mborner
Assistant Cook
It's even on their web site, although, they're not publicly going to call their grills useless.
Lookin’ Ain’t Cookin’ | Weber.com
Grilled Burgers Don't Taste Grilled.
- Thread starter mborner
- Start date
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Lookin’ Ain’t Cookin’ | Weber.com
Chief Longwind Of The North
Certified/Certifiable
Baking the burger, robbing it of flavor.I don't know how exactly to describe it or the science behind it but searing a burger using intense radiant heat as opposed to baking it (lid close) with convective heat makes all the difference in the world.
I do know the science behind it. Try this at home. Use a propane torch, whose flame is much hotter than the radiant heat from any grill. Fry the burger on one side until browned. Flip it and hit it with the torch, and the point of the blue flame. That's where it is hottest. Cook with the flame until a little smoke appears. Remove the burger when cooked through. Now, take that torch and sear the other side. Taste the burger. It will taste like a pan-fried burger.
The high temperature radiant heat gives you maillard reaction that browns the meat. But you get that from a hot surface too. What you don't get from the hot pan, or the torch flame, is the flavor developed by burning the beef fat. The smoke that is made from burning fat rises with the hot air and deposits smoke particles on the meat. They stick and give you the characteristic fire-grilled flavor. Both sufficient heat to cook and brown the meat, and smoke are required to get that flavor.
If your grill develops enough radiant heat to cooked the meat, and burn the fat to create smoke, you will have a fire-grilled flavor. If either part of that triangle is missing, you won't. I have seen people foil wrap burgers, ribs, chicken, etc., and not understand why their food, cooked on the grill, just doesn't have the grilled flavor they are looking for.
What you did with your grill, was to get it hot enough to both cook the meat, and create enough smoke to flavor it. Add seasonings and you have the perfect burger.
If you were to use a magnifying glass to condense a large enough circle sunlight into heat, and provide beef-fat smoke to waft across the cooking meat, and I dare say you could reproduce that wonderful fire-grilled flavor with no fire at all. Heat is heat, no matter the source. Flavor comes not from the heat, but from other variables that are introduced along with the heat.
Have you ever dried out a piece of meat by boiling it? I have, and made it chewier than a snowmobile's rubber track.
Seeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
Baking the burger, robbing it of flavor.
Along with most of the world, I've been grilling burgers with excellent results for decades with the lid down. They are not baked, they have a nice deeply browned exterior with a little char around the edges and the interior is cooked exactly they way I like it. The fact that you can't accomplish this simply means you have different standards and a different grill.
If cooking burgers on a foil covered grill with the lid open gives you the results you want, you're all set. You can accomplish the same results in a skillet on a stove without the foil.
mborner
Assistant Cook
Hi Andy. Thanks. You are right. I certainly am a rare bird. I do have different standards and you may recall me saying that it was a big eye opener for me to discover that most people (I think I said 99.9%) don't know or don't care about missing flavor elements in their burgers. This is not taking anything away from you, I truly appreciate your opinions. I know the problem is me, don't worry.
I've always had good burgers on my grill but that's not good enough for me. I want exceptional. I want memorable. I think I found it. 
Chief Longwind Of The North
Certified/Certifiable
I believe he pokes holes in the foil to allow the molten fat to drip onto the heat grates to produce smoke.
Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
roadfix
Chef Extraordinaire
You're right, I read their thing about keeping the lid closed. But you should still be able to get a good sear with the lid open like any other gasser out there. They even mention that closing the lid prevents flare ups.
And after reading that paragraph on flare ups I'm pretty sure their legal department had something to do with it. They want the lid closed on everything that's being cooked.
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Steve Kroll
Wine Guy
I'm going to have to beg to differ.
With the exception of the searing station, I have the same exact grill with the same BTUs, to the best of my knowledge. I made burgers on it just last night, lid up. Not only did I NOT use the searing station, but I also only used two of the three standard burners, and those were turned down part of the way. And yet it was still was plenty hot. So hot, in fact, that it was difficult to reach to the back to flip those burgers without feeling the heat on my arm.
So I don't buy the whole thing about having to have the lid down. And I certainly wouldn't consider my grill "useless," by any means.
mborner
Assistant Cook
Perhaps there is something wrong with my Genesis, and my last grill, and my parents Siver C, I don't know.
As mentioned before, I went around and around with the possibility of my grill not working properly. The first thing Weber asked me to do was to turn off the gas at the tank. They then asked me to turn on all the control knobs on the BBQ and then turn them off. (lid open, of course) Wait 5 minutes, then slowly turn the gas on at the tank to full. Start the grill. No change in heat.
They also had me take out the burners (PITA) and check the orifice tubes for debris. I have tiny screens covering them. Cleaned the screens and made sure that none of the orifice tubes were blocked and that every hole in the burner tube was clear.
No change.
Weber then asked me to send them a picture of all three burners turned on high. This is the picture I sent them;
She said, "I'm sorry, your grill is working perfectly, there's nothing we can do" She practically scolded me for even trying to cook with the lid up.
With that, just as you have doubts about what I'm telling you, I find it very difficult to believe that you can actually sear on your grill with the lid up using just two burners turned down because it gets "plenty hot". Unless your grill his highly modified in some way, I just don't believe it.
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mborner
Assistant Cook
Steve, I was just thinking of something else. Is your Genesis an "E" or an "S" model? I was just wondering because the E model has porcelain enameled iron flavorizer bars while the S has stainless steel bars. I know stainless is horrible at radiating heat and I'm wondering if that could be the difference between our grills.
roadfix
Chef Extraordinaire
I belong to TVWBB also and have been following your thread there as well. I'm curious to see what other S310 users there have to say about the lid.
Steve Kroll
Wine Guy
Mine is the Genesis E-330. So yes, that certainly could be a difference.
Just curious. Does the S-line also have stainless steel grates? Mine are cast iron.
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mborner
Assistant Cook
Yes, TVWBB has been helpful, also, but their site is not as active as this one. The responses come in a bit slower.
mborner
Assistant Cook
Thanks, Steve. Yes, my S-310 has stainless bars and a stainless grate. Also, I have the last generation with the burners running east/west instead of the newer version which run north/south. Another possible difference, maybe?
roadfix
Chef Extraordinaire
I hear ya, considering it's a dedicated Weber only forum.
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RPCookin
Executive Chef
I had a Weber Genesis Silver for years. It worked just fine for grilling with the lid up if that was what the cooking called for (things like grilled asparagus, peppers, and yes sometimes burgers). It also worked fine with the lid down (for chicken and such and it definitely didn't taste like oven baked). I also used it with the lid propped part way open (to keep the temp at about 250°) for smoking ribs and pork shoulder. With a bit of care, it did that marvelously too. Just because many things cook well with the lid closed doesn't mean that the grill is useless with the lid up.
We had to leave my Weber behind when we moved to the Bahamas. Now we are back in Colorado, and when we get into our new house in September, a Weber gas grill is going to be my first purchase. I am really looking forward to holding my first grill party.
Maybe the OP is simply looking for something that most of us don't find missing.
We had to leave my Weber behind when we moved to the Bahamas. Now we are back in Colorado, and when we get into our new house in September, a Weber gas grill is going to be my first purchase. I am really looking forward to holding my first grill party.
Maybe the OP is simply looking for something that most of us don't find missing.
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mborner
Assistant Cook
Thanks for the input RP, I appreciate it. You're right, I've had the unfortunate luck of being one of very few people that notice a pretty big difference between convective cooked burgers and radiant heat seared burgers. Maybe other grillers notice too, but perhaps it's not as important to them as it is to me. To me, it's critical for making a great burger. I can churn out "good" burgers off my grill all day long and everybody loves them. Believe me, I'm the only one that notices, so I understand the problem is with me.
I emailed Weber, again, the other day to inquire about the flavorizer bars and the differences between porcelain enameled and stainless, and once again they said, and I quote:
[FONT="]Weber said:
If anybody would like to see the transcript of the email please PM me, I don't want to publicly throw anybody from Weber under the bus. [/FONT]
roadfix
Chef Extraordinaire
Again, I'm sure Weber's "Our grills cannot be used to cook with the lid open" response must have something to do with safety and liability issues more than anything else.
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Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
Did Weber answer your question regarding the different flavorizer bars?
mborner
Assistant Cook
Yes, she said it would make no difference.
Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
That's what I suspected. Thanks.
