Well, it was an enjoyable Independence Day weekend until I destroyed my grill tonight with a grease fire that I estimate burned unattended for ten minutes.
(Gee, I’ve never seen the little thermometer built into the lid read 925º before.)
It wasn’t particularly expensive, but it worked well for what we wanted. There was nothing wrong with it, so there’s no immediate budget to replace it.
However, my irritation at its loss is dwarfed by the freakout I’m still in the middle of. I don’t know how much longer it would have taken to set the deck or the house on fire, but I’m confident it was more than halfway to doing so.
I’ve fired a gas grill and left it alone for 10 to 15 minutes all my adult life. Tonight I did exactly the same thing and had it seared in my soul just how plausibly I could have destroyed my home. I wasn’t distracted. I wasn’t intoxicated. I just did what I always do. (Did what I always did. I think I’m not going to do that anymore.)
Wonder what time I’ll get to sleep tonight?
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I did the exact same thing a little over a year ago. I turned on my grill to warm up so I could clean it (my step one is I char the crap from last time so it scrapes off easier). I’ve done this every time, and still continue to do this.
I went inside for 5, maybe 7 minutes to finish prepping my steak. I know it wasn’t any longer b/c I literally did nothing else other than turned on the grill, went inside, prepped the meat, and walked right back outside with my steak on plate.
When I came outside, something was immediately off…. My gas half of the grill (I had one of those half charcoal, half gas grills) was ash white on the outside. The knobs looked funny, and one had fallen off. It suddenly became apparent a large fire had taken place rather quickly and I was completely unaware that it had happened.
Then I noticed the most horrifying part: The heat had melted one of the gas lines off from its burner and the gas was still on!!! I was freaked out! Even more so b/c I happened to be home alone for dinner that night (I think my wife was at school that night).
Fortunately, the gas line had actually caught fire when it became separated, which meant it was actually just burning a well controlled flame out the end of the line.
Still I panicked and quickly tried to turn off the gas. I then had a “that was stupid” moment and bare handed grabbed the all metal valve on the propane tank, which because everything had recently been on fire, was still very hot. That hurt a bit… I ran in to get an oven mitt, turned off the gas… and got out the George Foreman.
Very familiar-sounding, from the look of the grill to grabbing the metal gas valve with my bare hand!
Could have been truly tragic. I’m so thankful it’s merely inconvenient.
Kamodo Joe FTW.
But I do miss the ease of gas. Those things get all sorts of crazy tho. Spiders building webs in the gas valves. Main burners rusting and disintegrating completely. Yeah, it can suck.
I’m not sure what I’ll do. I don’t have the money in hand for a Kamado Joe or a Big Green Egg, and if I saved it I don’t know that I’d want to spend it on such.
I may get a middle-of-the-road charcoal grill just to get a grilling capability back while I consider my longer-term options.