Sunday, July 04, 2010

Bad Barbecue

Dear Neighbor,

I enjoyed sitting on your deck today, eating your food, drinking your beer and exchanging smart remarks. What I did not enjoy was your menu. As a service to you, and all outdoor chefs everywhere, let me share these important tips:

- Don't serve burger patties. They taste disgusting, and strongly suggest extreme laziness on the part of the chef. Make a better burger. Buy chopped meat - never lean! - spice it to taste and shape it into a burger. Then grill. Nothing could be easier, and the difference between this burger and the terrible, flattened, tasteless patties you bought from the grocer, at a premium no less, is approximately the difference between ice cubes and ice cream.

- Make your own shishkabobs. The pre-made ones from the store aren't good and cost far too much. Man up. Buy some vegetables, cut up some meat, and make your own. 

- Cook to proper doneness.  Here's a newsflash for the Jewish cook. Well done meat tastes like an old shoe. Steak is supposed to be at least a little bit pink, and some people like it even a little red. It tastes better that way, and even if you don't agree its polite to check your guest's preference before depositing an overcooked, dry chunk of leather in front of him.

- Mass marketed America beer tastes like bat urine  Dave Barry said it first, and though I haven't been to the bat toilet to compare, I know Bud, Coors and the like are awful. If Dave says they taste like bat urine, I'm not going to second guess him.

Search for more information about snobbery at 4torah.com.

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