Bought a new barbecue

[Jenise]

So we've been lusting after a Weber Genesis but meanwhile have limped along with our old whatever-it-was that we bought about 15 years ago (for about $600, so up there in cost for its time), looking for a Weber on sale or even a used one off Craigs List to buy before our old unit bit the dust for good. Surely, someone impacted by the recession would put one up for sale eventually. But no, never came across one and two weeks ago some orifice fell off and the cost of replacing that is a whole $200 'assembly'. No way we'll do that, but now that we HAD to decide we balked at buying something brand new and expensive that's going to rot in this corrosive, moist saltwater environment just like our old one did. Other than a BGE, no barbecue is made to put up with what our barbecues have to.

So we had just decided that it was smarter money to to the disposable route, spending say $160 on some cheap CharBroil type unit that we'd just replace rather than repair. In fact, small, or at least smaller vs. larger meets our needs best in fact because smaller is more easily portable--our barbecue does not have a fixed location, but rather tends to spend winters on the wind-protected north side of the house and summers on the water side.

We hadn't gotten around to making that purchase when we visited friends in Lake Havasu last week and watched Roger sear a small roast on the searing station of his outdoor grill.

A searing station is a whole new world to us. At least in terms of outdoor use; it's a great indoor technique I and most of you employ often, but I'd not seen or used this feature on an outdoor grill before. And wow did it work well! Renee liberally coated a 12" length of whole beef tenderloin with a dry rub, and Roger blackened it on the searing station before moving it over to the grilling side of the barbecue to roast. The resulting roast was black and incredibly crusty on the outside and perfect medium rare within. And the crustiness was so durable that it persisted on the leftovers we put into sandwiches the next day. Heart be still! After dinner that night, I used their computer to go to Lowes.com and buy one for us.

Oh, cost? Just $300. So about twice what the CharBroil would have cost but still in the disposable zone in that we can buy 2.5 of these for the cost of one Weber.

http://www.lowes.com/pd_314076-52341-SH3118B_

[Mike Filigenzi]

Looks like a good deal. From the reviews, I don't know if one of these will last twenty years, but for that price it doesn't need to. I'll be curious to hear how you use it.

[Howie Hart]

Jenise - you threw me with the title. Your link shows an outdoor gas grill. http://bbq.about.com/od/barbecuehelp/g/gbarbecue.htm. I thought I'd mention this before Chef Carey and RobertJ (or, God forbid - Bucko) chime in.

[Bill Spohn]

Howie, that may be the definition in some areas of the US, but is not common up here in the PNW area, where the term also is applied to the cooker.

[Jenise]

Howie, that may be the definition in some areas of the US, but is not common up here in the PNW area, where the term also is applied to the cooker.

Ditto California where I grew up. It's a past-tense adjective to describe a food cooked this way, barbecued chicken for instance. As a noun it's also the device you cook outdoors on, synonymous with 'grill'. But if it's the food 'barbecue' as in "let's go get some barbecue", then that's smoked meat (and generally the trimmings).

[Jenise]

Looks like a good deal. From the reviews, I don't know if one of these will last twenty years, but for that price it doesn't need to. I'll be curious to hear how you use it.

In the dry desert, you might get 20 years out of a barbecue but if you live on salt water? No. This one will be the third we've bought in our 25 years of marriage, and the expensive one we're about to toss didn't last materially longer than the inexpensive Sears barbecue it replaced. No matter what, they got battered up and rusty and no matter what, we have had to replace the burners and do other refurbishing about every three years. We're convinced that we're money ahead spending less more often.

But speaking of the desert, when our Havasu friends got married they each had Weber grills. Rogers was newer and more expensive so they kept it and gave Renee's away, only to regret it because Renee's cooked hotter. That grill's here at their Birch Bay house and they bought the Master Forge for Havasu because it was cheap. And which does Roger like best? The Master Forge for that searing burner, and after helping him cook on it and then making a meal for ourselves on it two days later, we understood why. We've cooked on a lot of barbecues at other people's houses helping out at parties and such, and all, until this one, were less than adequate--generally uneven heat or too little heat or both.

[David Creighton]

don't see the charm of a gas grill. only real charcoal - never briquets or gas. its the flavor!

[Paul Winalski]

I own and use both an outdoor gas grill (the smallest model of Weber Genesis, as it happens), and a southern-style offset firebox true log barbecue smoker. Both have their place.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

don't see the charm of a gas grill. only real charcoal - never briquets or gas. its the flavor!

You're so right! Gas grills win on only one count: time. You don't have to plan ahead to use one.