For me, barbecueing has always been about nostalgia, recreating wonderful late summer evenings with family when I was a child, holidaying at a relative’s farm. The food was probably very ordinary, but it was made special by the sense of occasion, the closeness of loved relatives, and the feeling of the summer holidays slipping away, the stars encroaching in the late August sky, and the inevitable return to the dull Gradgrind of normal life and school.
My Weber kettle was bought about 20 years ago. It was the second cheapest model at the time. It’s travelled from London to Tokyo to Oxfordshire, to the opposite end of Oxfordshire. It gets about two outings a year, on unpredictably pleasant English evenings when I fire it up with smokey old self-igniting bags of charcoal which need some encouragement from additional accelerants.
It doesn’t really matter what I try to cook. Raw vegetables go on first, such as asparagus if in season, bell peppers, or stem broccolli, then the meat, usually steak rather than hamburger, and my wife has a piece of fish, wrapped in kitchen foil with lemon slices and herbs. Nothing comes out like it was from a Michelin starred kitchen but that isn’t the point.
As someone with a charcoal bbq and a charcoal smoker all I could think was “He must not have much practice with charcoal.”
As you obviously know. Charcoal is very controllable with good technique. Sure its slower to change temps than gas but when you dial it in you can get very repeatable temps.
Also those of us not running stick burners know we get most of the smoke flavour well well before 12 hours. And if you did want to smoke a burger, maybe try woodchips…
Now to clean my grill because I made Maui Ribs tonight. Yum.
This is the whole point: grilling is more than just the bit of meat and how it tastes, it’s the setting, the small pleasure of smelling it in the grill, the drink in your hand, all that. And the success rate may not be all that great, but that’s also part of the fun!
I love cooking on my grill because it’s a bit of a game, it’s fun, and I like the whole experience. I know I’m not a hotshot cook, but I am only cooking for myself and my friends, and they like it enough that I’m not going to stress about the perfect burger.
It seems the only valid part of the opinion is best seen as being against restaurants trying to imitate the backyard experience. But I cannot tell, because I am not going to waste my time listening to his podcast.
I will gladly take a hit in quality if it means a happier, more enjoyable experience overall. I’m no Anton Ego, so screw the whole snobbery.
I lived in Bayreuth and Kulmbach from 1990 to 2010, so that particular style has become my gold standard. I also love those from Coburg, and in Nuremberg I always have to have “3 in Weckla” from a stall. My only regret about Munich is how it’s missing the same culture of bratwurst.
Which all leads me to believe that Dave Chang has never enjoyed the sublime, supreme taste of grilled meat from a Coburg grill, where they add pine cones to the charcoal for flavor.
Screw hamburgers, I now am lusting for a pair of bratwurst roasted over pine cones in a cumin-spiced bun.
Sous vide is your friend. You can absolutely control the degree of doneness, and you can use cheap cuts for a long time and still get something incredibly tender.
This is the point I’m seeing under-represented on here. They are an outdoor food. If you’re going to compare merits of restaurant burger or whatever, fine, but even a terrible burger can be a blank canvas for supreme condiments (Fuddruckers is an entire franchise based on this philosophy).
I’ve never seen a consumer gas grill get nearly as hot as I would like it to be. I inherited a Weber Genesis and it basically says to do most of your cooking with the top closed…yeah so that’s now an outdoor oven?
I think a lot of people have touched on the specifics of cooking meat, a high temp sear with a low temp thorough cooking to your desired doneness. I think there is a fairly large difference in flavor between a fire grilled burger and a pan / griddle seared one. I’m not saying one is better than the other necessarily, but there is a flavor difference. If you are eating chunks of burnt carbon then you probably need to clean your grates, maybe this time with a stainless scour pad or pumice stone thing.
There’s a lot of ways to make a good if not great burger at home. Whether it’s the grill, a skillet, griddle, whatever…just keep perfecting it until you can make it taste good to you. You’re cooking for your taste and that’s what matters.*
*personally I think most chefs are somewhat pretentious. There are classical dishes where ingredients and technique are crucial to the quality of the final product. A cooked chunk of beef is not really one of them. You can arrive at an excellent burger multiple ways.
To be fair to Fuddrucker’s their burgers aren’t that bad. It’s Red Robin that does 100 toppings and a thin griddle patty. I like my burgers to have a thick meaty patty, so more meat than toppings. But, I still like a few of the RR burgers just for the flavor combinations.
YES! Burgers on a cast iron are infinitely better and reliable. I’ve never understood the obsession with grilling burgers.
Grills have their place, and it’s mostly chicken, fish, and sausage. When I think about my tool choice for meats:
Chicken: charcoal grill
Steak: slow and very low, then sear on cast iron
Burger: cast iron
Pulled pork, brisket, ribs: smoker
Korean bbq: charcoal grill
Sausage: charcoal grill
Fish: charcoal grill or smoker
I mean these are all tools and I suppose one can get different experiences from cooking given the settings. If I want to hang outside with a beer with people, I do not choose burgers: I pick something I know will work best for the setting eg chicken and sausage.
Oh, wow, I love this suggestion. Absolutely trying this. Thank you. I mean, anything with ghee is almost automatically better, but a burger with ghee - wow. That’s inspired.
