Oddballs relish the grilling

The Wall Street Journal informed me recently that I am now part of a fast-growing American culinary trend.

Considering that the newspaper’s weekend edition often reports on the lifestyles of the nation’s wealthiest people, I suppose I should feel flattered to be included in such expensive company. And I might, too, if not for the mildly mocking tone of the article, which referred to the boom in grilling food in winter as an “oddball hobby.”

OK, I’ll admit I have received more than a few curious stares in the six or so winters that I’ve been indulging my passion for searing grill marks onto just about everything I eat. The sight of a grown man on his porch, huddled over a smoking gas grill in the middle of a snowstorm, might be considered a bit out of the ordinary to some people.

A few years back, in fact, a kid in a pizza-delivery car was so startled to see a guy grilling outdoors in January that he slid to a stop in front of my house, rolled down his window, and gave me a thumbs-up sign. I waved my trusty spatula in greeting and then went back to the sizzling array of vegetables and meat wreathed in snowflakes.

If year-round grilling has become my obsession, I have the Food Network to blame – or to thank, as the case may be.

After watching Bobby Flay, the grilling guru, conjure up his charbroiled masterpieces on the screen, I was hooked. My kids got me a gas grill one Christmas, and I had the thing fired up on the porch the next night. In no time at all, I had succumbed to its smoky embrace. Propane-fueled and ignited with the press of a button, it was a form of cooking that not only was deliciously satisfying, but also a great cabin-fever reliever.

I steeped myself in marinades and emulsions, breathing deep of the aromatic clouds of garlic, herbs and exotic wood chips that enveloped me. Eventually, after having worn out one grill and moving on to a bigger and better one, I began to feel cheated when I would come home from work to find supper cooking on the stove. No matter what the calendar said, I wanted to make everything taste like summer.

If I now require grill marks to stir my taste buds in the dark season, I am by no means alone.

According to the Journal story, the growing ranks of people like me – oddballs in the millions, and mostly males – have made grilling a $2 billion industry and spawned a new line of high-tech winter cooking products.

One company, for instance, sells a $9,000 grill with “freeze-resistant porcelain-tile countertops” for the Arctic griller who has everything. For a mere $5,000, a cold-weather cook can now whip up a sumptuous repast on a 42-inch stainless-steel grill with infrared burners that reach temperatures of 1,650 degrees. While that might seem like an awful lot of hardware to cook a humble hamburger, its fans insist that the ferocious heat the thing puts off protects them from frostbite while grilling and chilling in 2 feet of snow.

The story mentioned one guy in Vermont who thinks nothing of standing outside in subzero temperatures to cook his every meal, breakfast included. It makes him “feel like an Eskimo,” he said.

Another man explained his habit of cooking outdoors, despite the 30-mile-an-hour winds coming off Lake Michigan, with the simple phrase, “Hey, I’m a guy.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.