Grills

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Homesick Cravings

There are few things I have missed more since my move from Australia to The United States than The Great Aussie Barbie. By this, I am talking about what I call barbequeing, but most people here call grilling. What I call grilling, Americans call broiling.

Language differences were unfortunately the least of my problems. Before my culinary cravings could be satisfied I had to first make my peace with the amazingly different entity that is the US idea of a sausage, and come to terms with the vastly different cuts of meat. Last of all, I had to track down a butcher who would cut said meat into a slice considerably thinner than the Henry VIII sided portions generally on offer.

Once all these cultural obstacles were dealt with, the actual cooking was fortunately not an issue. The apartment complex in which I live had recently installed a bunch of Electri-Chef 4400-EC-336I barbeques (or “grills” if you prefer), available for use by all tenants.

BBQing, Northern Hemisphere Style

One sunny (are there any other kind?) Las Vegas afternoon I headed down to the bbq area with my well-stocked plate of steak, sausages, corn and bread rolls in tow.

The Electri-Chef 4400 is a rather sturdy little number, complete with a large built-in cover for those wanting to roast larger items. (This seems to be a standard feature here - this is by no means the case in Australia). This model isn’t transportable, but comes as a sort of kit which is designed to be set into a brick foundation. This is obviously a good idea for places providing public grills, or for people wanting to tailor a more tasteful look by designing their own serving area.

Before my food went anywhere near this communal object, I cleaned down the cooking area thoroughly with the brush provided. I was impressed at how easily the rather jagged (sort of twisty diamond shaped) grill cleaned. It seemed contoured to accept a wire brush and most of the gunk came away easily.

Now, in my opinion the best barbeque results are to be achieved using charcoal (with apologies to Hank Hill) or even wood as your fuel source. For people like me who live in an apartment, where a cooker and fuel would be just another piece of clutter, the idea of using electricity is highly convenient. It was nice to not have to worry about lighting gas, or setting up dirty coals - a simple twist of the temperature dial set the thing going. This grill is very simple to operate with the temperature dial basically being the limit of your interraction with the technical side of things.

Perhaps the biggest downside I experienced with this barbeque/grill is the fact that the thing takes an eternity to heat up. Twenty minutes after cranking the heat up to maximum, my meat was still bright red. Once a bit of heat got into the thing it fared a bit better, but still cooked at a hideously slow rate. I almost felt like I was using a toy Easy-Bake oven running on light-bulb power.

This is definitely not your choice if you are looking for a speedy, hot cook or much searing action. I can’t say “sizzling” is an adjective that springs to mind when describing the Electri-Chef 4400. The sausages I cooked didn’t even really brown, rather they cooked through, turned whitish inside and remained pale outside.

People cooking for large groups aren’t going to love the only moderate cooking surface here, but for me it was perfectly adequate to cook up a large steak, a few sausages, two ears of corn and toast a couple of bread rolls with space to spare. There’s also a convenient wire shelf at the rear of the grill which I found useful for leaving items I wanted to keep warm, but had done cooking.

Once the action was over and it came to tasting, I have to say the food was surprisingly good for an electric barbeque. Despite their unbrowned appearance the sausages seemed cooked ok, although unfortunately I don’t think I’m ever going to get the hang of eating American sausages like this - they seem more like the sort of thing I’d eat sliced up cold in a sandwich, maybe with a slice of tomato and some cheese.

The Bottom Line

Overall, the Electri-Chef 4400-EC-336I Grill isn’t ever going to be my ideal barbeque. It’s a bit slow, not as hot as I would like and lacks the taste infusion of charcoal or wood. Purely for convenience it does an adequate job, it can be attractively installed and is nice and compact and offers the convenience of the ability to just switch it on and go without having to worry about fuels.

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