Gravy's Cooking Thread

Siliconemelons said:

I miss my charbroil infrared - but my parents gave me their Weber and its fine and durable.

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Back in college I played Star Wars galaxies with a big group of people when the game was coming out. I had rolled a bounty hunter, and we all know the state of the game when it launched, but they had finally fixed the heavy weapons or special weapons or whatever the hell they were, specifically the lightning gun that bounty hunters got. Once they had fixed that and it started doing real damage, you used to be able to go to the highest level planets take a mission that was worth 30 or 40,000 credits, just run up to the little node that spawned the monsters, blow it up, die, respawn, and and take another mission that was close. Rinse and repeat.

I think it took me about 4 hours and I made a few million credits, they patched it pretty quick. I done took those credits sold it to IGE, and got a few hundred bucks, and then went to academy and bought my first gas grill.

Was just a run of the mill charbroil with a side burner, and I believe it was four burners internal maybe three. I had that grill for eons, and what occasionally just replace the grates and deflectors. The nice thing about those older charbroils was the body or housing for the burners used to be made out of cast iron, and they were pretty heavy. Not a lot of heat leak out the back from where the hinge was. Problem is over the years the base just pretty much disintegrated while the top remained solid. I thought about building a new base for it but ended up just buying a newer charbroil and it didn't even last 2 years with the amount of cooking that I do on the grill. I mean when weather is good I probably grill two to three times a week, basically treat it like an appliance.

They just don't make them like that any longer, and most of your big box store gas grills are that way. Watch the video a long time ago about picking out and what to look for when buying that type of grill on a budget, and a lot of those checkboxes are absent now on any models that you find.

I was really happy with the one that I've got but it's to the point where I can't really repair it. Need some heat treat paint, but it started to rust out pretty bad.

I just know Weber makes a girl that's going to last for years upon years as long as you maintain it and occasionally have to replace some internals, but that's reflected by the price. One of my uncles had an old gas Weber that still had the little fake briquettes down in the bottom that he had for a couple of decades maybe, and he finally replaced it I guess with the newer Spirit model, or at least he had that the last time I visited.

You really do get what you pay for. I just need something small enough that I can roll into the garage when I'm not using it because I don't have any sort of coverage outback, and even using a grill cover doesn't keep moisture and stuff from getting at it.

I just know the last time I was in the market for a gas grill I did a whole bunch of research and was checking stores and looking at everything and it got real annoying because I wasn't wanting to drop 500 or $600 on something decent, because I sometimes still don't trust how long these things will last considering how much I use them.

I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet though. I'd like to try to find one with an infrared side burner like the one I've got now to do quick Sears, or at least that zone within the body itself.

My 50% off bare Bones Weber 22-in kettle though is holding up perfectly fine and I don't know how many countless meals have cooked on it, I guess that's why I'm steering towards a Weber gas model, I just don't know if they have all the features that I'm looking for, and I'm not looking for something in the thousand plus range.