in the tone.
Ole' burnin' Betty isn't as spritely as she used to be. Like all of us, she's looking a little weathered, she's bulged in some places and has caved in others, and has frankly taken on an "old person stank" if you follow? I try to keep her clean, exercise her as much as possible, replace the odd joint and generally give her the respect she deserves after so many years of faithful, delicious service, but she is listing to one side and can't keep her lid on anymore. Her rotisserie burner rusted out and the side burner melted the surrounding plastic rendering that useless!
I guess this is kind of a confessional now that I think of it, because I am guilty of certain kinds of neglect which have probably led to Ole Betty's condition(s). But rather than blubber and whine I'm going to set out some tips for grilling in these extreme weather conditions.
1. 600F in minus 30C weather has a detrimental effect on cooking times and grill pre warm time.
2. Beer freezes very quickly when it is held in a snowbank can holder.
3. Don't cook a full chicken on the grill when it's -40 with the wind chill, IT TAKES WAY TOO LONG!!!
4. Don't, DON'T wear a new petroleum based ski jacket to grill in the freezing cold! Why? Because you're cold, you get closer to the heat, the jacket melts!
5. That same jacket inhales greasy fatty smokey smells, and never exhales them until you're sweating it out on the ski hill.
6. Cast iron warps. It makes sense when you think about it, but only IF you think about it. Run that grill for 90 mins @ 500 in-30 weather then shut it down and walk away and that baby will "de-nature" and eventually bulge and cave. It will happen, and when it does, there's no reconstructive surgery in the world that will put that lid straight, or uplift those sagging grills.
7. If you must grill under these arguably insane conditions, cook something quick, say, just long enough to swallow one 500ml can of beer. Bone off chicken breast or better yet, thighs, maybe a marinated flank steak, a smallish piece of fish. Anything that will require frequent checking, or house in and outing is VERBOTEN! Use your head, you want to go out once to start the grill, once to put the food on, check/flip it and platter it to come back in. Period. Just don't forget to turn it OFF. I once cleared a fairly sizeable snowbank around my grill by forgetting to turn it off for 2 DAYS, which brings us to tip 8.
8. If you grill, start drinking AFTER you turn it off.
I think this may be her last season with us, I can barely stand to see her there, leaning far off to the south, and downward. It pains me to wrestle her top off to get the meat in there so I think, no, I know, it's Bye Bye Betty....
When we moved into our current house we had natural gas so I got a BroilKing Sovereign XL grill. What a unit. Cast iron, rotisserie, side burner, 78 000 btu (British Thermal Units). She's a hot burning beast with ceramic coated cast iron grills mmmmm. I'm not kidding when I say I cooked 300 days on her the first year. I am a professional cook and instructor but I also cater and that baby has served me well.
Ole' burnin' Betty isn't as spritely as she used to be. Like all of us, she's looking a little weathered, she's bulged in some places and has caved in others, and has frankly taken on an "old person stank" if you follow? I try to keep her clean, exercise her as much as possible, replace the odd joint and generally give her the respect she deserves after so many years of faithful, delicious service, but she is listing to one side and can't keep her lid on anymore. Her rotisserie burner rusted out and the side burner melted the surrounding plastic rendering that useless!
I guess this is kind of a confessional now that I think of it, because I am guilty of certain kinds of neglect which have probably led to Ole Betty's condition(s). But rather than blubber and whine I'm going to set out some tips for grilling in these extreme weather conditions.
1. 600F in minus 30C weather has a detrimental effect on cooking times and grill pre warm time.
3. Don't cook a full chicken on the grill when it's -40 with the wind chill, IT TAKES WAY TOO LONG!!!
4. Don't, DON'T wear a new petroleum based ski jacket to grill in the freezing cold! Why? Because you're cold, you get closer to the heat, the jacket melts!
5. That same jacket inhales greasy fatty smokey smells, and never exhales them until you're sweating it out on the ski hill.
6. Cast iron warps. It makes sense when you think about it, but only IF you think about it. Run that grill for 90 mins @ 500 in-30 weather then shut it down and walk away and that baby will "de-nature" and eventually bulge and cave. It will happen, and when it does, there's no reconstructive surgery in the world that will put that lid straight, or uplift those sagging grills.
7. If you must grill under these arguably insane conditions, cook something quick, say, just long enough to swallow one 500ml can of beer. Bone off chicken breast or better yet, thighs, maybe a marinated flank steak, a smallish piece of fish. Anything that will require frequent checking, or house in and outing is VERBOTEN! Use your head, you want to go out once to start the grill, once to put the food on, check/flip it and platter it to come back in. Period. Just don't forget to turn it OFF. I once cleared a fairly sizeable snowbank around my grill by forgetting to turn it off for 2 DAYS, which brings us to tip 8.
8. If you grill, start drinking AFTER you turn it off.
I think this may be her last season with us, I can barely stand to see her there, leaning far off to the south, and downward. It pains me to wrestle her top off to get the meat in there so I think, no, I know, it's Bye Bye Betty....
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