cheesedicers

Going on from my last sermon which looked at developments in bbq design centring around commercial products, I thought about people who have made their own Bizarre creations.

It’s no shock that Americans have used cars to convet into bbq grills, either static or apparently still usable as a vehicle. There are some superb examples of recycling as we must suppose that in the case of the Pontiac that has had it’s boot converted and the Lancia that has had the same done to the engine bay, something rather noteworthy must have happened to the other end of the car.

There have also been some imaginative conversions to engines themselves. There is a wonderful job on a massive V8 which has had a side removed and replaced with a hatch, and the exhaust outlets changed into chimneys out of each cylinder bore.

Another has made a charcoal bbq cooking station on a theme of the General Lee car from the Dukes of Hazzard television series. This one is pretty good because it has several layers of bbq grills meaning that you can cook for many people and because it is on wheels, clips over to a towbar and can be moved anywhere.

Another obviously US creation is a massive six-shooter pistol shaped one with the charcoal bbq built into the bullet chamber and the escaping smoke seeps out of the barrel making it look as if it has just been fired.

What all of these seem to have in common is that they are scrupulously clean, which makes me query whether having finished them, the owners can’t quite let themselves to use them which rather defeats the object more than somewhat.

One that was definitely used and by far and away the most impressive is one constructed in Montevideo which weighed in at 12 tonnes and was used by 1252 cooks to attempt to break the world bbq record by cooking 8 tonnes of meat which needed 6 tonnes of coals. It didn’t mention how much ketchup and mustard was needed but that is quite an impressive effort.

The champion that I’ve found though would be a Ford truck from the nineteen thirties which has been totally converted to have the load copmpartment turned into a huge mobile bbq with racks atop the fire pit, the sides have had compartments built in for keeping tools, food, coals and all the paraphernalia needed for combining having a bbq and mass catering. I am sure that it a commercial enterprise because it is also usable as a truck, although again it is scrupulously clean so you almost think that it would be a shame to use it.

Such things are certainly an indication of the love people have for cooking outdoors, and the imagination for customising something as ordinary as bbq grills and the willingness to spend what must often be huge sums of money on them, shows us that attempting to do something a bit special when it comes to sharing food gives further evidence that man is a marvellously social animal.