Death of a Grill; Long live the Grill.

Readers know that I love to cook. However I must admit that since my party, I've been reluctant to do much in the kitchen. I did learn this one thing, and I'm not going to be ashamed to do it--I will ALWAYS serve water in disposable clear plastic cups. It makes a difference in clean up. Trust me though, I'd never serve my guests on paper plates, though after cleaning up for 12, it would be a sore temptation. Actually, as I write this, do not misplace your trust in me--I'm liable to do that next time.

For many years we've had a Phoenix grill. I don't think they make them anymore, but there are remnants of them around. Ours suffered from "there is something rotten in Denmark" as well as all of the neighboring Scandinavian countries. It has been rendered unusable unless there is some major metal work applied to it.

I thought I had secured a Phoenix, but the supplier could not get it (though they advertised that they had two in stock). Unlike the bird of lore, this Phoenix burned, but did not rise from the rust ashes that much of it's body had been consigned to.

What is unique about Phoenix (and Holland) grills is that there is a stainless still pan between the food and the flame. You don't get flare ups. I take that back. IF you allow to much crap to linger without cleaning it, the whole thing can catch afire. Naturally, I have some experience with this.

I passed on the Holland grills because they are weakly equipped in the BTU department. Adequate BTU's in a grill is the same has having adequate horsepower under the hood of the car. Underpowered cars don't get you from point A to point B in the same amount of time. Same with a grill when cooking. For me, the consideration was having BTU's PLUS having flare ups under control.

Enter infrared. Infrared grills seem to be the latest and greatest thing to hit the home BBQ industry. This technology has already been in existence for food service. It heats in 3 minutes and reaches temps of 1600F. If you are interested in this technology, you can read about it here.

I spent a good bit of time researching grills, and I settled on the Solaire grill. I bought the smallest one (27") that they had--but I got the juiced up BTU model (32 v 24). It appears to be a well-made grill--a simple yet elegant design of quality materials and appealing options. I elected to pass on all of the options (griddle, steamer/fryer). There is one option that I did get (though I had to go to another supplier) AND it was the option that sold the grill: the Solair has the ability to convert one (or both--but you wouldn't get THIS grill if you were going to do both) burners to regular grilling. The combination of the two is called infravection. To me, this was a well thought out option that really put the customer first.

Once I settled on a model, I had to find the best price. I'm embarrassed to say that there is NOTHING that upsets me more than paying too much. Oh, I buy nice things--so I'm not cheap in that regard. But when I buy nice things, I want it to be the absolute best possible price at the time. I think that I did that. There was as much as a $500 difference among sources. The least amount was $227, with the latter being a meaningful difference to me.

The grill itself is NOT something that I wanted to spend money on. We've hospital bills from my son's recent emergency appendectomy (I have a $5K/10K) deductible plan. This plan made sense as we were all healthy, and the difference in the premium would have paid the individual deductible ($5K). I could afford to self insure for that. So, I'll have to fork over $5K for this stint. The entire bill is likely to be in the $37K range before the hospital discount. (They've denied the claim so far as the hospital had not pre-authorized the extra day. I made 4 phone calls to ensure that this was done, and I received confirmation on Friday that it had). I'm not anticipating any problems. But I digress....

But NOT having a grill has been a bother. I grill 3 times a week ALL YEAR LONG. It has been several months now since I've been among the ungrilled caste. I've grilled hamburgers on my cast iron griddle pan--but it really makes a mess--and I set off the smoke alarm. More smoke come off than my super duper exhaust fan can handle. (I do not have a hood, but rather a "pop up" . Though powerful, it does not encapsulate smoke the way a hood fan would so....screeching smoke alarms).

So I will patiently await my new grill. I'll give a post-mortem on performance once I've take a few test drives.