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Backyard Chefs Fired Up Over Infrared Grills
Vicissidude writes "With the expiration of a key patent, major gas-grill manufacturers have scrambled to bring infrared cooking to the masses. The grills are still powered by propane and have traditional gas burners that heat mostly by convection — or hot air. But they also can cook foods with radiant heat generated by one or more infrared burners. Char-Broil says its advanced burners operate at 450 to 900 degrees, hotter than the 450 to 750 degrees of standard gas burners. And unlike charcoal, which can require 20 to 30 minutes to reach its 700-degree cooking temperature, heat from the infrared burners can be adjusted quickly. Bill Best, founder of Thermal Electric of Columbia, S.C., developed the technology in the 1960s, primarily to give automakers a faster way to dry the paint on cars."
I like the taste of paint in the early morning
That's hot!
How, how, HOW(!?!?) is this related to my rights online?
Will owning this grill magically make my Firefox not fit in my internet tubes? It's from all the hamburgers isn't it?
Maaaaybe, it's for roasting my Thunderbird on a spit glazed in BBQ sauce. I guess that's somehow related.
Is there anything propane CAN'T do?
There is lots of hot air.
Everything gets grilled.
The idea is analagous to car technology.
And there was a patent involved.
OK, so this fancy burner looks different but doesn't seem to make a significant difference in performance. YMMV and all that, but I wouldn't pay extra for one of these. It's basically a ceramic grid that the gas blows through, so it's more fragile than the typical rolled steel or cast iron burner - probably cheaper to manufacture, too.
Actually, it's about as close to a non-significant change in gas grill technology as you can get. Who greenlighted this story?
Wake me when they have the infrared charcoal grill. That I wanna see.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
it will cook bland food with no flavour
charcoal (especially made from your favourite food, like oak chippings) is part of the equation a catalyst if you will
fuel+fire+food+fat&juices+charcoal+smoke=flavour
Each one bearing a copy of "To Serve Man". :P
They require us to go outside and socialize, when most nerds can get healthier food from a George Foreman Grill.
I'm so glad that a patent on a product intended to dry paint stopped some people from using the same technology to cook meat. Obviously this patent protected the original intended use and enhanced innovation.
Now more steaks and burgers can be burned on the outside, raw on the inside!
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I've been using propane grills for a number of years, now. Although simple to use and quicker at reaching their desired heat, I find they're quite a pain to clean and maintain. Yearly, I have to replace the burners, lava rocks, and scrape all the crud off the sides. I think the glass plate may or may not help in this department, however, it all depends on if you let the grease sit on it for too long. I recently switched back to charcoal for the time being and I have to mention, the taste you get from charcoal is unbeatable by any propane grill. With that in mind, what kind of taste are you going to get from a virtually flame-less grill? To me, it's no different than sticking a steak in the oven (assuming an oven could reach 700-900*).
One day someone will be able to explain to me the point in going outside to use a grill that cooks your food in practically the same manner as the broiler in your oven. I'll take a bag of mesquite charcoal and my New Braunfels smoker over something like this any day. You grill for the flavor. Propane, electric, and now infrared just miss the entire point AFAIC.
...so how exactly is this "scrambling" (or even newsworthy?)
To make matters worse, the glass plate that does the work precludes misting or dousing with water to extinguish small fires. Food particles, marinade, etc. fall on the glass and collect there, and are almost immediately ignited. I can't wait to see the complaints CharBroil gets after Joe Barbecue Wizard every shatters his glass plate trying to clean it or sets his house ablaze.
If you think this shouldn't be posted here, you are a loser. BBQing and grilling out = stuff that definitely matters!
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
It's a Cook Book!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
OMGWTFBBQ
If you can't master a simple task like making a charcoal fire, you don't deserve a steak.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This'll teach the dog not to get all up in my grill.
I would assume the patent application is for the way they *generate* the heat, not for the process of "using heat to cook." I'm pretty sure there's prior art on that one. ;^)
(and why anyone would want to cook meat at TWICE the normal temperature of a common grill is beyond me. It sounds like a "Home Improvement" MORE POWER moment. 6 hours at 350F is not the same as 3 hours at 700F. Just ask Alton Brown.)
--
Toro
Reek worse than one of my father's farts after a few Colt45s and some burritos.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This is a perfect example of one of the big problems of patents as currently implemented. They're supposed to be there to reward inventors and promote innovation -- but here the patent was doing the exact opposite, it's preventing new grill designs. The headline shouldn't be "patent expiration enables new grills," but rather "patent expiration makes grills cheaper." In theory, the market should make this happen through patent royalties. But obviously this patent holder would be making more in grill royalties if the patent were being licensed at a reasonable rate, and the grill makers and grill users would be better off too. So why do we all too often see patents *not* being licensed? The more I see this occur the more I think a compulsory licensing scheme for patents would be helpful. Remember, patents aren't just supposed to reward inventors -- they're supposed to encourage inventors to share their ideas *so that society can use them*. Patents should be benefiting both the inventor and the rest of us!
...oh shit. Well, I guess as long as you're not in a jungle... with a team of commandos led by Arnold Schwarzenegger.... with a creature from another planet running around... ...wait. It's getting very hot this year...
FWWWWEEEEFH
Camping on quad since 1996.
Or "How to cook humans^Wfor humans^W^Wforty humans"
For good pieces of meat (not hamburgers), some people prefer them rare - flash cooked on the outside, moist on the inside. Brief exposure to high heat can do that. Lower heat == longer cook times == shoe leather.
I've been cooking via radiant heat for a long time now, and the meat comes out completely differently. The problem with your traditional gas grill is that it dries out the meat. Usually the top is off, which contributes significantly to the drying out. A metal top helps a little, but that's still not enough. True radiant heat cooking (from ALL sides, not just the bottom) makes the meat just taste different, in a way that you just can't get anywhere else. The meat also turns out much juicier, since the water isn't lost.
I brine a turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and when I take the bird off the BBQ and cut into it, the water literally gushes out. You have to see it to believe it.
Here's what I've been using: www.kamado.com
In short, that's 450 lbs of clay, and the clay allows the heat to reflect back, heating it from all sides.
What will really be interesting is if someone can do it more evenly than that.
In short, you haven't lived until you've had something cooked this way.
I have no association with kamado.com other than as an extremely satisfied customer.
Many steak house kitchens use a cooking device called a "salamander" to cook steaks. It's essentially two of these infrared elements; one above, one below and just enough room to slide the steak inbetween. Those reach temperatures of 1500 degrees or more - and the people who eat the steaks rave about how well they're cooked.
Being a proper sort of geek, I converted my new grill from propane to natural gas before lighting it the first time. A quick change of inlet hose and a little numbered drill action on the orifices and I never have to worry about running out of propane. While I was at it, I uprated the main burners just a touch so that I can get it up to some even higher temperatures for cooking meats.
Cooking at these higher temperatures isn't like cooking on charcoal or a regular propane grill. Things cook faster and flare-ups don't happen; drips vaporize (poof) and only provide added flavor.
If I feel like I'm missing the good old campfire flavor, I can throw some wood chips in the smoker box. Hickory is nice, sometimes cherry is better. I think I've got a bag of mesquite chips around here somewhere...
For those who wonder why anyone wouldn't use charcoal - turn knob, push button - 15 minutes later the temperature is passing 700 and it's time to toss the meat on. Yum yum - and after cooking, turn the main burners all the way up, close the lid, and check back in 30 minutes. All the mess is now ash; brush it away and it's clean again.
Why not broil in the oven? Not the same thing at all! Your household cooking appliances are designed so the average knuckle-dragger won't burn the house down. Those gray steaks that only have a thin pink stripe in the middle are a poor shadow of what a well grilled steak is like. And by having the cooking fire outdoors, the house stays cooler in the summer.
Gas grills are a very good thing when well designed and well handled - capable of better and more dependable results than a charcoal fired grill. Does that ceramic infrared burner add anything to the equation? I'm not convinced; it's more of a spec sheet checkoff for the marketing department.
Nor do they explain why a 20 year patent lasted 40 years.
But I think I'll stick with my grill. I bought an old oil barrel, cleaned and seasoned it, cut it in half, mounted some piano hinges to connect the halves, and welded on a chimney on one and legs on the other... Total cost $25 for a very nice grill...
And my smoker? Two trashcans, a chip box, and a hotplate. Total cost $12 for a very nice smoker...
Now I think of it, there is a fine line between us cheap grill nerds and poor rednecks...
I put some ceramic honeycomb material from an old infrared space heater on the rack where the lava rocks would go, makes for an awesome poor man's infrared grill.
be funny, see king of the hill.
For those who wonder why anyone wouldn't use charcoal - turn knob, push button - 15 minutes later the temperature is passing 700 and it's time to toss the meat on. Yum yum - and after cooking, turn the main burners all the way up, close the lid, and check back in 30 minutes. All the mess is now ash; brush it away and it's clean again. I start mesquite charcoal in a charcoal chimney on my grill grates. This gets the coals started and heats the grates at the same time. Takes about 15 minutes to do this, and because the charcoal is made from real wood and doesn't have any filler, there's barely any mess afterwards. My grill is ready to go as soon as I dump the coals out of the charcoal chimney. I've had both at gas and charcoal at home, and I worked for ten years professionally in steak houses and fine restaurants where both gas and charcoal was used. The major reasons that gas is used in restaurants for grilling is for the convenience, cost and the ability to train some schlub how to cook a consistent steak. It takes real skill to work a Friday night with charcoal, chefs that can handle the pressure and keep a consistent fire going are far and few between. Most anyone in the business can learn to use gas. Not many places use salamanders for steaks anymore either. I think Ruths Chris is one of the last ones. Most use high quality natural gas grills, or are switching over to mesquite charcoal. Someone else already said it, there's a reason that competitive grill and BBQ contestants don't use gas.
I will admit, nothing beats a charcoal grill; however, an infrared grill is hands down the best way to grill red meat without the hour backyad ordeal. The high temperatures sear the meat and cook straight through for a 'hot' vs. luke warm medium rare steak. You have to learn how to grill again though, use a lot less dry rubs, etc. The grills also do a good job of keeping themselves clean and preventing flairup. Unfortunately a lot of BBQ companies have simply removed U shaped burners from their grills and replaced them with ceramic burners. If this burner is not positioned at an ideal level away from the food a dry outcome is the result. I have used many grills from TEC to Viking and have found that Solaire (Solaire Grills) obtains a great result, I think they actually formed from pieces of TEC engineers; and they make a great portable grill for tailgating, camping, etc. The technology has actually found a lot of uses in the restraurant business in the form of salimander buners. Most steak houses use this technology. As an added benefit, I have found that the infrared burner is great at starting the lump charcoal I use in my Primo (Kamado style BBQ) as well.
That way the steak can be crispy on the outside, and mooing on the inside.
Whats the point in patents if nobody will use them until the expire?
What about the RADIATION? Think of the CHILDREN!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6677051.stm
Is that 20 years is a lot longer than it used to be. Shutting off an entire line of technology for 20 years may have been a reasonable trade till as recent as 20-50 years ago, but I think it should be obvious that this is no longer a good trade. AND good ideas can be monetized much more effectively these days, with the internet, fast shipping, larger markets, etc. So I'm all for striking an intelligent balance, but I think patent length needs to be tied to some metric of how quickly technology evolves. Watching, for instance, the huge evolutions in computing, leads me to believe that 20 years is simply too long to hold back a given idea.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
"Infrared has done to the grill business what the microwave did to the indoor kitchen," he said. "It's presenting consumers with a whole new way of cooking."
Microwave is not used for cooking. It is used to heat things up. Way different.
this could be great for smoking meats if the temperature can be finely controlled, as any meat smoker knows getting the wood too hot will make the meat taste like carbon & turpentine, and with several acres of wooded land (mostly oak & about 20% hickory) i would love to have an infrared meat smoker...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Propane is naturally odorless.
The smell that commercial propane has is something that is added so you can tell if there's a leak.
it's memorial weekend you insensitive clod!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Pfft, ask anyone in college, a microwave is neither for heating things up nor cooking things. Its for like making lightbulbs go whoa! and like awsome colors man.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
I think you'd see a tech explosion with or without patents once populations reach a huge critical mass. The combination of a lot more genetic variances and chances for genius to arise combined with exchange of ideas. Humans are just naturally inquisitive and want to see better ways of "doing stuff". Once we got just a little bit beyond a mostly agrarian society people had more free time to invent and experiment. If patents were totally eliminated I still think you'd see humans building/creating/constructing. Just our nature to do so. What that would do to business I don't know, but we'd still see a lot of innovation, IMO. The bottom line is business comes after the creative urge, not before, in most cases. Real innovators do it because they want to. Here's an example from my own life. Back in the 70s I was doing a lot of off road bicycling,because it was fun,and I really wanted a fat tired multi speed bike, the skinny tired bikes had too many flats and dented rims, etc to be practical, and the fat tired single speeds didn't cut it to climb hills and go across soft ground easily, etc,-so I hand built one, and it worked quite well. Eventually these sorts of bikes began to be sold as "mountain bikes". There were a lot of guys at the same time period thinking and doing similar, and I bet all of them just wanted that sort of bike because it filled an unfilled niche at the time. Business came later. Urge to have something cool that didn't exist at the time came first. Patents had nothing to do with that urge or development at the time.
I, too, vote for mesquite (or other high-quality "real wood") charcoal and no-fluid, chimney charcoal lighting.
I have an easy-to-clean Son of Hibachi for everyday grilling and a big, oval Patio Classic BBQ with adjustable airflow for slow cooking -- that also functions as a party-scale grill when we host cookouts for large groups.
Some people seem to think lighting charcoal is a big deal. Not so. Crumple 3 sheets of newspaper, put them in the chimney (the Son of Hibachi functions as a chimney in its "closed" position), pour the desired amount of charcoal (15 briquets or so for our small grill, full to the brim for the big one) into the chimney on top of the paper, light paper through the air holes at the bottom of the chimney, then do something else for 15 minutes.
Now pour the charcoal into your grill or BBQ and.... cook. Or, in the case of my Son of Hibachi, open it out flat, spread the briquets, and... cook.
For slow-cooked BBQ (super-tasty ribs and briskets), be prepared to add more charcoal after two - three hours. Lift the grill, pour in about as many unlit briquets as lit ones already cooking, and use your charcoal tool (in my case a giant cast iron spoon) to make sure the unlit briquets are nestled well among the lit ones, put the grill and food back, and close the lid. Come back in a couple of hours and... eat.
Both of these units are super-easy to clean. I have BBQ heretic (propane-using) friends who are amazed when they see that cleaning my charcoal cookers is *easier* than cleaning their flavor-destroying, gaseous monstrosities.
Infrared heat is great for drying paint on cars and metal surfaces in general. But for cooking? (shudder) Not on *my* Florida patio. When it comes to BBQ, we like the real thing around here.
- Robin
"The only woman I'm pimping is sweet lady propane! And I'm tricking her out all over this town."
Hank Hill
I bought a Trager. Runs on wood pellets made from furniture wood shavings/scraps with forced air to keep it buring.
It produces a heat from about 120 up to 500 degrees. No matter what you throw on there, it gets a nice red smoke ring on it. I routinely get asked "My god, what did you put on this steak? It tastes great!"
Just a little salt and pepper, the smoke does the rest.
Oh, and for an interesting taste on a steak, add a little dried mint to your herb shake. It gives it a very nice taste and people often say "Wow, that is good. But there is a flavor I can't quite figure out..."
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
what grade of structural steel are these "grills" made of?
r y_law/1227842.html?page=4
occording to PM, these things are getting up into melt-down temperatures fro structural steel
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/milita
or like jet fuel (kerosene) burning in a starved environment (orange flame w/ black smoke), do they leave the hamburger in tact and still in its paper wrapping (like humans in cotton suits), while it melts all the steel around it?
Sounds like the kind of radiant gas fire common in British living rooms. A burner at the bottom heats an unglazed, vertical ceramic surface with an array of protruding pimples to red heat. This gives off IR. A heat exchanger cools the combustion products and releases this heat back into the room before they are drawn up the chimney (or, if you have no chimney or don't want to risk it with CO, out of the balanced flue).
Anyone within line of sight of the radiant elements feels warmth from absorbing infra-red radiation. The air in the room is also warmed. In a chimney-flue model, some of the air drawn in at the bottom ends up going up the chimbley while the rest is emitted from the top vents. in a Unigas model, the combustion chamber is isolated from the room. The flue vent exposes equal areas of intake and exhaust duct to the outside air (usually they are coaxial with the intake outside the exhaust), so the effect of outside air pressure cancels itself out whichever way the wind is blowing.
You can detect the IR by photographing the fire (with an IR-sensitive camera, but most are) after shutting off the gas. The radiant elements should continue glowing brightly (at a wavelength too long for the eye) for a few minutes.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
And here I thought we where all beginning to lower our CO2 footprint.
At least I assume this thingy will waste even more fossil fuels then most grills.
When will these kind of companies start thinking about how to get the CO2 footprint down.
aXi.
With or without lighter fluid?
By "lighter fluid" you mean Liquid Oxygen, right?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The entire article was written as if were an ad for Char-Broil. The whole thing was, "Char-Broil did this, Char-Broil has adopted this feature, etc." Oh, except for the one line:
"Most leading grill makers, including Solaire, Weber and Whirlpool's Jenn-Air, also offer grills that use infrared."
No shit, sherlock. Most of them came out with it before Char-Broil, and quite possibly have done it better. Napoleon Grills has had this feature for a few years now, and makes a far better barbeque than Char-Broil.
I hate articles like this. Just enough information to make people believe they're reading news, rather than advertising.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Sorry, I know this is getting off topic, but speaking of waste and such from Katrina, brought back to mind, this grill made from a log that I saw on another site.
1 /16385/0///200/#msg_144661
http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/m/14466
What the hell is that?!
---southpaw
and will sell your infrared grill at WalMart for $89.95. And George Foreman will do the TV ads. George has already sold 100 million grills.
You sir, are an uninventive, lazy American.
If the market pent-up demand was such, why did it take manufacturers 7 years to release models? Don't let the facts get in the way of patent rights, eh?
People did use them. The opwner chose to only liscense them to hign end systems. So if you were in the market for a 2000 dollar grill you could get one.
What this shows is the the patent owner made a bad decision. Of he had charged 10 bucks for someone to use one, he would ahve made a lot more money.
OTOH, the patnet owner may have worked for a BBQ maker, and it was there stratagy to keep it for high end systems. Which was still a mistake.
The point of patents is that the creator gets to say how they are used for a limited time. Now, if copyrights where done with the same time line the world wold be abetter place.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
People did use them. The opwner chose to only liscense them to hign end systems. So if you were in the market for a 2000 dollar grill you could get one.
I didn't see that in the article. Just because they were only in high-end systems doesn't mean that the owner woudln't license them to anybody else - they may have been too expensive to make to be worth putting in a low-end grill (say, if it doubled the cost).
According to TFA, Char-Broil hired them to find a way to improve the function of the technology, and, I presume, lower the cost.
It may be fair to say the original company didn't develop the technology far enough to get the cost down to where they could license it broadly.
The above is all assumptions too, just a guess.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
A hotter generator should increase the carnot efficiency substantially.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I picked one up at the beginning of the season, cooks a nice steak, medium-rare in about 6 to 8 minutes. You change the way you cook with it, you seer everything for a couple minutes per side on the infrared and then move it down.
I think everybody in the world respects the sacrifices made by people in the USA and their entry into the war in 1941 certainly changed the outcome. I think the American experience of WW2 was quite different to many other participating nations though and I'd agree this affected the post-war capacity of the USA compared to other places -my understanding is that there was little or no interference of the country's infrastructure and this enabled rapid development. Many European countries for example had their industrial centres heavily bombed and utility infastructures greatly damaged - whole cities destroyed in firestorms, road and rail networks, ports, water pumping stations, power generation plants and other places were reduced to rubble. Millions were made homeless and severe starvation was rife. Clearly it was easier to invent, market, and produce new products in the USA than many other countries in at least the decade following the war.
Many thanks to the Americans for the loans to get things back into shape- the Marshall Plan - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_plan - these helped get post war countries back on their feet though loans still affected economies for sometime (apparently we in the UK paid our last WW2 loans to the Americans off about 2 years ago, something like in 2005).
I, for one, welcome our new tasteless meat-grilling overlords.