Can we talk about the phenomenon of barbecuing for advanced users?
Adeline loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and outdoors. Usually that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the Sunday Roast series, she shares her observations. This time: about the phenomenon of barbecuing—for advanced users.
Barbecuing used to be very straightforward. You ate white baguette with Calvé sauce, had to spend an hour struggling to wrench a piece of chicken off the satay skewers your father had put on the grill so you could cut it open to check whether it was cooked, then put the chicken back on the barbecue, and by the time the coals were properly hot everyone was full, the baguette was gone and the meat was left over. I loved barbecuing, because I loved bread with sauces.
Light the fire
To ruin all this fun, there’s now a quick-start kit. You put an ugly cylinder on the barbecue, fill it with briquettes or charcoal—I don’t care which, because I don’t know the difference anyway—and strategically place a firelighter in between. Or firelighter curls, which also exist nowadays; they catch fire in record time. In no time at all, the whole thing is hot and ready to grill, and the barbecuer doesn’t even have to mess around with firelighter paste anymore. I swear, I hadn’t even eaten two pieces of baguette with whiskey cocktail sauce.
Missed the memo
The start of barbecue season is almost like Rokjesdag. You don’t know it, but you know it. The temperature rises just enough that you sit close to the barbecue without quite freezing blue, which means your hair smells the next day as if you had lain on the thing yourself. Suddenly the supermarkets have run out of briquettes, you have to drive all over town and country for the last firelighter, and you knock someone down with the leftover baguette in the supermarket. But the worst thing is sitting in the garden and realizing through the neighbors that that was the day, while you missed the memo. Because what a barbecue mainly does is smell delicious, making everyone who isn’t barbecuing miserable.
Roasting a roast
It’s no longer the intention that you grill your little satay skewer, hamburger or slice of bacon. No, nowadays you’re supposed to roast a proper joint on the barbecue. The barbecuer in question has probably been to the wholesaler for the best cut in question, presumably talked to the butcher who insisted on choosing bavette, and is now standing there like a true Van Gogh, scattering the spice blend over the coals. Then the bavette goes on, and halfway through the temperature is checked once more for perfect doneness. No more charred hamburger that you just have to “cut a bit off,” but pure perfection.
Exchanging information
Whatever you do, you’re obviously no grillmeister if you grill on gas, because gas is for wimps; you have to poke around in the coals the artisanal way, with tongs. So in your garden you have at least one small or large Egg. That’s what insiders call a Green Egg, I swear: there are even private Facebook groups where Green Egg Grillmeisters secretly exchange information. And the worst thing is, I notice that I’ve started googling this type of thing too since I got a garden. Have you ever tasted what comes off one of those things? It is not normal.
With a smoky flavor
I suspect we’re becoming one of those couples; it’s already happening. Yesterday we were doing some work, and at the end of the afternoon we wrapped up with a cold beer in our new garden and discussed what to eat. The menu was a Greek salad with some chicken. Just some chicken, nothing special. And he really said it: “I’ll just fire up the barbecue.” An hour later we were eating the aforementioned salad and a little chicken that most resembled souvlaki, but with a smoky flavor from the charcoal. I’m still processing this…
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