Barbie Rehab

We bought our barbeque in 2002 for $200 on sale. I thought it was a good deal too, because we had gone through others and I knew what to look for. The cooking grill was porcelain-coated cast iron, not chrome steel which can rust, for example. There was a cast iron cooking pot for beans and the like, a vented cast iron box to put wood chips in for smoking, a cast iron burner unit (these guys were big on cast iron), as well as a wok and a cover for the whole thing. Pretty good deal we thought at the time, especially when you look at what you can spend on the stainless hot rods that are popular now (see photo).

Of course we cleaned it from time to time and covered it when not in use but winter this year seemed like a longer one than usual so I decided to strip it down and give it a good look. The round cooking grill was pretty caked-up on the underside so it got a few coats of that spray stuff that warns you to wear a mask, gloves, and a HEPA suit. Then I spent an hour or so painstakingly scraping off what was left with a screwdriver. Turned out just about new, you can't do much hurt to porcelain.

The flame diffuser disk was shot, though. Its job is to spread the flame and heat outward, around the circular grill more uniformly but it was made of regular steel and it had rusted badly. The company charged me $17 for a new one(and another $17 to ship it) which I thought was a bargain. I was halfway expecting the company would be long out of business so it was a surprise to even find the parts. And to find them here in America by the way, instead of Taiwan or India or someplace.

So last night we had hamburgers and they tasted great.