What do you do when you're at a communal barbecue and everyone else is doing it wrong?
Yesterday I went to a buddy's coffee shop to celebrate his release from hotel jail. He had been at a bar one night at the same time as someone who had contact with someone who had the virus, so his health code turned red and the authorities arrived to escort him to a hotel for 7 days quarantine (at his expense, of course). When I got there the fire was already going and people were cooking food. This wasn't a traditional grill, this was a kind of big bowl on legs with a crosshatch grill laid across it. Imagine a big Weber kettle with no top. Enough room for 8 people to crowd around and cook different foods and warm up because it was quite a chilly day.
So you can see the variety of foods being cooked. The beef, Chinese shaokao skewers, a lamb chop and some pans with tofu and noodles & cabbage. I wasn't cooking any of them, I didn't bring any meat. Nobody bothered to tell me to bring anything, otherwise I would have. The first item is the beef in the middle. One fellow from Lithuania had gotten the meat shipped in special from his ex-girlfriend in Inner Mongolia. He was very proud of the beef. Another fellow from France remarked this was the perfect sort of meat to make beef bourguignon. I privately agreed, this was stew meat, the kind that will not tolerate being cooked with direct heat. It needs slow cooking under cover and some smoke, too.
The fire was burning low, so someone opened the hatch to throw some more wood on. The wood was from broken up furniture! It had stain or varnish on it. So here is all this food being cooked on treated wood. Someone else noticed and said something about it, but that was all the wood they had. The alternative was letting the fire go out and the fun stop.
The Frenchman had some lamb chops, which he was cooking on a separate grill. This one was fueled by charcoal, thankfully. But he was using direct heat as well. This grill was a box grill. I don't have a photo but you can imagine a box on legs with a thin crosshatch wire grate. It's what BBQ used to look like in America in the 1950s. Needless to say this wasn't the right way to cook lamb chops, particularly the thick ones he had.
The beef, predictably, came out tough and inedible. The man was disappointed after the big fuss he had made over his special meat from Mongolia. The lamb was pretty tough, too. It could be eaten with difficulty, but wasn't the luxurious dripping-with-fat lamb I know I could have made. Plus, someone had seasoned it with hot spicy powder, which made it unpleasantly spicy. And all the food cooked on that big bonfire had that nasty wood smoke around it.
I'm already known as "the BBQ guy" but nobody really asked my advice. I was just asked how to brown onions, so I improvised a pan from some aluminum foil and got the job done. Now that I've told my story, what would you have done?
1. Just watch that man ruin his prized beef? Or tell him how to cook it, or even just take it over?
2. Even if I did offer advice...what could we have done, actually? There was no cover for that grill and no way of slow cooking that I could see. Is there some trick that people do when this happens?
3. The lamb...how could it have been saved?
4. The treated wood on the fire - what would you have done? "Stop having fun everyone! I'm shutting this cook down by shouting shaming words about toxic smoke!" It certainly wouldn't have made me popular. I suppose the thing to do would have been to let the wood burn down a while before putting food on. But...I really, really didn't want to be Captain Bringdown. I especially didn't want to be The Expert That Nobody Asked For.
5. Most importantly, how could I have done all this without being the BBQ bully who tells people how to cook their own meat? This was a social event, not a judging competition. Everyone just brought something to cook. If it came out suboptimal who cares? Cooking food over an open fire is literally the oldest form of cooking known to mankind. Anyone can do it. I felt bad about the beef which I knew was destined to be ruined, but I kept my mouth shut.
The only food that came out well was the shaokao skewers, which were designed to be cooked hot and fast.
So you can see the variety of foods being cooked. The beef, Chinese shaokao skewers, a lamb chop and some pans with tofu and noodles & cabbage. I wasn't cooking any of them, I didn't bring any meat. Nobody bothered to tell me to bring anything, otherwise I would have. The first item is the beef in the middle. One fellow from Lithuania had gotten the meat shipped in special from his ex-girlfriend in Inner Mongolia. He was very proud of the beef. Another fellow from France remarked this was the perfect sort of meat to make beef bourguignon. I privately agreed, this was stew meat, the kind that will not tolerate being cooked with direct heat. It needs slow cooking under cover and some smoke, too.
The fire was burning low, so someone opened the hatch to throw some more wood on. The wood was from broken up furniture! It had stain or varnish on it. So here is all this food being cooked on treated wood. Someone else noticed and said something about it, but that was all the wood they had. The alternative was letting the fire go out and the fun stop.
The Frenchman had some lamb chops, which he was cooking on a separate grill. This one was fueled by charcoal, thankfully. But he was using direct heat as well. This grill was a box grill. I don't have a photo but you can imagine a box on legs with a thin crosshatch wire grate. It's what BBQ used to look like in America in the 1950s. Needless to say this wasn't the right way to cook lamb chops, particularly the thick ones he had.
The beef, predictably, came out tough and inedible. The man was disappointed after the big fuss he had made over his special meat from Mongolia. The lamb was pretty tough, too. It could be eaten with difficulty, but wasn't the luxurious dripping-with-fat lamb I know I could have made. Plus, someone had seasoned it with hot spicy powder, which made it unpleasantly spicy. And all the food cooked on that big bonfire had that nasty wood smoke around it.
I'm already known as "the BBQ guy" but nobody really asked my advice. I was just asked how to brown onions, so I improvised a pan from some aluminum foil and got the job done. Now that I've told my story, what would you have done?
1. Just watch that man ruin his prized beef? Or tell him how to cook it, or even just take it over?
2. Even if I did offer advice...what could we have done, actually? There was no cover for that grill and no way of slow cooking that I could see. Is there some trick that people do when this happens?
3. The lamb...how could it have been saved?
4. The treated wood on the fire - what would you have done? "Stop having fun everyone! I'm shutting this cook down by shouting shaming words about toxic smoke!" It certainly wouldn't have made me popular. I suppose the thing to do would have been to let the wood burn down a while before putting food on. But...I really, really didn't want to be Captain Bringdown. I especially didn't want to be The Expert That Nobody Asked For.
5. Most importantly, how could I have done all this without being the BBQ bully who tells people how to cook their own meat? This was a social event, not a judging competition. Everyone just brought something to cook. If it came out suboptimal who cares? Cooking food over an open fire is literally the oldest form of cooking known to mankind. Anyone can do it. I felt bad about the beef which I knew was destined to be ruined, but I kept my mouth shut.
The only food that came out well was the shaokao skewers, which were designed to be cooked hot and fast. 
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