The Washington Post quotes Paul!When the Washington Post did a story on year-around grilling, our own Paul Faaborg is one of the experts! You'll see Paul quoted liberally in this story from the Post. By Gene J. Koprowski Timothy Morrison is one committed carnivore. He likes to grill meat and chicken, and sees no reason to wait until Memorial Day. "Grilling in the winter makes it feel like it's summer," said the Bowie resident, who was outside cooking every other weekend this winter, despite the nasty weather. Now he is planning an upgrade for his patio and deck. It will incorporate some spectacular hardware, including a new, 36-inch grill and side-burner. "This is a dream come true," he said. "I'm moving on up from an old, portable grill to something more professional." Morrison is no lone ranger of the outdoor range set. Designers say a new trend is spreading across the country -- and not just in warm-weather locales, but also in colder climes such as this. Year-round grillers are building outdoor kitchens, at costs that can run from $10,000 for a basic cooking site, with a grill and a side-burner and outdoor heating equipment, to more fancy setups that can cost as much as $30,000. "People are increasing the living space in their home -- and redefining their back yards," said Judy Gamble, a senior designer with the firm Water & Fire, in Newton, Mass. "It's not just a bunch of lawn in the back yard anymore. It's an extra room." Gamble has designed a number of outdoor kitchens in the Boston area that integrate the cooking facilities inside the house with those outside. She has even created kitchens like these in Canada. "With outdoor heating and extra lighting and some outdoor cabinetry, you can really maximize your outdoor space," Gamble said. David L. Fox decided to install his permanent grill last year because he was tired of changing the propane tanks in his portable grill. Fox, whose house in Monkton, Md., is propane-heated, now has a 36-inch grill mounted in a custom-built stucco-and-stone island on his deck, next to a granite countertop. Fox gets plenty of use out of the grill. "We grill all year round," he said. "We're out there even when it's raining." The counter has a built-in umbrella holder. Last month, when the Presidents' Day storm dumped more than two feet of snow in his neighborhood, one of the first orders of business was to dig out the grill. His menu, when others in the region were happy just to have enough bread and milk: marinated grilled shrimp. Such a setup is not for everyone, he said. "If you don't cook a lot, it's not worth going into a project like this," he said. "It's a lot cheaper to go to your local store and buy a gas grill." Tom Caulfield, senior vice president at DCS, a Huntington Beach, Calif., maker of rotisseries and other accouterments for outdoor kitchens, said that his customers have told him that adding a permanent outdoor kitchen has even "increased the value of their home. It also makes it move faster" if it is for sale. The trend began in the Southwest and has spread eastward in recent years, said Paul Faaborg, president and chief executive of Iron Works Inc., a Springhill, La., maker of outdoor grilling equipment. The growing use of permanent equipment to create an outdoor kitchen, rather than the standard, wheel-mounted charcoal grill, is partly motivated by the cold weather that much of the country faces for five or six months a year, Faaborg said. The permanent gas-fired grills work better in the cold than do charcoal grills. "There are a couple of major things that affect cold-weather grilling with conventional charcoal grills," said Faaborg. "The effective temperature drop from an average temperature of, let's say, 80 degrees, to maybe a temperature of 16 degrees, that impacts it a lot. Then you're dealing with the fact that most of the cooking is done by men, after work, when it is dark. So you're dealing with extreme temperatures." He said, "The wind, and the wind chill, affect the performance of the grill, also. That's a nemesis." He said that if you're grilling hamburgers or steaks, for example -- "things we would consider to be charbroiled -- you have to know that charbroiling does not take place until the grill is at least 400 degrees. So if you have a grill that tops out at 400 degrees during the summer and you subtract the temperature drop of 80 degrees, you're poaching, not charbroiling." The grills made by a specialty grillmaker start at a width of 24 inches, but many are as wide as 36 inches. Some even go to 96 inches wide. Side-burners can have a cooking space of 12 to 17 inches. These grills are made, generally, of stainless steel, while grills one might buy at the lawn and garden store are cast from aluminum. The stainless steel grills have greater heat conductivity -- they're industrial grade. The grills are also "side-fired," meaning the flames heat steel radiants, metal parts, and the metal spreads the heat along its length, creating a "cozy, red glow," Faaborg said. These radiants then act as a heat sink of sorts, absorbing and spreading the heat evenly across the grill. Chefs can then add lava rocks and place them in their grills to further bolster the heat-sink effect, he said. The grills made by a specialty maker, for example, boast 15,000 BTUs per hour of heat, which enable the chef to produce 124 hamburgers per hour. That's several times the heating capacity of aluminum grills. But the grill is not the only item that someone who aspires to having an outdoor kitchen should have. "The next step is to go with a side-burner of some sort," said Faaborg. "The third item is a sink. Then you have people who want to build in smokers, and ice-makers and refrigerators." The first, casual impression of winter grillers is that they are a hardy bunch. One local resident, a former Green Beret, is known to brave the cold in "just shorts and a T-shirt," said his daughter Kristin Brown, who works in Washington. "We have always thought it a bit bizarre to be grilling in scarves, gloves and coats." But most of those with outdoor grills are well-off homeowners who simply love the taste of grilled food and will do almost anything to get it. Last year, Kelly Deters-Baker and her husband, who live in Cincinnati, bought a complete outdoor kitchen from Iron Works for more than $10,000. "While we're expecting snow today," Deters-Baker indicated in an interview in February, "I will run outside to throw my short ribs on the grill." Morrison is planning to refashion his entire patio to accommodate outdoor grilling; the vision currently calls for mid-range expenditures for an outdoor kitchen at his Bowie home. "This makes the winter a lot easier to handle," he said. Many homeowners start off small with their outdoor kitchen dreams -- buying items such as a turkey fryer until they graduate to the full-blown outdoor kitchen, said Glenn Krapf, a sales management associate at Home Depot in Cockeysville, Md., outside Baltimore. For elaborate outdoor kitchens, homeowners often install patio heaters, and even cooking islands, with granite or stainless steel countertops. "They match the outside of their house with the inside of their house," said Caulfield, the rotisserie manufacturer. Other must-have accessories include outdoor lighting and wine coolers, he added. Why are homeowners spending so much on their outdoor kitchens? "Part of the reason is that people have spent a lot more money on their homes," Faaborg said. "And they want to encourage people to come over and enjoy what they have done. That to me is the driving point. And you can have a lot of people you enjoy at your home, rather than going out with a few people to a restaurant and being surrounded by a lot of people who you don't enjoy." Caulfield said: "We're just scratching the surface here. More people are centering themselves around their homes. They're doing more entertaining at home. I really see this developing. People are using their refi loans to pay for these outdoor kitchens. It's becoming a selling point." Gamble, the designer, said the outdoor kitchens are seen as an "upscale option" for homes. But she noted that the impact lasts long beyond the winter. "In the summer, with an outdoor kitchen, the party can flow from the house to the patio," Gamble said. "That allows you to have more guests and better parties." © 2003 The Washington Post Company
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