On the Grill, Beef is King

I am continuing to work on my cheap grilling station.

I bought myself a Pit Boss portable stainless two-burner propane grill. It was fantastic, especially for the price. I put a Loco adjustable regulator on it and adjusted the grill’s air shutters to turn it into a high-horsepower steak-grilling machine. No problems. I also bought a one-burner Coleman butane stove, which works very well for steaks and doesn’t grease up my kitchen.

Obviously, I needed a platform. I had these items on the bricks on my porch, and it made for poor ergonomics.

I decided to buy a $39 folding table from Home Depot. These tables are great. They’re pretty light, you can adjust the height, and they don’t seem to have any glaring defects. Today I put the grill on one side of the table, and I put the stove next to it. Perfect.

I ate a bunch of steaks right after I bought the stove, and I was looking for something other than fat cuts of beef, so I decided to try chicken leg quarters. They were surprisingly hard to find. I guess they’re not trending well with hipsters.

If you like grilling chicken, you’re living in a bad time. Most of chicken’s flavor is in the skin, and it’s getting hard to find good cuts with the skin still on. It’s like castrating your dog. It used to be optional, but now people get self-righteous and freak out if you don’t fall in with the rest of the sheep. They get really angry, as if it’s somehow wrong to not castrate your dog. It’s as if testicles were birth defects or bombs that went off and killed children. You can amputate a dog’s healthy tail and ears, and no one will try to stop you, but if you try to leave your dog alone, people bunch up their faces, cross their arms, and throw tantrums, as if it’s somehow their business. You have to castrate your dog, and you have to eat chicken with the delicious skin removed.

There are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids, which is a major health threat to the rest of humanity, and I don’t bother them. Whatever happened to minding your own business?

I know I’m digressing, but now I’m thinking of sailfish. They are very common. I’ve caught a bunch of them. It’s customary to release them, but it’s not mandatory. You’re allowed to eat them, and they’re delicious. Still, if someone in South Florida catches you steaking a sailfish, you can expect a torrent of verbal abuse, even though what you’re doing is legal and ethical. It’s really annoying, dealing with self-righteous herd creatures.

Skinless chicken cutlets are everywhere. They dry out fast, and they lack fat, so they’re not that great. You have to add fat to them if you want them to taste good. It’s kind of stupid. You throw fat out in order to be healthy, and then you add new fat to correct your mistake.

I got lucky and found 4 big leg quarters locally for under $5. I grilled one last night and one today.

I have decided I am not excited about grilling chicken. The results have not been good.

I can prepare a steak in under 15 minutes on the grill. When I grilled my first chicken quarter, it took about an hour. I had to use a thermometer, because rare chicken, unlike rare beef, can send you to the ER. When I finally finished, I found the chicken tasty but tough.

Today I came up with a plan. I nuked the chicken for 6 minutes prior to grilling it. When that was over, the chicken was cooked and safe to eat. It just needed some grilling to fix the skin and add flavor.

It was better than the chicken I ate last night, but still not great. It was not tender enough. Maybe I need quarters from a different type of chicken. Maybe I have roaster quarters and I need fryer quarters. I don’t know.

I have a new plan. If I bake the chicken for three hours at 300 degrees and then grill it, it should be tender. I think it will work, but it’s a royal pain.

My feeling is that I should forget chicken and stick with beef and fish. Chicken is harder to cook than other meats.

The vegetables are working out much better than the chicken. I had forgotten how great grilled vegetables are. I’ve been slicing onions, peppers, and zucchini and grilling them with olive oil, salt, and pepper. They’re not as good as steak, but they’re definitely better than chicken. The grill brings out flavors you wouldn’t think could be found in vegetables.

I think this may not be true for people who don’t like vegetables as much as I do. I’m not sure. Many people–Cubans and Puerto Ricans come to mind–have a bizarre aversion to vegetables.

I need to try grilling eggplant and squash. Maybe I’ll have grilled pineapple for dessert.

I learned something new about my grill. I thought it couldn’t hurt whatever it was sitting on, because the heat didn’t project downward very well. Turns out this is wrong. Since I souped it up, it can project a lot of heat toward the table. I plan to get something to put under it, like a couple of quarry tiles. Glad I figured this out before melting my table.

I’m very happy with my setup. I’m somewhere around $200 in the hole, and I have an excellent grill plus a very convenient stove burner. The whole rig is light and portable, and there is nothing I can’t replace for $120. I can put the whole thing in the car and grill at a friend’s house if I want. I would rather have this than a big, overrated “professional” grill that starts to cough up ruined parts in two years.

I still need a second propane tank. That’s how you deal with propane. You don’t buy one tank and wait for it to die during a cookout. You buy two, and when one dies, you attach the other one.

I wish someone made a portable propane broiler or “salamander.” That would be wonderful for steak. Broiling will char a steak without fat flareups. Maybe there is one out there, if I look.

I have a MAPP gas torch, and I’m considering using it to sear steaks. More than one way to skin a cat.

It’s very sad how the grill industry has convinced people it’s okay to eat grey and brown steaks. Completely wrong. A waste of meat.

I highly recommend this grill and the Loco regulator. Just be careful. Once you take the brakes off the grill, anything can happen.