Posted by JimB on June 11, 2004 at 13:09:54:
In Reply to: Gas grilles: no more biquettes? posted by blork on May 27, 2004 at 13:28:15:
The reason you don't find any grills with briquettes is that it is cheaper for the manufacturer not to provide them. I bought a large char-broil 44,000 BTU in 1992 that had a vaporizer bar instead of bricks. It cooked ok that summer, but when winter arrived and the outside temp. was well below freezing, anytime I raised the lid to check the food, I'd lose all my heat instantly. Needless to say, that by the time my steaks were cooked, they were also dried out. To solve my problem, I was able to purchase the lava rock grid from Char-broil that fit the unit exactly and placed ceramics on it. The ceramics not only store and maintain heat but provide more even "radiant" heat across the cooking surface as well as serving the function of a vaporizer to create smoke. With some minor repairs and a burner replacement, I still achieve excellent results with this grill today. I absolutely wouldn't try to cook anything requiring high heat without ceramics! Some manufacturers like Ducane or Great Outdoors still supply a rock grid with lava rocks or ceramics. And some models of the cheaper manufacturer's like Fiesta or Char-Broil, still have the protrusions inside the bottom casting of the grill that were designed to accomodate the grid for lava rocks. You can buy grids and ceramic bricks on the internet by searching for "grill parts".
Source:
dialup-4.227.130.7.Dial1.Denver1.Level3.net
4.227.130.7
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)