Guys and Their Grills
by Cyndy Cerbin

Everyone knows that backyard grilling is man’s sport.

Jeff Foxworthy thinks it’s because clean-up can be done with a hose and a leaf blower and because men can’t resist the daredevil combination of fire, accelerants and miniature pitchforks.

But Foxworthy’s not giving our Valley boys enough credit. Lots of grillers we’ve met recently take the sport very seriously and can fire up a spread that would make Bobby Flay sear with envy.

Take Mike Owen for example. Mike runs the newsroom of a large city newspaper by day, and still goes home to put dinner on the table several nights a week. And he’s only suffered one explosion.

More on that later.

Mike says his love of being outside lured him to the grill. He grills year-round. Even if it’s only 25 degrees out?

“Sure. It’s fire,” he said. Rain won’t stop him either. He took out an unused deck swing and put a barrel grill in its place, using the swing’s supports to build a roof over his cooker. “Shingles and everything,” he boasted. “I thought about adding a chimney but thought I might be getting out of control.”

Mike’s obsession did get out of control one day. He and wife Allison had invited another couple over to celebrate Mike’s birthday and to christen his new grill. Sumptuous steaks waited nearby for a hot fire, but rain forced the party onto the carport. The charcoal chimney starter had been lit and the briquets were firing up nicely. Because the grill had just been seasoned, Mike didn’t want to set the ashy starter on the grill’s grate. So he set it on the floor of the carport.

If you’ve ever read the directions on a charcoal chimney starter, you can see where this is going. Unfortunately, Mike did not.

“I reached down to pick up the charcoal, and I’m just about to pour it in the grill and there’s an explosion—POW!— sounds like a rifle going off! Suddenly it’s raining hot coals and concrete shrapnel is bouncing off the roof of the carport.We didn’t know what the hell was happening!”

Mike finished dumping the coals into the grill and looked down to find a perfectly round, 8-inch wide by a half-inch deep crater in the concrete floor of his carport.

“Who knew concrete blows up when it gets superheated?”

The rest of the dinner went fine. After the guests left, Mike found his neglected cocktail glass on the counter. There, mingled with the melting ice, was a chunk of concrete. A new kind of bourbon on the rocks.

The next day, Mike—like any skilled journalist wanting to get to the bottom of a mystery—Googled “exploding concrete.” The first website to come up wasWeber, the manufacturer of his charcoal chimney starter. And the first picture on the site looked very familiar. It was of a concrete crater, 8-inches wide by a half-inch deep. “Turns out there’s a cardboard wrapper on new chimney starters that says ‘do not set this thing on concrete.’ Who reads that kind of stuff? Men don’t.”

Mike’s story spread through the newsroom like wildfire. A young reporter remarked, “Well, that was just stupid.” Mike, wanting to make a teaching moment out of it, said, “No. That was ignorant. I didn’t know. Now, if I do it again, that’s stupid.”

Mike, fortunately, has not done it again. Despite the unknown dangers, he’s sticking with his charcoal grill. “If I can blow up something with charcoal, just think what I could do with a canister of propane.”

The Grilling Gourmet
Bob Haines lives out in the country, where a grilling disaster won’t cause too much property damage. But he’s been lucky. No disasters. (Unless you count the time he spent all day prepping a meal for 30 guests, then turned on the grill to find its propane tank empty.)

While Mike’s a pretty basic bourbon-and-burger kind of backyard barbecuer, Bob has taken his grill game to the level of gourmet. To show off what a gas grill can do (and perhaps to simply show off), Bob recently whipped up a feast of tapas. On the menu: ahi tuna, shrimp, scallops, lamb and filet of beef. And don’t forget the sides: sugar peas, grits cakes, Aztec rice and black beans, Portobello mushrooms, squash and zucchini. (Baked potatoes and salad were dropped from the menu by popular demand.)

“Wait till you wrap your lips around this one, baby!” Bob serves a lamb loin that looks like a mini porterhouse steak and an ahi tuna steak drizzled with ginger sauce and sprinkled with green onions.

“You’re making me cry, man!” Friend and neighbor Roger Barros is quick to give Bob the feedback all cooks live for. “This is unbelievable!”

“I hope you enjoy eating it as much as I enjoy cooking it for you,” Bob said, knowing full well he does.

About the only thing not on the menu is dessert. “I’ll have to learn that next,” he said. “But I’m just not a sweets kind of guy.”

Bob, like other real men, gleefully tells tales of his more manly pursuits, such as hunting a boar, shooting it, digging the pit to cook it in, building a steel tube rack, strapping the splayed 100 pound pig to it and flipping it every 30 minutes for basting. This particular event was during his church’s men’s retreat, for which he was the chief chef. “Those guys, when we carried that pig to the table, it was like locusts descending!”

On another occasion—another pig roast—Bob’s plan started falling apart. He had rented a large rotisserie to handle a 300 pound hog for 60 people. He figured he’d need six hours to cook it. But the rotisserie just wasn’t getting the job done. Easygoing Bob refused to panic and set out to find a solution. He drove to a nearby farm and found a big piece of old corrugated metal. He made a tent out of it to hold the heat closer to the pig. “I didn’t know—I’d never cooked a pig that big!” And his guests? He shrugged. “So they had to wait an extra hour to eat. Everything turned out fine.”

Bob will cook for anyone and everyone. But his petite wife, Cindy, says his talents are wasted on her. “I’m just not a big eater. I cook because you have to eat; he cooks because he enjoys it.” Cindy said Bob plans the menus, does the shopping and cooks the meal, whether inside or out. “When Bob’s not home, it’s cereal for dinner,” she said.

“I do it because I like to cook for my friends,” Bob said. “It’s a socialization thing. Kind of a zen thing for me. Just something I like to piddle with.”

Bob likes the taste of charcoal-cooked meat, but prefers the convenience of a gas grill. He also owns a smoker and a Charbroil infrared grill, which uses gas to roast instead of grill. It can slow-cook at low temperatures or sear at something like 700 degrees. He uses it to cook about 30 turkeys a year. His specialties are slow-cooked meats like briskets, pork loins and leg of lamb.

Bob was born to good cook parents. His father was a fire department battalion chief who honed his kitchen skills feeding 15 hungry guys at the station house three times a day. Bob now cooks breakfast for about 50 men from his church once a month, and one time he cooked for 100. His two sons are now following in the family’s culinary footsteps. At the end of the meal someone suggested Bob open a restaurant. “No way!” he exclaimed. “That would kill it for me. That would turn it into work!”

As Bob’s guests shower him with compliments, his reply is humble. “Anybody can be a good cook if they have good friends to cook for.”

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