Stoked and Smokin’: Hot Machines We Love

Statistics show that women do at least part of the barbecuing in 40% of American homes. So barbecuing isn’t necessarily a guy thing.

Statistics also show that women make or influence 80% of the car-buying decisions in this country, but how many spend their spare time customizing cars or bankrupt their families to buy cool rides?

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Barbecuing is one thing. Barbecue obsession is another, and, like car obsession, it’s basically a guy deal. Barbecue ads will tell you all about continuous electronic ignition, 25,000-Btu cast-iron burners, porcelainized flame tamers and 16-gauge removable drip trays, but if they mention a choice of colors, it’s generally just black or stainless steel.

There are expensive glamour-ride barbecues and high-tech machines with knobs and dials. There are customized classics and solid backyard kettles that can still go from 70 to 500 degrees in . . . well, quite fast enough, thank you. Barbecuing is a vroom-vroom lifestyle with loads of accessories, the grilling equivalents of roll bars, 80-spoke wheels and suicide doors. You can even get a stylish cover for your barbecue, just like the one you lovingly pull over your car to protect the finish.

As we know it in this country, barbecue grilling began in the 1920s, when Henry Ford started selling little portable hibachi-like barbecues to encourage people to go picnicking (and incidentally to drive his cars). He also invented the compressed charcoal briquette as a thrifty use for the sawdust and wood scraps left over after making Model Ts. Around the same time, Californians had taken to assembling little temporary barbecues in their backyards, using loose bricks and racks borrowed from their ovens.

After World War II, people were making barbecues out of 35- or 55-gallon oil drums and building permanent brick patio barbecues. The modern age began in the ‘50s when Weber introduced its sturdy and convenient kettle-shaped barbecues. In the ‘70s, gas-fired barbecuing became common.

Over the years since then, barbecues have diversified. At the high end, a lot of them have become, in effect, kitchen ranges intended for outdoor use (though with grilling and smoking capability). The same versatility is possible well below the high end. If you have a mid-range gas barbecue, you can usually get an accessory burner for frying or boiling. The Weber company has long publicized techniques for baking, roasting and stir-frying on their simple charcoal barbecues.

Lately, high-end barbecues have shown a taste for cooking with radiant (“infrared”) heat, rather than directly over burners. Ducane introduced the concept nine years ago with its “back burner”--a horizontal rack of barbecue bricks heated by their own burner, located at the same level as the rotisserie. The pitch was that since fat dripping from the meat couldn’t fall on the strip and cause flare-ups, you could just close the grill and forget about it. Of course, it also made it possible to collect any meat juices that drip out for sauce-making purposes.

Many barbecues are sold at hardware stores and supermarkets. For the more specialized models, you go to a barbecue store, which usually also sells fireplaces, mail boxes and patio furniture. Here’s what you might find at some of these showrooms.

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Paykel Fireplace Fixtures in Santa Monica dates back to 1921. “My dad sold the first gas barbecues in Southern California,” says owner Andrea Salter. “In 1966, the first salesman tried to get him to carry them and my dad said, ‘Who’d want a gas barbecue? I tell you what, if you go out and find me one customer, I’ll buy two of them.’

“So the salesman went out and knocked on doors until he found one. He brought back the name, and Dad took the two barbecues, and that’s how we started stocking gas barbecues.”

Paykel advertises the most complete line of barbecue equipment and accessories in Southern California. Some might dispute that, but it must stock the largest range of high-end barbecues, from big names like Broilmaster, Ducane, Arkla, Sterling, Dynamic Cooking Systems, Pro Chef, Pacific Gas Specialties, Fire Magic. “We sell smaller barbecues too,” says Salter. “But we do sell a lot of stainless-steel models around here because of the ocean air.”

One dream barbecue for sale at Paykel is the 36-inch Jade Range Dynasty Hi Performance Smoker/Broiler, which looks a whole lot like a stainless steel restaurant range--not surprising, since Jade Range also manufactures commercial cooking equipment. Jade Range claims this baby can cook close to 400 hamburger patties an hour.

Its unique feature is the wood chip smoke-ejector system. You put pieces of hardwood in a sort of drawer heated by the gas barbecue burners. So far, this is a feature shared by some other barbecues, but here the smoke from the wood is transferred throughout the unit by a series of beveled 1/2-inch “tube ejectors.”

The stainless-steel hood has three positions, including folded all the way back (in many barbecues, the rear of the cooking surface is hard to use because the hood stays in the way). Needless to say, the Dynasty Hi Performance has an insulated body and cabinets for wood and accessory storage. You can even buy a matching stainless steel bar (or “Indoor-Outdoor Bar System”) to go with it.

It’s a lot of barbecue, at a lot of price: $3,500. But look at it this way--you wouldn’t get much car for that money.

Jade Range makes a lot of products. The Holland Co., by contrast, makes nothing but the Holland Grill, which takes a different tack in the prevention of flare-ups than the radiant strip of infrared broiling. It puts a heavy cast-iron plate over the gas burner and then a drip pan on top of that, so the company can literally guarantee no flare-ups. Grease dripping from the meat flows down a trough in the middle of the drip pan and winds up in a little bucket that hangs outside the barbecue.

The heat spreads by radiating, but Holland claims there’s also a convection oven effect. Holland Co. reps like to demonstrate that this grill can cook a pork roast and bake a pie at the same time. If you want, you can close the drain valve, fill the grease trough with liquid and steam your food. Hey, steaming on a grill! It’s $499.

Paykel Fireplace Fixtures, 1443 Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 394-1441.

Barbecues Galore is a chain specializing in barbecues and barbecue equipment. At its branches, such as the one in Torrance, you can find the Charcoal Spit (“an Exciting Way to Entertain”)--a pit with a motorized rotisserie big enough to spit-roast a whole pig--or a Kingsford Pro kettle featuring a special holder for an instant-read thermometer.

Half a dozen barbecues, both gas and charcoal, are standing in the parking lot, apparently left over from a barbecuing demonstration. Inside the store there are scores of portable gas grills, indoor electric grills, squat Japanese Kamado pots, pressed aluminum smokers, high-end built-ins and little hibachis. A unique model is the Magma Marine Kettle, a gas barbecue mounted on a pole, which may be the only barbecue with a lid attached to the firebox by a cable. It’s for use on boats.

For those who haven’t been following the contest, gas is gradually pulling ahead of charcoal as a heat source in barbecuing. Charcoal barbecues are cheaper and outsell gas models at hardware stores and other nonspecialist outlets. But the people who come to Barbecues Galore have made their decision.

“We sell about 10 gas grills for every charcoal grill,” says assistant manager Ray Enright. “One reason is, a couple of years ago everybody heard about carcinogens and decided charcoal was bad. Actually, the problem isn’t using charcoal--it’s burning your food.

“The preference for charcoal over gas is really just a matter of tradition. And the fact that the first few times you use a gas grill, maybe it tastes too clean for you. But after a while, it gets broken in and you can’t taste the difference.”

Still, several of the more interesting barbecues here are charcoal-burning variations on the oil drum barbecue. The Keg-a-Cue is an oil drum barbecue in every respect except that it’s made out of an aluminum beer keg. There are more sophisticated barbecues around, but sophistication isn’t entirely the point of barbecuing. It’s $49.95.

A serious variation on the oil drum barbecue is the Bandera, a slick-looking smoker/grill made by New Braunfels. It has the basic drum shape, but it’s made from much heavier-gauge metal. The big drum is on the right and works as an ordinary charcoal barbecue, but when you fire up the smoke box on the left (which is about the size of a water-cooler bottle) and close the grill lid, it becomes a smoker. There’s also a smoking chamber the size of a couple of bar refrigerators.

At $459, it’s a very solid piece of equipment; don’t imagine you’re going to move this heavy monster around much once it gets settled in your backyard. (There are smaller New Braunfels smokers built along the same lines, such as the Black Diamond, $199.)

Barbecues Galore, 18225 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance. (310) 793-9551. Other locations in Santa Fe Springs and Tarzana.