A crazy Friday-night exercise in fuel management

[DarrenC]

Got home about 6:30 after making what seemed like a dozen stops on the way last night, went to fire the grill and realized I had forgotten to stop for charcoal.  There was about 10 or 12 briquettes left in my storage bin.

What I should have done:  Turned around, gone back out to the store and bought more charcoal

What I did: Shouted "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" to the fire gods, cracked my first beer and got to work making something out of nothing.

Opened the hibachi and salvaged the previously snuffed out pieces from the last time I used it to bring my total volume up to about half a chimney.  Once they were going I laid my foil wrapped bakers on one side of the charcoal grate and used the tongs one briquette at a time to build as close to a pyramid around and over the bakers to get what heat I had closer to the cooking grate, keep the fire burning upwards and allow better ashfall.  Put the cooking grate on and the skillet directly over the coals to bounce heated air back on my tiny fire and start frying onions. 

After a half hour I moved the skillet to the indirect side, used an air mattress pump to blow the ash off the coals and grilled the striploins for a couple of minutes per side.  Not hot enough to get a steakhouse char, but brought up a nice brown bark anyway.

Moved the steaks onto the skillet and grilled the asparagus covered for 10 minutes or so over what was left of the coals.

I suck at the photography/documentarian thing but this pic is just before I took the skillet off the grill so I could remove the cooking grate and dig the bakers out of the ashes.

Not even close to my best steak dinner, but certainly not bad for a relaxed Friday night, and the exercise really has me thinking in new directions about how little charcoal I really need to use.

[Travis]

Man, that's what I call good fire management!


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[Bubblehead]

 ;)Nice work!  Pulling that off with so little fuel is impressive!  Great looking food to boot.

[MikeRocksTheRed]

LOL.  Nice work!!!!