The Barbecue That Goes Wrong

I am terrible at barbecuing. None of my barbecuing attempts have worked out successfully. I’ve flooded the garden and surrounding neighborhood with smoke. I’ve over-cooked meat, under-cooked meat and I’ve burnt myself several times. Something almost always goes wrong. My biggest problem by far is keeping the barbecue lit. I can start a barbecue, no problem. The coals will be glowing, the heat will be rising and the meat will start to cook…

But then the heat will slowly start to die, the coals will go dull and my wife will have to finish cooking the half-done meat in the kitchen. A small part of me feels less of a man every time this happens.

Barbecue Help

That’s why during my latest barbecuing attempt I decided to enlist the help of my best friend Luke. He had lived in Australia for a number of years and has become somewhat of an expert purely based on the amount of barbecues he’d taken part in, seen or simply been near.

Based on some of his suggestions I bought a fire starter kit. The main part of the kit was a special metal tube with air holes around the base and a handle.

The tube was designed to keep the coals supplied with oxygen as they burned. This stopped them dying from lack of air circulation, which we’d identified as my primary problem. The idea was that once the coals were truly hot enough to retain their heat I’d transfer them to the barbecue… The reality turned out to be a little different.

Luke was not able to attend so I had him on standby via text message to provide advice. I was sending him regular photo updates of my progress. I set up the barbecue, made sure I had all my various meat cooking implements ready and set up our large sun umbrella nearby so that I could keep in the shade while cooking (I burn easy and not just when it comes to barbecues). For safety I kept everything on top of our wooden garden table, out of reach from the children.

Unexpected Results

I stuffed the base of the metal tube with old newspaper, then a few fire starter cubes and finally the coals themselves. Shortly after lighting it the whole thing started to produce a huge column of smoke. It looked like I’d set up a artificial volcano in my garden. I was starting to get a little nervous. Enough smoke was drifting into the surrounding area that it could alert the local fire brigade.

“Does this look right to you?” I text to Luke.

“That’s fine. The smoke will die down in a little while and… Oh dear god. Get out of there!” He replied jokingly… At least I think it was jokingly.

At the very least I now knew that the smoke was normal and would die down eventually. I just had to wait…

A short while later I was wondering if the column of fire that replaced the smoke was also normal.

I could feel the heat from the flames on my face as I tried to take another photo to send to Luke for his advice. The light quality of the photo was not going to be the best because of the shadow from the sun umbrella but that hardly seemed important in the moment. I lined the photo up with my phone and took it. As I stared at the screen and the shutter on the camera clicked I had a sudden horrible realization.

The sun umbrella!

I looked up. The flames were almost touching it. It was seconds from catching fire!

In a panic I rushed over and tried to drag the umbrella away. It didn’t move. The circular concrete base that held it in place was too heavy. I tried again. This time I managed to tip the umbrella sideways on to an edge of the base. It was enough to let me spin the whole thing away from danger. The trouble was it worked a little too well. In my haste I spun the whole thing to far, came back around and hit the metal tube producing the column of fire. With a clang it fell to the ground.

Burning coals scattered across the wooden table. Some bounced over the edge and took the bag of fire starter cubes with them. Another landed on the highly flammable ‘ wortel doekje’ that covered my children’s nearby vegetable garden. The wooden table started to smolder and burn, the bag of fire starter cubes (not wanting to be out done) erupted into their own source of flame and all the vegetables in the children’s vegetable garden started to cook from the fast moving flame grill that surrounded them.

To make matters worse my five year old daughter had just appeared at the back door of the house to see how things were going. The sight that greeted her was understandably alarming.

“FIRE!” she started to scream while pointing at the garden in flames.

“STAY THERE!” I shouted back to make sure she didn’t leave the house.

I sprinted into the garage (which is also made of wood and was close to the source of the fire) and quickly retrieved the garden hose.

As fast as I could I sprayed the whole area with water. The coals hissed and died. The fire was quickly extinguished.

The Aftermath

The table was marked and burned, I needed a new bag of fire starter cubes and the children’s vegetable garden would never be the same but at least the umbrella was safe.

I calmed my traumatized daughter, updated Luke (he replied with lots of fire truck gifs) and cleaned up the mess. Then I started on my second attempt to light the barbecue. This time I made sure to keep the whole thing far away from anything flammable. The column of smoke and fire was smaller this time. When the fire died down I carefully tipped the glowing coals into the barbecue. A short while later the coals went out again and my wife had to finish cooking the half-done meat in the kitchen.

Next time I think we’ll try a gourmet.