Aug 30, 2012
It’s
time for us to start weaning ourselves from the convenience of gas
grilling and rekindle our relationship with
charcoal.
All it
takes is one whiff of smoke from some charcoal briquettes, mixed
with an aromatic hint of lighter fluid. That distinctive aroma
activates an area at the base of our skull that I like to call the
Kingsford Olfactory Cortex. The smell of charcoal instantly
transports us back to the campfires and cottage weekends of our
youth: Dad’s in an apron, burgers are sizzling, hot dogs are
plumping up, corn cobs are roasting, and Mom comes out the screen
door with a pitcher full of cherry Kool-Aid, ice jingling and
sparkling in the summer sun. I think I want to cry.
Those
memories never leave us, but few new ones are being made now for
our own kids. Sadly, Canadians don’t grill much over charcoal any
more. According to Weber’s Grillwatch survey, only about one in 10
Canuck backyard cooks owns a charcoal grill compared to almost half
of our counterparts south of the border.
I know,
it’s a lot colder up here, and running outside to push a button on
a gas grill is a damn sight easier than going to the trouble and
mess of ripping open a bag of charcoal, dumping it into the grill
and getting it going, not to mention having to clean up the ashes
left behind.
But
that convenience comes at a cost. Charcoal imparts such great
flavour that there’s almost no comparison between a steak seared on
a gas grill and one that’s kissed by smoke. I would argue that
pretty much anything tastes better when cooked on a charcoal grill,
from your lowly skinless chicken breast to a roast
duck.
Even
sweets are lifted to a new level when they’re cooked over charcoal.
I’ll never forget an evening at the beach a few years back when,
after grilling some brats in my Smoky Joe portable grill, I used
the leftover coals to reheat a pear crisp. The vapours from the
fire turned a great dessert into a mind-blowing
revelation.
A little history
Charcoal
has, of course, been around for a long time. Back in the olden
days, tradesmen called colliers would stack wood in a giant
cone-shaped pile and then cover it with soil or clay, with a hole
in the bottom for air and one at the top to serve as a flue. They’d
light a smouldering fire and, several days of careful tending
later, the wood would be transformed into brittle, clean-burning
dark grey charcoal to be used for cooking and heating.
The
process of making charcoal, called carbonization, is simple: you
heat wood slowly, with little or no oxygen to feed the fire, and
instead of burning, the wood shrinks as its organic matter
vaporizes. What’s left are porous chunks of charcoal, consisting
mostly of carbon, that burn cleaner and hotter than
wood.
Charcoal
briquettes have also been around for a long time, but the Kingsford
briquettes that we know and love were developed in the early 1920s
by Henry Ford and one of his relatives, a fellow named E.G.
Kingsford. Ford’s early autos had wooden parts and his factories
produced lots of wood scrap. A factory was built to turn the scrap
into charcoal briquettes. For years, American backyard cooks got
their Kingsford charcoal at their local Ford dealership, and today
Kingsford converts about a million tons of wood scraps a year into
briquettes and owns about 80 per cent of the market.
Briquettes vs. lump
charcoal: which is best?
Over
the last couple of decades, the dominance of briquettes has been
challenged by makers of lump charcoal, which is preferred by some
cooks because it burns longer and hotter. It’s also purer. Lump
charcoal is basically an organic product – pure carbonized hardwood
– whereas Kingsford and other briquettes are made from charred
woods that are mixed with mined coal, limestone, starch, sodium
nitrate and borax (or sodium borate).
The
modern, all-natural foodie ethic clashes with the idea of food
cooked over this chemical package. But man, those additives are
what make Kingsford start easily, burn evenly, and provide its
distinctive aroma and flavour. The bottom line: meat cooked with
Kingsford tastes great.
My
barbecue team, Rockin’ Ronnie’s Butt Shredders, has been competing
for almost 20 years now, and we’ve always used good old Kingsford
briquettes, with a few chunks of hardwood like hickory, mesquite
and cherry wood added for extra flavour. My view is that if you
want to win the hearts, minds and taste buds of the barbecue
judges, you’ve got to hit that Kingsford nerve hard, and we’ve got
plenty of cheap plastic trophies to show our strategy works. As for
the unnatural additives, last time I looked, life causes death. I
like to think that most of us can handle a little borax in our
lives without getting into a big panic. In fact, panic is known to
cause more deaths than borax.
Despite
my love of briquettes, I swing both ways when it comes to charcoal.
While I’m loyal to Kingsford for cooking Southern-style barbecue, I
often use pure hardwood lump charcoal when I’m grilling. It
generates excellent heat for searing and charring, and if you want
to add extra flavour, all you need to do is toss some wood chips or
chunks on top of the hot coals just before you’re ready to grill.
Close the lid of your grill and you’ve got a perfect hot, smoky
chamber that will make whatever you’re grilling sing. Another
advantage of lump charcoal is that it produces much less ash, which
makes it great for kamado-style cookers, which quickly clog up and
lose their air flow when you try to cook on them using
briquettes.
What kind of charcoal cooker to
buy
Speaking
of the urn-shaped kamado, it’s one of the hottest pieces of cooking
equipment out there right now. The classic Big Green Egg has long
been the Cadillac of charcoal cookers, but in recent years many
knock-offs have come onto the market, including the Primo, the Big
Steel Keg and the Kamado Joe. Even the cheapest models will set you
back $600, and the high-end brands can cost a lot more than that.
This ceramic cooker is based on an ancient Asian design, and it’s
extremely versatile, allowing you to smoke a pork shoulder at 200
degrees or sear a steak at 700F or even higher.
If you
don’t want to shell out for an Egg, there are lots of extremely
cheap charcoal grills on the market that are great to take to the
beach or on a camping trip, but they don’t last long and they don’t
work all that well. You can’t go wrong with a good old Weber
kettle-style covered charcoal grill, which is a solid, versatile
cooker that will set you back a couple of hundred bucks.
For
picnics, camping and boating, nothing beats the Cobb, a portable
charcoal grill that’s among the most versatile and convenient
cooking tools I’ve ever used. Every outdoor cook should have a Cobb
in his or her arsenal.
If you
want to graduate to the world of Southern-style barbecue, the
perfect entry-level device is Weber’s Smokey Mountain Cooker,
nicknamed the Bullet. It’s a specialized device that will introduce
you to a big new world of flavour, but it’s not for the
dabbler.
How to start your coals
Barbecue
purists don’t approve of chemical fire starters like the smelly
white cubes or the kerosene-like liquid starter you get at the
supermarket. Aficionados like to start their coals using a charcoal
chimney, which isn’t much more than a metal cylinder with a handle
on it. You put your charcoal in it, and there’s a little chamber at
the bottom where you place a couple of balled-up pieces of
newspaper. Light the newspaper, wait for about 15 minutes, and
you’ve got a chimney full of hot coals – just enough to grill a few
pork chops. You can also use it as a seed fire for a bigger
quantity of charcoal that you can use for longer cooking projects
and bigger cuts of meat.
My
preferred method is to light up a tiger torch – a propane torch
usually used by roofers to melt tar – and point its roaring flame
at the coals you’ve loaded in your grill or smoker for a minute or
two. That’s kind-of hardcore, however -- I do it not only for
convenience but also to intimidate my opponents at barbecue
contests.
Let’s start a fire together
As a
self-proclaimed barbecue evangelist, I encourage you to welcome
charcoal into your life. It will free your taste buds from the
humdrum world of propane and bring back a bit of old-fashioned
ritual to your grilling. Here are a few of my favourite recipes for
dishes that taste best when cooked over coals, from my cookbook,
Barbecue Secrets DELUXE!
Spice-Crusted Pork Blade Steaks
Makes 6
servings
I love
pork blade steaks because they’re inexpensive, extremely tasty, and
very hard to ruin. The cumin seeds add an earthy tang and an
interesting texture to these rich, chewy steaks. Serve them with
your favorite summer sides (I like grilled asparagus and cherry
tomatoes).
For the
rub:
2 Tbsp
| 25 mL powdered ancho chiles
(if you
can’t find ground anchos, any chili powder will do)
1 Tbsp
| 15 mL granulated garlic
1 Tbsp
| 15 mL granulated onion
1 tsp |
5 mL freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp |
5 mL ground chipotles (substitute cayenne pepper if you can’t find
ground chipotles)
1 tsp |
5 mL dried oregano
1 tsp |
5 mL dried parsley
For the
steaks:
1 Tbsp
| 15 mL cumin seeds
6 pork
blade steaks (8 to 10 oz | 225 to 300 g each)
kosher
salt
2 Tbsp
| 25 mL Dijon mustard (regular prepared mustard will also
do)
extra
virgin olive oil
Combine
the rub ingredients in a small bowl and set the rub
aside.
Toast the cumin seeds in a dry sauté pan over medium heat until
they’re fragrant and just starting to turn light brown. Remove the
cumin from the pan and set it aside.
Generously season the blade steaks with salt. Using the back of a
spoon or a basting brush, coat the steaks with a thin layer of
mustard. Sprinkle the cumin seeds on both sides of the steaks and
pat them in so they stick to the mustard. Sprinkle a generous
coating of rub on the steaks and drizzle them with a little olive
oil. (You’ll have rub left over, which is great for grilling just
about anything.)
Prepare your grill for high direct heat. Place the steaks on the
cooking grate, close the grill, and immediately reduce the heat to
medium. I like to throw a chunk of hickory or mesquite among the
coals just before I start cooking to add an extra dimension of
flavour.
Cook the steaks for 8–10 minutes, turning them once or twice, or
until they are springy to the touch. Remove the steaks from the
grill, tent them with foil, and let them rest for 5 minutes.
Drizzle them with a little olive oil and serve.
Seared
Calamari with Fresh Tomato Basil Salsa
Makes 4
servings
The secret to great grilled squid is to use the
freshest and smallest you can find, and to cook it over high heat
for no more than a minute per side. Any longer and it turns
rubbery. In this recipe, the tomato salsa provides a cool, tangy,
herbal complement to the hot, garlicky calamari.
1 lb |
500 g cleaned squid, equal parts bodies and tentacles
1 Tbsp
| 15 mL kosher salt
1/2 cup
| 125 mL extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp
| 2 mL red pepper flakes
2
cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 cups
| 500 mL small, ripe cherry or grape tomatoes
1 Tbsp
| 15 mL fresh basil
1 Tbsp
| 15 mL rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
salt
and freshly ground pepper
Coat
the squid in the salt, then rinse it thoroughly with cold water.
Pat it dry with paper towels. Slit the bodies and score the inside
surfaces with diagonal cuts. Cut each squid into bite-sized pieces.
Place them in a bowl with 1/4 cup | 50mL of the olive oil, the red
pepper flakes, and the garlic. Toss them to coat them and marinate
them in the refrigerator for about an hour.
Preheat your charcoal grill on high and in this case keep the lid
off for maximum combustion. Using hardwood charcoal in a
kettle-style grill works best. Try to time it so you put the squid
on the grill when the coals are at their hottest, which is right
after they’re all ignited. You can tell coals are ready when
they’ve got a light coating of white ash. While the grill is
heating, coarsely chop the tomatoes (halves or quarters are fine),
slice the basil leaves into fine shreds, and toss them together in
a bowl with the vinegar and the remainder of the olive oil.
Distribute the salsa between four plates.
When
the grill is hot, gently place the calamari on the cooking grate,
taking care not to let the pieces slip through the cracks (you may
even want to use a grill-topper with small holes designed for this
kind of task). Don’t walk away! Stand at the open grill and tend
the squid with a set of good tongs, turning the pieces often so
they cook quickly and evenly, no more than a minute per side.
Remove the squid from the grill and transfer it to the
plates.
Sprinkle
each serving with just a pinch of kosher salt and a light grinding
of pepper. Drizzle the calamari with a little more olive oil and
serve it immediately with a crisp, fruity white wine.
This article originally appeared in Calgary's City Palate magazine.