What’s the most bone-headed thing you’ve seen done, or have done yourself, while barbequing? (Not talking about real barbeque here, but “backyard barbeque grills” – though the former is fair game as well.)
I was at Lake Havasu during Spring Break in 1997. Some college types were camped next to us, and they decided to cook some hot dogs on their grill. They put the charcoal into the little Webber and doused it with lighter fluid. Then they put the grill on and immediately put the 'dogs on to cook! :rolleyes: They were eating hot dogs cooked in flaming naphtha; not on nicely glowing coals from which the lighter fluid had been burned off. Just about the time they were finished eating, the coals were ready for cooking. :smack: I guess “Grilling-101” is not taught in school.
Whenever they show something being barbecued on commercials for Burger King and other grilled things, they show the flames so high that they’re licking the food being grilled.
When I first got my propane grill, I thought that’s how it’s supposed to be done. Made some nice barbecued carbon-chunks…
“Backyard barbeque”, as I’m using it, means using charcoal or gas to cook things on a grill fairly rapidly. “Real barbeque” beans slow cooking at low heat, often or usually in a brick enclosure. Barbeque sauce is often put on the meat while cooking in a “backyard barbeque”, while “real barbeque” often leaves the sauce off to be served separately. But the real difference is the temperature and time. (Also, “real barbeque” needs wood charcoal instead of briquettes or gas.) YMMV.
At a beach barbecue in Galveston in the early 1970s, a friend of my family’s (an astronaut, incidentally, but I ain’t naming names) made a sandpit barbecue to cook all the fish we’d caught with a seine net. Unfortunately, his choice of firelighter was somewhat dramatic: half a gallon of gasoline. He poured it in and threw in a match. The thing went up like a Saturn V engine, very nearly removing his face. Luckily he jumped backwards just soon enough, and the thing was eventually usable. Mmmm, shark steaks.
I’ve seen fire safety videos about the use of petrol/gas and fires/bbqs. Don’t do it. Even if the fire or bbq looks dead, petrol is highly volatile and ignites at a low temperature. One video I saw was of a fully-suited fireman throwing a glass of petrol onto a seemingly dead fire: the petrol ignited and the flames went back up the liquid and engulfed the fireman’s arm. Imagine how burned he would have been had he not been suited up.
Even having an open source of petrol nearby is dangerous - think of sparks.
Mr. Legend’s former girlfriend once decided that their campfire wasn’t going well enough, so she tossed a capful of Everclear onto it. The flame traveled up the stream to her hand, singeing her and melting the plastic bottlecap.
My uncle threw kerosene on a brush fire when I was young. He was burned pretty badly.
My mom decided, when I was older, that the fire wasn’t going as well as she’d like in the BBQ pit, and squirted some lighter fluid on it and it flared up and burned her face. It wasn’t as bad as my uncle, but we still spent the afternoon in the ER.
A friend of mine had a party in the place he just bought with a porch about 4 ft. long. He placed the grill on the porch, but the base was about three feet wide, allowing about two feet between the screen door and the grill. Being overzealous indoorsy types, they both didn’t know how to start the fire well and were overcome with testosterone. The end result: three feet high flames and wind kicking them a foot inside the door. Somehow, the wire didn’t melt.
It was late into the fall, and I had a nice NY strip steak thawed and just wanted so badly to grill one last time. So, I get everything ready and go out to the grill … I turn on the grill and open the propane valve, no tell tale hissing of gas under pressure…this does not bode well. It seems as if I have an empty tank. I don’t want to go get it refilled (I think I was broke anyways) and I have no charcoal, but I am single minded in my goal of grilling and eye the brush and branch pile under the oak tree. This will serve for a fire and very likely be much more flavorful than any gas or charcoal fire, methinks. I set to it and start a fire in the gas grill with this mix of both older and green branches. The composting wood smells rather earthy and fungussy and has a powdery growth infecting it, but I think, ah it’ll burn away. There is no problem, it all goes rather smoothly and the steak is grilled succesfully over the wood fire. The steak is passable, but I can’t help but think it tastes slightly funny…a certain taint…earthy and fungussy. That’s alright, I think to myself, I like mushrooms with my steak, anyways. Later that night I decide to go to a nightclub that I haven’t frequented in years, I feel a little feverish and not quite right, but I believe it will pass. I sit down and get reaquainted with the bartender and sip on a beer. Two thirds of the way through this first and only beer and deep in conversation with the beautiful bartender I go clammy, and with no warning projectile vomit the entire dinner of barely digested steak, corn, and baked potato across the bar and onto the floor. It was quite apparent what I had for dinner and very chunky! I apoligized, excused myself to the bathroom and sneaked out the backdoor. I assume I poisoned myself with the tainted and rotting (green) wood-- I have no other explanation. Quite embarassing and taught me a lesson about grilling with proper fuel.
My story involves a not quite Steinbeckian failure of imagination.
The deceptive thing about barbecue is that after a while, the coals burn down to the point where one might think that there is no chance of having the fire flare up again, but a brisket is a fatty cut of meat. A friend was cooking a brisket. The fire had died down, so he left the house. When we got back to his house, the grease had dripped down onto the coals, rekindling the fire and lighting the meat on fire. A thick column of smoke was rising above his roof when we pulled into the driveway. Fortunately, the brisket flambe was contained in the pit, but the meat was a charred mess, and though nobody mentioned it we all knew what could have happened.
Some friends and I were barbecuing sausages which were very drippy. The fat from these things burns pretty well…VERY well, actually, and the fire seemed to be going out of control so we put the cover on the thing and closed up most of the holes.
In my teenage wisdom I thought it would be okay if I just took the cover off quickly in order to check on the sausages. :eek: As soon as I did that, a large amount of oxygen rushed into the barbecue, sending a column of flame up six feet in the air and nearly scorching my face off. :eek:
I don’t like to own up to stupidity, but to possibly save someone else some pain here goes.
On the beach with a couple of those foil disposible barbies, having finished eating push the barbie-tins to one side. Ooh look at the nice smooth sand underneath, why don’t I run my hand through it to make a groovy pattern?*****
Note: White hot sand doesn’t look any different to cool sand. But it’s hotter than boiling water. Do not poke your hand into white hot sand, like I did.
*****Due to the must trample the pristine snow[sup]tm[/sup] effect.
I was in Denver visiting some friends, and on Saturday we grabbed some steak and potatoes and veggies, and fired up his propane grill. The POS spark starter wasn’t doing the job (hate that design), but I knew from college that you can start a grill with a lighter or a match by holding it up to the holes underneath the grill and turning the gas on.
Well, my friend had been trying to light it for awhile with the starter, gas full on. You could smell the gas coming from it, but I just turned the gas back on, stuck my lighter underneath, and flicked it. There was this really scary “whomph” and I watched in horror as this fireball engulfed the grill, coming inches from my face and singing my arms. All three of us were clustered around the grill, and I could have taken us all out. :eek:
Best part is, I should know better. I grew up with propane stoves which we ran off of bottles, so we also had the pilot light turned off. I was tought how to safely light the stove or oven, and I still did it wrong. We even had a familly friend who burned her arm pretty badly lighting her oven one day, because she turned on the gas, got distracted for a minute, and then tried to light it.
So, for those who don’t know, if you’re hand-lighting a propane grill, make sure that the gas is not on (and hasn’t been on for awhile). Get your flame going right underneath the grill, where those little holes are, and then turn it on. If it doesn’t light right away, turn the gas back off and wait several minutes for the gas to clear.
An alternate (and probably better) way, is to roll up a piece of paper into a taper, stuff it in near where the gas jets are, and turn on the gas.
Well, I once imbibed a couple of beers too many while barbecuing, and suffered from the resulting incoordination… literally.
I needed to close the vent underneath the coals on my Weber, and instead of walking around the grill to reach the lever, I just reached around…
… and touched the inside of my arm to the kettle full of hot coals!
I only made contact for an instant, but that was all it took. I left a layer of skin behind on the grill, or it vaporized, or charred and fell off. It wasn’t on my arm, that’s for sure. It’s in the exact same place where Kwai Chang Caine has his Tiger scar that you see him acquire during the opening sequence of every episode of Kung Fu. A severe second degree burn, about the size of three half dollars.
well, I will own up to this one, but not without some embarrasment. I had owned a couple of propane grills, and felt I knew my way around them. I did grill all the time, even mid winter. So I of course knew that I should turn off the gas at the tank when I was done grilling. I shouldn’t just walk away in a beery haze and forget to turn the grill off. Oh no, I knew better.
If you leave your propane tank on, and your grill on all night you will:
a) run out of propane
b)create a fire hazard
c) really almost irretrievably slag your grill.
When I was a teen my family was having a barbeque by the beach using one of those portable charcoal briquette things. I was keen to get back home and go to a party with a girl I was sweet on - so while everone was down at the beach I took the initiative and loaded all our gear into the back of our car, little realising that briquettes were still burning at about 2000 degrees…the result was that I burned out most of the interior of the back of the car – and I was grounded.
