Gas Grills
If
you’re in the market for a new grill, you owe it to yourself to
check out gas grills. These machines offer the latest in technological
advances while sacrificing none of the versatility that grills are famous
for. Best of all, you get to taste the flavors of the meats you grill,
rather than the flavor of the fuel you use to grill them.
The slogan “taste the meat, not the heat” has been a spot
of contention in the debate between charcoal and gas grills. After all,
adherents of charcoal grilling insist that the flavor of charcoal smoke
is one of the things that a barbeque enthusiast prizes, rather than
deals with. Proponents of gas grills on the other hand insist that there
are subtle flavors in the meat that are swallowed up when you drown
them in lighter fluid and charcoal.
Who is right in this debate? Well there is never going to be an end
to it, and the correctness of each side is validated by some extremely
talented chefs. It boils down to personal taste in the end, as most
things culinary tend to do. So what do you do in this situation, where
facts are scarce and opinion looms large in the spotlight? You should
learn what facts there are, and let your tastes decide once those facts
are known.
So, to aid towards that end, here are a few facts about gas grills.
Gas grills heat up faster than any other type of grill. They just do.
A gas grill is up to cooking temperature within mere minutes of turning
it on. Burning gas requires no heat up time; all that is necessary is
bringing the cooking surface up to temperature. Compare that to a charcoal
grill which takes a half an hour or more to heat up, and you can begin
to see the appeal of a gas grill in today’s fast paced world.
Gas grills can smoke. Proponents of charcoal grills will tell you that
you can’t get the smoky flavor of barbeque with a gas grill. That’s
an outright lie. Just like in a charcoal grill, you need a smoke box
to properly smoke with a gas grill, but many models have them built
in. if your model does, you simply wet the wood chips and put them into
the box before firing the grill up, and then turn on the grill and cook
as you normally would. The box keeps the wood chips from igniting, but
allows them to smoke, flavoring your meat with apple, hickory, cherry,
or any other flavor you can find.
The natural gas used in gas grills is more expensive than charcoal.
It’s true that pound for pound gas is more expensive, but the
fact of the matter is you have more control over the expenditure of
your gas than you do over how much charcoal you use. To cook anything,
you need a minimum amount of fuel. But if you spend ten minutes grilling
hamburgers, you’re going to use the same amount of charcoal as
you would need to grill almost anything.
Ten minutes worth of gas is a significantly different price tag than
two hours worth. And even if you were to grill something for two hours,
it would be at a low flame level. That means you turn the burners down
and use less gas. Guess what you do when you grill something over charcoal
for two hours? You move the coals further away, and you use more coals.
While gas is more expensive, it’s also more efficient, so the
price gap is not something you should worry over.
