Charred Life Lessons: Grill Skills

I have been cooking for as long as I can remember. I was a latchkey kid so it wasn't uncommon to check in with my mom when I got home from school and be asked to start dinner before she got home from work. Basic stuff--brown some ground meat, etc. I was no young Paula Dean or anything. But I learned my way around a measuring cup pretty early on. And now, I love to cook. And not to be, you know, bragging, but I'd say that my circle of friends and family consider me a damn fine cook. I have some specialties but because I try to avoid boring readers here, I will skip that and get to my point.

Last night, we planned to have hamburgers for dinner. We had the standby Lipton Onion Soup Mix that we have used before for burgers, pretty good ones, but I thought I'd look for something a little different. I stumbled onto a recipe I thought looked fabulous. It involved cheese, bacon, onion, ketchup, Worchestershire...I mean, can you go wrong with all that? Turns out, you can.

I luckily had all I needed for these babies and I mixed them up and got ready to toss onto the grill. Now, grilling is not my area of expertise. See, I have a thing about gas fires and when you have a thing about gas fires, you tend to shy away from gas stoves, gas grills and the like. Go figure. And our grill is a gas grill. But lo and behold my husband was under the weather and not up for grilling so the task fell to me. But I thought: Hey, I can do this. I mean, he is right here to guide my every step via verbal instruction.

Turn on the burners, put on high and let warm up for about 10 minutes. Check.

Turn burners down to medium heat, put burgers on grill and cook for about 6 minutes first side. Check.

Go out to flip burgers, see they are all on fire and now charred bits of hockey puck on the grill. Check.

Wait. What? Yes, on fire. All of them. And don'tcha know, opening the cover to reveal big flames bursting up from around my poor, poor used-to-be hamburgers was a gas-fearing-gal's drrrream. Turns out, running around the yard shrieking "I'm not ready to die yet!" doesn't actually put the fire out. It does, however, frighten dogs.

After collecting myself, I hosed down the items-formerly-known-as-burgers and brought them in, displaying my obvious grill skill to my husband. "What happened," he asked, truly stunned that anyone could actually screw up burgers on a grill. "Um, I don't know. Medium heat, 6 minutes, big fire," I said. That about summed it up. No need to mention the shrieking. "Did you close the grill cover?" he asked. "Because you shouldn't." Ah, a critical bit of info that would have been enormously helpful...um, six minutes ago. "Were those wrapped in bacon? Because bacon grease really makes the flames flare up and you have to have a water bottle at the ready at all times." Ditto on the six minutes ago. Damn. My hubby's lack of full disclosure can be blamed on the drugs he was taking (the prescribed variety) and the delusion that anyone with a respectable IQ could handle the basics of grilling a burger, even his wife. But this charred life lesson has certainly taught me that while I may be a whirling dervish in the kitchen, my grill skills might need some fine tuning. Or better yet, stick to something you know, sister! Lasagna, anyone?