Until it did the unthinkable.
I was off last Tuesday and decided to spend the day taking care of some much needed yard work. Several hours passed and I accomplished much, and was due a much-deserved break. I sat in my lawn chair next to my grill and began to sift through the mail while admiring the day's work. Thoughts of dinner started to float in my head as I glanced at my grill. She was ready as always.
Beside her sat some hickory wood chips just begging to soak, a trusty bag of charcoal and a full box of matches. "All I need are some good steaks!" I thought. And what I saw next was almost too good to be true. There in the paper, Kroger had bone-in NY Strips for $3.99 a pound.
I returned home with two nice steaks for less the $10. I was inching closer and closer to a perfect day. I fired the grill up, but noticed something peculiar. Pieces of hot coal were falling on the deck below the grill. I laid an old cookie sheet below it and didn't think twice. Hindsight can kiss my ass!
The steaks were cooking perfectly. The beautiful smell of beef and hickory filled the air. More pieces of hot coals started falling from the bottom, but I didn't care. I just drank my Bud Light Lime and enjoyed the moment. I like mine medium rare, so for a half-inch thick steak, that's about seven minutes per side.
And seven minutes later, I opened the grill to flip. It was then that my almost perfect day ran into a brick wall. Flames were engulfing both the steaks! Never have I seen anything so awful. Those poor little fellas were burning to a crisp. I fought back the flames with the remainder of my beer and pulled the steaks. But it was too late. There on my plate, where should have been two perfectly cooked steaks, was two blackened pieces of flesh. It was horrible.
I had ramen noodles for dinner that night (beef flavor of course). With each bite, the theater of mind became a Quentin Tarantino-style horror movie. My grill had failed me. And it was going to suffer a terrible, miserable fate.
The next morning I promptly began a forensic inspection in order to determine the exact cause of this horrible accident. An autopsy of the steaks revealed heavy charring on over ninety percent of their bodies. But it was the inspection of the grill that was startling. I discovered a one-foot hole in the bottom of the grill. This let a massive amount of air into the cooking chamber, fueling the fire to red-hot intensity. The steaks never had a chance.
So now it is confirmed. The grill was directly responsible for the deaths of my juicy steaks. I hereby sentence my grill to:
DEATH BY SLEDGE HAMMER!
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Source: www.zug.com
