Grilling season doesn't have to be a burn

Being Frank, by Frank Ameduri

With the solstice just one day behind us, summer is in high gear in Alaska. With the long days of summer comes much charred meat and infinite other goodies that are big enough to stay on the grill. Grilling is perhaps the second oldest form of cooking. The oldest form is the leave-your-meat-on-the-hot-rock method, which is no longer widely practiced in polite society.

Of course, grilling has evolved over the years, and those of us over the age of 30 still remember a simpler, purer form of the art. My grandfather's grill consisted of an overturned trash can lid with some homemade levelers screwed to the sides. Upon those, you could float the grill, at one of three desired elevations. Some young people are wondering how you could contain a fire in a trash can lid. They used to be made out of metal.

Anyway, gramps made his own coals, too. The recipe was pretty simple. Pile a bunch of wood in the trash can lid. Pour a bunch of kerosene on it. Toss in a match and then rub the toasted hair nubs off your forearm. After about 30 minutes, voila! Coals. Gramps had one way to cook meat, too. You couldn't really call it rare. He'd toss the steak on the grill, listen for something that sounded like a sizzle, flip the meat for seven seconds and then serve with knife and fork as condiments. Gramps would then let the coals cook away into nothing and add them to the garden as needed.

Things are different these days. If you visit the garden section of your local Everything-Under-The-Sun store, you'll find a wide assortment of grill options. They actually still sell grills that use coals, but nobody makes their own coals anymore. You don't need kerosene, either. The briquettes come with everything except the match. Most people don't use the coal cooking method anymore, though. It's all about gas now.

The first gas grills were pretty simple contraptions. There was a box, a grill, a simple regulator and a hose that ran from tank to burner. They were lit the old-fashioned way -- with a match and the required sacrifice of some forearm follicles. A big grill in those days could hold four hamburgers or 12 hot dogs, if you stacked them. There were two temperature settings -- on and off.

Today's grills come with everything. You can get side burners, refrigerators, motors, canopies, CBs and Web cams on your grill. They come in various sizes, as well. The smaller ones can do about eight burgers, but they also have a rack for buns, beans, corn and whatnot. The big fellas just have a chute at one end where you lead the steer in.

If you're a real Yuppie, and you don't like the idea of flames of any kind, you can get the convection or microwave grill. These come with mobile phones and Web surfing options as well as surround sound and a book called "755 Things to do with Tofu." There are actually 756 things you can do with tofu but that last one is under litigation in 14 states.

Anyway, once you decide upon a grill, you're only three weeks from actually using it. The display models are not for sale. The big display models can stand about six feet tall and 18 feet wide. To help you get them home, the manufacturer packs them, disassembled, into a box that looks like my third-grade Snoopy lunch pail -- though it weighs slightly more than my car. It's a marvel of modern packaging, to be sure.

When you get your grill home, you'll want to put it together right away. The first thing you'll want to do is get rid of the direction booklet. For one thing, it's 863 pages long, but that's only because it's written in seven different languages -- none of which are English. If you're lucky, there is a Pig Latin version, but the diagrams are very confusing.

The average sized grill comes with 78,864 parts, so don't even try to spread them out and check them against the parts list. The best grills only require a few tools. You can usually get by with 11 screwdrivers, a socket set, three pliers, a large set of Allen wrenches, a torque wrench and a case of your favorite beer. You'll get frustrated a few times, and you'll be sure you're doing it all wrong.

Remember, no two grills -- even of the same model -- go together exactly the same way. In the end, if nobody gets seriously injured, you've done well.

It's also important to remember that it will take you at least three days to complete the grill assembly, so you might get hungry. It's a good idea to keep some wood, an old trash can lid, some matches and some raw meat on hand for such an occasion. Happy grilling!

Frank Ameduri is no handyman, but he's cooking with fire.