Grilling: Charcoal vs. Gas

On Thursday, Paulius posted a tasty-looking grilling recipe, and talked about charcoal grilling vs. gas grilling. (Paulius, you seem to be giving me a lot of material for my blog lately.) In his post, he said that grilling with gas isn't the same, because grilling with gas doesn't provide the same flavor that you get from using charcoal. I agree with his point, but only to an extent. I will say that grilling with gas is usually different, but it depends on the grill. I have a natural gas grill, which I use all the time, and I will put my gas grill up against charcoal any day of the week.

Here's the thing, typically speaking, a gas grill does give a relatively "sterile" taste as opposed to charcoal, but there's something that most people who use gas grills miss... "seasoning" the grill. You see, my grill has the burner and a layer of lava rocks over the burner. The lava rocks serve a dual purpose. The first purpose is to absorb the heat from the burner and redistribute that heat more evenly through the grill, preventing hot and cold spots in the grill. The second purpose is to absorb the grease, BBQ sauce, and other flavors from the meat. Over time, the lava rocks become "seasoned," which provides the same essential flavoring that you get from charcoal. Once the rocks are seasoned, the seasoning burns in a manner similar to charcoal, providing the flavor that you can only get from grilling. Furthermore, as the old seasoning burns over time, more is added with each grilling. It's kind of like recycling your extra grease and BBQ sauce.

I did replace my lava rocks one time, and the first couple of grilled meals immediately after the new lava rocks tasted more "flame-broiled" than grilled. But I quickly learned this, and over the next few meals, I intentionally put extra BBQ sauce directly on the lava rocks, and in short order, my lava rocks were re-seasoned, and I was back in business. The misconception about gas grills is that they all fall short of charcoal, and that's not quite true. The gas grills that fail to live up to charcoal are the cheap ones that don't have lava rocks.