Columnist Josh Barro says you should, “Celebrate American prosperity with your fine kitchen appliances and make the food for the cookout indoors.” Shouldn’t a columnist know that it is not a cookout if you cook in?
Barro’s bitch is that grills are grotesque, disgusting, nasty things of limited utility.
“Who doesn’t like a backyard barbecue? Me, that’s who,” Barro wrote. “There’s a reason you do most of your cooking inside: Grills are impossible to keep clean, they lack good temperature control, and they make worse food than what you can prepare in your kitchen.”
I disrespectfully disagree. There is a long list of foods that taste better after being prepared on that impossible to keep clean grill (which is part of the appeal).
Related: RiseUpNH: Independence Day!
Chicken, Hot Dogs, Burgers, Corn (most of the time), steak, ribs, sausage, seasoned veggies, pork chops, fish, and even pizza and that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface (and by all means add your favorites in comments).
You can know absolutely nothing about grills and temperature control and make better tasting food on a grill than in a kitchen.
Outdoor grilling on either the sacrilegious but ubiquitous gas grills (I use one) or the more appealing (taste-wise) charcoal or wood-smoked grill, adds layers of flavor (Bam!) that inside cooking cannot duplicate or not well.
Put another way, Barro is welcome to his opinion. Some people don’t like hiking or camping. They are indoorsy not outdoorsy and have it your way. But it’s not just that.
Grilling on Holidays like Independence Day has become an ingrained tradition that includes a wide range of things you can’t typically do indoors like ignite fireworks.
Maybe Barro do that too, through the closed car windows or just on television or online.
Bits of fireworks could fall on you as you look skyward turning oohs and ahhs into something else but that’s America.
Feel free to watch it from your kitchen while preparing a completed meal delivered to your door. I’ll be outside with the bugs and the “nasty” grill munching on pasta salad and thanking God for America while flipping some very tasty burgers.
