Barbecue that is. Pull out the charcoal (or turn on the gas), slice up that watermelon and start marinating those steaks. Summer is here, and it is time to invite some guests and fire up that grill. Best of all, with the help of some new and creative tools, barbequing keeps getting better and better!
Search the Internet for innovative barbeque items and you might just be surprised at what you come across. Create “potato people” by inserting adorable hat and shoe-shaped metal picks into your spuds, making your almost-too-cute-to-eat potatoes cook faster than ever. Personalize your meat with a branding iron that will allow you to stamp your initials onto every burger and steak you make. Grilling and fashion go hand in hand with a camouflage barbeque apron loaded with pockets to hold barbeque tools and elastic loops to hold six cans of beer, ammunition style. For those of you who favor midnight barbeques (and you know who you are), invest in a barbeque fork with an attached laser pointer so that you can really put the spotlight on those dogs even when cooking in the dark.
While cool and kitschy may work well as a hostess gift, when it comes to stocking your own kitchen, I am a big believer in having just the gadgets I need to get the stuff done and no more. After hours of googling “innovative barbeque gadgets” and “fun bbq tools” I came up with a list of interesting items that seemed like worthwhile additions to our repertoire of grilling gear. Besides, what could be better than having a barbeque so we could try out all of our fun new toys?
You might think that it doesn’t matter if your hamburgers are all uniformly sized and shaped but for those of us who like our burgers to cook at the same rate and to actually fit the buns, a burger press is a must. There are plenty of great ones on the market, but I was excited to try the Weston Burger Press with Patty Ejector in my quest for the ultimate burger. If you’ve ever tried making a hamburger in a burger press, you already know that making a perfectly shaped burger is one thing, but removing it intact from the press is quite another. With the Weston press, the spring loaded plunger does double duty, first forming the symmetric four-and-a-half-inch burgers and then popping out those perfectly-shaped patties. The ability to vary the size of the burger from a quarter inch to an inch and a half was another plus, allowing for thinner burgers for those who are counting calories, or fat-juicy-stuffed burgers for those who really want to indulge. Finally, if you have ever tried to clean a meat-speckled hamburger press, you will appreciate that Weston gave its burger press a non-stick finish, making the clean up relatively painless.
If your significant other has ever borrowed your kitchen oven mitts for grilling purposes, you know that those carefully-chosen oven mitts that match your kitchen so perfectly will never look the same when you get them back, which makes a serious pair of grilling gloves that can withstand the punishing temperatures dished out by your grill a worthwhile investment. Grill Armor Gloves, which come in several styles, are gloves with a capital “G,” made even better by a lifetime guarantee. Grill Armor’s silicone gloves are completely waterproof, making them equally useful for using your hands to take chicken off the grill or for pulling freshly-cooked ears of corn out of a huge pot of boiling water. FDA-approved and PBA-free, these bad boys come in regular and extra large, with both gloves shaped to fit on either hand. Little dots all over the face of these gloves give you a better grasp of whatever you are picking up and they are heat resistant up to 425°F. Best of all? No matter how greasy, slimy and full of barbeque sauce these gloves get, the fact that they are dishwasher-safe makes cleanup completely and totally painless.