Posted on 07/24/2010 5:51:25 AM PDT by smokingfrog
The battle of the sexes is sizzling this summer.
Elizabeth Karmel — one of the few women in New York to helm a top grill pit — rakes male cooks over the coals with her new “The Girls’ Guide to Grilling” (at stfsavortheflavor.com).
In it, she claims that women are just as good — if not better — at taming the outdoor flame.
“The great thing about being a woman in the male-dominated world of grilling is that in the end, it’s all about the food, not about fire-building or pounding my fist on my chest,” says Karmel, executive chef at Hill Country (30 W. 26th St.). “I don’t need to be macho, I just need the food to taste great.”
She adds that women who try grilling her way will find that not only is the experience not messy, they can actually feel feminine while they do it.
“I think everyone should look pretty while they’re grilling,” she says. “Because we all feel better about ourselves when we look pretty.” She suggests wearing grilling mitts to protect long fingernails, and mitts to protect fingernails, and avoiding heels by a hot grill, preferring to go barefoot.
But her comments have sparked a war in the testosterone-fueled world of red-meat-cooking males.
“I’m not worried about getting dirty; I want flavor,” says Andrew Fischel, owner of Rub BBQ (208 W. 23rd St.). “If I’m not getting smoky and getting greasy, than I’m not cooking. Grilling outside is about getting smoke in your eyes and dirt under your fingernails — all that great stuff. That’s why a lot of men gravitate towards grilling . . . the dirt, the smoke, it’s all part of the experience.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
YUM....great looking steaks
It takes me a half hour to get the coals white using the electric coil starter, 10 minues to start and another 20 for them to turn white.....
steaks dont take very long maybe 10 minutes or so a side..depending on how thick....neither do burgers...pork chops a little longer to make sure I kill any buggers...even still I try to keep those moist, so you might find a shade of pale pink around the bone...and I like to keep them on the bone...
LOL they don’t make the cow grill any longer,looking for the pink Smoking Pig!
So, will you divulge the manufacturers name?
Barbecuers and charcoal are for people that don't have wood.
If I'd have to mess around for hours with charcoal...I'll build a real fire. I like to use a hole in the ground with some good rocks around it, Just come up with a grate.
I've been to ranch get togethers where they dig a hole with a backhoe, build a huge fire, let it die down, throw some sheet metal on the coals and put a dressed out steer or two in there, and cover it back up.
They generally wrap the steers up in a wet tarp or cloth.
Next day...beef sammiches.
Of course that's a little extreme for an afternoon backyard party.
It started out as a 5' section of 20" pipe. Rather than do the standard "cut 2' off the pipe and drop that section for the fire box" they cut off the bottom half of the pipe in the firebox section and welded 3/8" steel plate together to make a rectangular firebox tha can handle 2' lengths of wood.
There's a half moon opening between the firebox and smoke chamber with a half moon plate that can be adjusted from full open to 2" crack - with threaded baffles on each end of the pit, temperature control is easy. The firebox has a gas log starter with a hookup for my propane tank ... so starting it is a breeze. The bottom of the firebox is a 3/8" plate on rails so that, when it comes time to clean out the ashes, all I have to do is spread out newspaper, roll the bad boy over the paper, pull out the plate and then roll off.
It weighs about 350 pounds.
Our place had an old stone fireplace that my Grandpa built probably in the 20’s that we used to roast meat and corn on. Since it was on an apple farm, we had plenty of apple wood for that. I learned to peel the bark for the apple wood (difficult) because fire with the bark on it seemed to make the meat taste bitter to me.
I once took an old 1930’s refrigerator that was laying around the farm and turned it into a smoker. It worked great. I dug a 3’ fire pit like you described, sized so I could fit an old Weber Kettle grill lid over it (~22”) and lined it with stones (basalt).
Then I laid Terr's cotta pipe in a trench from the side of the pit about four feet and elbowed it up through the bottom of my fridge, with a woodstove damper set into the top of the fridge. I ripped all of the lining, insulation, and rubber seals out of the fridge so they wouldn't smolder and kill us. It leaked smoke like crazy, but it worked like a charm. Being a fridge, it even had built-in racks you could adjust any way you wanted.
I just built a roaring fire in the pit until I had about a foot or two of coals, then covered it up and adjusted the airflow w/the pit lid and fridge top vents, adding wet wood for smoke and dry to keep the heat right.
It was pretty redneck, the whole thing was built from scrap and didn't cost us a dime to build, but it worked. We smoked the ribs and chops from the hog we butchered that year - awesome - then when I left for the Army, my mom tore it down and hauled it off to the dump because it was so ugly.
Someday, maybe I'll try it again. Gotta find a fridge that's not 1/2 plastic though.
Make that terra cotta. Stupid spell checker.
That's me, and exactly what I'm talking about. I think they did use burlap, as that was readily available from grain bags and wouldn't really impart a flavor.
I still like cooking most things over a wood fire, including fish, and smoking ribs and chicken. Hot dogs, hamburgers, everything tastes better cooked on a fire.
Everything, of course, but steak.
So how do you cook steak then?
I don’t care what you call it, I’d eat her shrimp any day.
Ah... BGE. Almost as good as the Bubba Keg Grill, now known as the Big Steel Keg.
The Bubba Keg is good bang for the buck .. but I needed the XL size (24") and accessories - place setter and pizza stone chief among them.
I'll let the "almost as good" comment slide ... except to say that my grand kids will still be cooking on my egg long after I'm dead and gone.
So will mine... but then the doctors only give me two months to live.
Just kidding. Steel should last a long long time, but of course, they haven’t been around long enough to establish a track record. I will tell you this, tests (and my own use) shows that the Bubba retains heat a good deal better. You can put your hand on the Bubba when it’s 350 inside for a second or two...no way you can do that on the BGE.
I love the BGE and knew the Bubba was a good product because of the BGE and a good deal of research. I think the company figured out that “Bubba Keg Grill” wasn’t such a great name and that’s why they changed it to Big Steel Keg and improved it even more. Of course, to get rid of the old stock of Bubbas, Home Depot dropped the price to $300.
I REALLY love that.
Oh... I’ll bet you that BGE will make a few improvements based on the Bubba/BSE. They make sense and do make a difference. The seal is a big one.
Life's too short for mediocre.
FYI…
Is it "Art Deco" or is it a barbecue? You decide, because our Lil'Pig smokes and cooks just like any other Traeger grill. With 418 sq. inches of cooking surface, and internal hopper, stainless steel door handle, multi-position digital thermostat control, and viper casters, this grill is sure to raise a "squeal" from your guests.and
Tell me more, I haven't had any problem with mine. When I close my egg down the fire dies very quickly .. and high heat hasn't impacted the seal after many uses.
The biggest plus side for the emergence of the Bubba/BSE and the Bayou Classic Cypress Grill (one my brothers has one) is that it brings American made competition into a market dominated by one player for quite a while ... always a good thing. I expect that price for Big Green Eggs will be coming down a bit in the future.
Yes. Others on line say they’ve had it up to 800...but I don’t see the point. Steaks almost explode when you slap ‘em on at 700. It’s an amazing thing. And a big bag of charcoal will last for weeks (I grill several times a week as well.)
I’m getting ready to do my first brisket. I’d love to know your method. I’ve got a couple of good looking recipes, but talking to someone who’s done it on a kamado type grill.
I’ve read on line and have friends who use a BGE all the time, and they are constantly complaining about having to replace the seal. It was the first thing they looked at when I showed them the Bubba. The Bubba uses a seal like you have on your oven. Not sure what it is, semi metallic/asbestos, I think...but basically just like an oven.
BTW...almost everything that fits a BGE works on the Bubba. I have been trying for weeks to get a remote food/grill combo thermometer that BGE sells. Think it may come in Wednesday. Will save me a lot of going in and out the door.
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