I’ve been cooking on a gas grill for about as long as I can remember. Sure, when camping I cook over the open coals…but my workhorse has always been a gas grill. They are easy to use – just open the valve, click on the igniter button for a second or two (or drop in a match if your igniter is worn out), and in a matter of minutes you’ve got things up to temperature and ready to throw a hunk of meat on the grate to sizzle and spatter away. I even plumbed the house when I built it to have taps for a gas grill, so that I never have to worry about running out in the middle of a cookout.
I’d never really considered the idea that the “smokey” flavor I was getting from the gas grill was the charred remains of the last half-dozen things I’d cooked on the grill, which had dripped down onto the “flavor plates” and were now infusing my current endeavor. I mean, in the back of my mind somewhere I knew it, but never really gave it much thought. That is, until the current grill I had started to fall apart from five years of almost daily use…and I discovered the parts I needed (that weren’t discontinued) would cost over half what I had paid for the grill to start with. It was time to get a replacement.
