Journal 54 Grilling with a Bang

This weekend I tried to start grilling again. I was thinking of some improvements and expansions I wanted to make this year:

Something on which I can light the chimney outside the grill.
A grill caddy.
A pizza stone.

Last year I had a problem with the temperature starting way too high and the heat not lasting enough. I don’t think I missed anything special. I just think I needed to light less charcoal in the chimney, instead of stuffing it to the top. I also needed to find an object on which to light a second batch of charcoal. Last year I couldn’t do this, and taking the food out of the grill to light another batch messed with the cooking process. Overcompensating with using too much charcoal to try and keep the grill hot for a long time didn’t work too good.

I was tempted to just light the chimney on the “stone” patio, but the paving stones are composite stones held together by mysterious binders, so I didn’t think it was healthy.

But we badly wanted to grill this weekend. So I cleaned the grill, my partner washed the grate, and we prepared some chicken and sliced onions. Although I didn’t have my burning platform, I thought I would light the charcoal not on the pavers, but on a slab of real stone.

Everything was going great and according to my plan.

The inside temperature of the grill stabilized at 300F. The temperature remained nice and stable for a long time. Yay! I would have preferred 375F to 400F, but this was good. Much better than blazing past 600F! I made a note of how much charcoal to use next time.

After I got the food over, I started lighting the next round of charcoal: nice big pieces that I could gently put in the SnS coal basket without kicking up too much ash. Everything was great. The charcoal got hot and white, and when it was ready, I started lowering in the pieces. Then my partner called me over, so I covered the lid and walked away for a second.

Suddenly, behind me I heard an explosion. Then I see the chimney fly across the patio, strewing hot coals everywhere.

The rock exploded.

I have heard people talk about the dangers of exploding rocks, but around campfires, and not very often. I thought this was some freakishly rare occurrence. I have also seen every Tom, Dick, and Harry light charcoal chimneys on asphalt, coated surfaces, inside their garage...

But no, one time Asya goes to light a fire on a stone for under twenty minutes, it has to explode! Yes, I guess it really happens.

I wondered what to do next. The chimney was undamaged. I guess same thing as last year: take the whole grate full of food out and light chimney in the grill, put the food back in. So I open the lid and I’m startled to see that parts of the onions have turned hot pink. Like the color of a pink highlighter. In fifteen years of cooking onions, I have never seen anything like this.

We try to figure it out. The chicken is not looking too happy either. The underside of the onion, the one touching the grate, is pink wherever the grates touched it. Could it be that the grate got damaged over the winter? Or during cleaning, even though it was only cleaned with dish soap and a gentle sponge? Did I use something more abrasive last year? A coconut coir sponge, but that wasn’t that abrasive, was it?

Turns out the grate, the shiny, stainless-steel-looking grate, is not actually stainless steel... it is plated steel. But plated with what? The site did not say.

The company that sells the basket also sells a 304 stainless steel grate. So the grates that come with the Weber grill are not durable, and after a year, not usable? So frustrating!

We called it a day and quickly cooked salmon in our old Oster convection oven that is still going strong after seventeen years of use! It was purchased in 2008! 2008! I am only thirty-one, how do I own products that are such better quality? Why is everything so bad nowadays?

Well, at least this season’s grilling season started with a bang!

I want to give a few housing updates: there are no updates.

If you are also struggling with housing, know that you are not alone! By any means! So many people are going through this right now. This issue is insane.

Please have a wonderful week. Thank you for reading. Hang in there!

Asya