Charcoal is King

 There are lots of ways to cook a burger these days. Propane, wood, pellets, solar. By far and away, Charcoal beats them all with its flavor, its fire and it's fun. 

Charcoal at work- YUM!

When I was a little boy, my Dad would wake up in the predawn hours to fill a rusty red weber grill with a pile of Kingsford briquets soaked in lighter fluid. The cigarette would hang from the corner of his mouth as he poured the black dusty wads of chemically pressed charcoal into the belly of the  crumbling rusty kettle as he prepared to make us what we called  “solinol”. 

Solinol (or as the Hungarians call it, Szalonna) is a throwback to the old country where a chunk of fat back is slowly smoked and roasted at the end of a long fork over a campfire and blotted into fresh crusty rye bread before being served to salivating children. The Solvacks handed this gem down to his Granddad and my Dad handed it down to me and a few years back I donned the fire gloves and fork to roast a piece of pork fat over the flames on my new weber grill for my wife. 

 Szalonna roast

This is a "Solinol" roast back in the old country.
 Leave it to the Slovaks to roast bacon on sticks next to the fire

We sautéed peppers and onions to go along with it and toasted the morning with coffee in our front yard, as memories of my childhood flooded into my brain with stains of  the hot pork grease on my chin and shirt.

The pork grease and the memories would have meant nothing if not for the smell and the flavors of the charcoal that wrapped the experience up like a smoky little bow. 

Charcoal takes me back to those days but also sends me to a hundred other places and flavor profiles. The kabobs on the corner of New York City’s Met, the burgers at the company picnics when I was ten, the ribs and chicken at my high school graduation party. All these memories made that much more flavorful because of the presence of charcoal.

 It is the stuff handed down by Prometheus himself who must have enjoyed a dog or two in his day on smoking lumps of charcoal and it is my favorite means of cooking. 

The Brands

My favorite these days is a step away from Kingsford. The Cowboy Charcoal made with chunks of real wood burned in a low oxygen environment so as to lock in the carbon and the low ignition point for easy lighting is my preferred fire fodder. 

Henry Ford is credited with coming up with the charcoal briquette, although I am sure charcoal went back way before the times of the Model T. He wanted his picnicking car enthusiasts to have a portable means of cooking as they took their new cars to the countryside for afternoon camping. 

He teamed up with Edward G Kingsford to use saw dust and chemicals bound together in the form of little bricks that could be bagged up in that signature blue paper bag and stuffed into the trunk of Ford’s newest assembly line creation. 

American’s dug that idea so much, that even up until the early 1980’s, Kingsford was the name in Charcoal. Everyone knew the dance of saturating a pile of charcoal with lighter fluid and trying to avoid burning  one's eyebrows off as you stuck your match laden hand into the belly of the other signature name in outdoor cookery, the Weber grill. 

But as petroleum got more expensive and people got tired of eating  hotdogs that tasted like a refinery, the market responded with new technologies in lighting techniques as well as fewer and fewer chemicals in the cooking substrate. 

By the early 90’s, every home in America was sporting a propane grill in their backyard and charcoal was reserved for BBQ pitmasters and rib competitions. 

Then sometime in the mid 2000’s Home Depot caught on to the secret that home chefs wanted pro-bbqers gear and the chimney starters and cowboy charcoal showed up on the scene.

The world literally caught fire with the flavor of hardwood charcoal and the ease of a handle welded onto a stove pipe and stuffed with newspaper.  The taste could not be beat and the days of lifting the lid on your grill only to find out that the fire went out, were over. 

Home chefs everywhere ditched their propane grills in favor of the kettle-style cookers and when knock-off Webers popped up in Walmart and the trend was set. 

Now there is an art to charcoal grilling and if you're like me, you cherish a good Weber and proper chimney starter like no other. My days now however,  yearn for the comfort and reliability of a Weber and a pile of Kingsford, because to my disappointment the Weber didn’t fit in the trailer. 

The Day After.

Charcoal on the Road

I now live in a desert trailer park and have sold all my worldly belongings in an effort to live more deliberately. The full size Weber and the 50 pound bag of charcoal didn’t fit into the plan. So when we were liquidating our life, I had to accept $20 and watch my bronze signature Weber grill that I won as a giveaway from Old Navy drive away to go live at someone else’s house. 

Desperate times call for desperate measures though, and  in my first  days  in the desert, I found a discarded stainless steel propane grill propped up against a dumpster. The price was right and with a little wire brushing and soap, the thing was belting out 600 degrees of heat for steaks, chops and salmon before I knew it. 

When I leave here, though,  the grill will go to a new home as moving this thing makes no sense. So that is why I refuse to shell out the $300 to buy a new Weber for my time here in the desert, even though that is where my heart resides. 

My love of charcoal remains however and to satiate my desire for smoke and fire, I have devised a new system. I use an aluminum pan on the burners of the propane grill and cook with the grill toppers as I normally might if I were using the propane.

Without a chimney starter, I might be forced to resort back to  lighter fluid, but the idea of flames shooting into the dry desert air in fire season and the taste of a BP oil spill gives me pause. 

We were given a bag of tortilla chips from one of the house boaters that rivals the size of the 50 pound bag of Kingsford. A small handful of corn chips mixed in with the charcoal smells amazing and easily lights the charcoal lumps without the need for paper or a chimney starter or even lighter fluid. 

Last night I made tandoori chicken skewers with naan and cucumber mint salad. I didn’t have any plain yogurt for the naan or the chicken marinade, but we did manage to find a couple of containers of honey vanilla yogurt that worked just as well and the additional sugar made the yeast explode with fluffiness. It was the best naan I ever made. 

I cooked the chicken skewers over the coals and the slow low heat combined with yogurt and the ginger gave the meat a juicy texture and tangy taste that beat most if not all  of the Halaal markets I have ever eaten at. 

My jury rigged  ram shackle grill is not nearly as easy nor as convenient as the Weber and my chimney starter back in Beaufort. The charcoal however makes it all worthwhile even if I don't have the best hardware to cook with. 

So I say again, to anyone who will listen and everyone who knows the pain of having to live life without a proper charcoal grill. You can grill off a quick chicken breast with your propane grill,  and make a dynamite burger in a hurry. But for real honest to goodness wood smoke flavor and a great grilling taste, there is no shame in doing what you gotta do, because charcoal is king. 

My Rig- not pro by any means, but you don't need big digs to get great flavor