Gassy

Electric stoves seem like such a terrible idea. The world is a big place. I guess there are some people in it who get excited about such things. Maybe it’s the clean lines of the appliance. Perhaps these folks have an irrational fear of gas. Or, I suppose, they are good for places where natural gas isn’t available.

Sadly, we have an electric stove. The kitchen isn’t set up for gas. Sure, we can redo the kitchen to run a gas line for a stove. But that’s a project we’re just not ready to undertake right now.

During the sabbatical, however, I was cooking with gas. And that was absolutely essential for blistering eggplant to make baba ganoush. Now that I’m back to electric, I have to re-learn how to cook. For example, I knew how hot my high output gas burner would get the cast iron skillet when cranked up all the way. But I have no idea how long it takes an electric coil to get fully hot on the number six dial setting.

Transitions are tough.

In part because I need some way to char my eggplants, and in part because I miss cooking with gas, I’ve just done the unthinkable.

Last night I bought a crappy gas grill.

Surely, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I have strong thoughts on grilling. To me, grilling means direct high-heat cooking over hardwood lump charcoal. It doesn’t just cook food, it adds flavor.

Gas grills don’t do that. Gas grills fire roast.

But fire roasting is a great thing to do with vegetables. And dammit, we need to eat more vegetables. My secret plan is to try and find someone who is totally overwhelmed by their CSA share and try to buy them out. Ideally from Roxbury. Or, I suppose I could just contact the farm directly and see if we can work out some kind of arrangement. Now I have a few more things to add to my to do list right underneath, “Assemble the new grill.”

For those who are curious, I got the Brinkman 810-2511-S 5-burner grill from Home Depot. It’s $200 and Consumer Reports has nothing bad to say about it. Plus, in the magazine’s tests, this model did exceptionally well in both high temperature evenness and low temperature evenness.

The manufacturer suggests that it can crank up temperatures of 750 degrees or higher at the cast iron grates with all burners turned to their maximums. That could bode well for some outdoor pizza experiments.

Honestly, if I ever decided to cook hamburgers on this thing, I might just as well throw a cast iron skillet on the grates and get an incredible sear on those suckers. The smoke that would ordinarily fill my house will instead perfume the neighborhood, and maybe even scare away the squirrels.

The thing also has a side burner, so I can slowly reduce a sauce while fire roasting something on the main deck.

Some people say the Brinkman isn’t built to last. And that’s just fine. This is an experiment. It’s going to be hard for me to put down my chimney starter and click an ignition switch. But Mrs. Fussy thinks that the instant access to outdoor fire will result in more quick dinners cooked outside that don’t heat up the house. And she’s got a point.

Fire roasted corn is delicious. It may not be quite as flavorful as hardwood grilled corn. But it sure beats boiling a huge pot of water in a house you are trying to keep cool with the air conditioning. And in theory it just takes minutes to make.

Still, it feels like cheating. We’ll have to see how it works in practice. I’ll keep you posted.