Within the food world, certain debates are never-ending: butter versus margarine. Red wine versus white. Chicken or beef.
But none grows more heated this time of year, perhaps, than the face-off over fire under a grill: charcoal or gas?
It is a passionate dispute smoldering in back yards across America. It pits purists who love the smell of smoke and the blaze from wood or charcoal against those who gladly give up hopeless minutes blowing on coals, then cleaning up piles of ashes, for fire begun by turning a knob.
Ultimately, it boils down to taste.
The charcoal crowd thinks it wins, hands down.
“I really don’t see the argument for a gas grill. If you’re half interested in making something taste good, why not make it taste good?” asks Mark Soden of Huntington Beach, Calif., a high school audiovisual technician who competes in barbecue competitions throughout the state.
“If I’m going to take the time to cook something, I’m not doing it all for convenience,” he says. “I have a certain element of pride to make it taste good.”
Firing up flavor
Hard-core charcoal folks such as Soden believe a fire fueled by charcoal or wood flavors food like nothing else. Beef chars, chicken crisps, fish takes on the smoky flavor that marks good grilling. And no lava rocks, flavor bars or other man-made contraptions can do that.
“It’s an intense, earthy flavor,” says Yvonne Kopina, a chef at the Robert Mondavi Wine and Food Center in Costa Mesa, Calif., who grew up with the Santa Maria style of barbecuing, where food is grilled over various kinds of oak. “I like the way the smoke smells,” she says, “and it seems like when you’re having all that smoke and breathing it in, that’s how the food tastes.”
Grilling means cooking over live fire, says Chris Schlesinger, who wrote “License to Grill” (Morrow) with John Willoughby.
Tender food is cooked rapidly over hot flame, with the added benefit of the smoky char, he says. The seared crust that develops when food is exposed to direct heat of flames is responsible for the characteristic grilled flavor. But though any cooking processes using reasonably high heat can brown food, Schlesinger writes, “there’s no question grilling rules. It is the hottest of high-heat techniques and the food is usually cooked right over the flames, which means the heat is about as direct as it gets.”
He quibbles not with the convenience of gas.
“There is a lot of reality in cooking–that’s why we have microwaves,” he says. “I’m not going to tell someone to throw away the gas grill. Sometimes you choose dried herbs instead of fresh herbs. But let’s not confuse the results. If you want speed and convenience, I believe you specifically sacrifice flavor.”
And no gas grill matches the thrill of a charcoal grill, he says.
“It’s about working with live fire and the excitement of it and the unbelievable feeling you get when you’ve conquered the wilds of the back yard to deliver a meal. With a gas grill, it’s all safe, and you lose that kind of adventure and success thing.”
No fancy gas grill is necessary, he says.
“All you need is a fire, a grill and a beer.”
Gas grill, easy rewards
Ron Rumford of Fountain Valley, Calif., has beer beside his gas grill. In fact, in his brand-new, built-in, four-burner gas grill island, he has a built-in refrigerator. His old Weber kettle-style grill didn’t have that. It’s parked on the side of the house now.
“The good part is the little refrigerator,” says Rumford, a manufacturer’s representative for a company that sells printing-press rollers.
“I really favored charcoal in the past because I liked the flavor. But if you get the (food) seasonings right, if you `turn it up a notch’ as Emeril (Lagasse) on TV says, you take care of everything. Just spend a little time marinating meat, and you’re ready to go.”
Diane Robson, a teacher from Chino Hills, Calif., likes to baste the food. She uses the gas grill to cook chicken, steaks, burgers and vegetables, and turns and bastes just about everything to instill flavor. Maybe charcoal is better, she says, “but it’s negligible compared to the convenience of gas,” she says. “Who wants to get charcoaly hands? It’s a dirty job.”
Steve Weddington of Irvine, Calif., has been a gas guy since he chucked his Weber kettle 15 years ago. His neighbors all have gas grills. They found this out when, at a recent block party, no one could pull their grill from the back yard to cook since they were all hooked up to natural gas lines. Food was prepared on the one Weber kettle owned by the neighborhood’s only charcoal guy.
But Weddington, an electrician with three young children, will never go back to charcoal. “Gas is such a convenience. You just go out and turn it on as opposed to going to the store and getting charcoal and lighting it,” he says.
Over the years he has honed his gas-grill skills, mastering the temperature of his gas fire to produce food he takes great pride in. Occasionally he’ll add wood chips to his gas grill for more flavor. “I can make a cardboard box taste good,” he says.
Proof is in the tasting
Bill and Cheryl Alters Jamison, award-winning cookbook authors from Santa Fe, might fire up a dozen grills and smokers when researching their books and writing recipes. Like everyone else, they believed charcoal made for better-tasting food before they began their newest book, “Born to Grill” (Harvard Common Press, $27.95).
Boy, were they surprised.
“We found that you might cook over gas, charcoal or wood for different circumstances, but if you cook with gas at a comparable heat as charcoal, you’re not losing any flavor,” Cheryl Alters Jamison says.
It’s there, right on Page 12 of their 500-page cookbook: “Charcoal briquettes and gas, the most common fuels, make almost no difference in taste. Gas is completely neutral in impact and briquettes come close, losing their wood character in the manufacturing process without gaining anything savory in return. When charcoal leaves a lingering tang, as sometimes happens, the effect is usually faint compared to other flavor factors, especially in open grilling.”
The fuel you choose says more about your personality than your food, Bill Jamison says. Grilling techniques and the level of heat your grill achieves ultimately flavor food.
“That’s what confuses the issue,” Bill Jamison says. “If you have a gas grill with a wimpy heat level, you won’t get a good result–the crisp, clean flavor on the surface of the food.”
Maybe the answer comes from someone such as Tony Forster of San Juan Capistrano, who traces grilling within his family to the 1830s when his ancestors cooked over the natural oak wood that grew in south Orange County.
Today, as president of the San Juan Capistrano Historical Society, Forster often grills big batches of tri-tip for fundraising events using a 40-inch-by-80-inch wood-pit barbecue.
At home, though, he might fire up the gas grill.
“It sounds like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth, and I am,” he says. “But when you’re out doing something where the public is, they’re looking at what you’re doing, and they can see the smoke coming off the fire, they can smell it, and it’s warm, and they buy a Coke or a beer. …
“It’s a whole lot different than that cute little gas barbecue sitting out there.”
