These past couple of years have seen an increase in my cooking inventory.
It all started with a gas grill. My dad first got me into grilling. When I was just a teen, he'd make me grill up chicken and steaks out on our gas grill. Well years later after I was married, he gave me some money and told me to buy my own grill. I didn't now any better, so I bought a typical grill for around $200. It was terrible but I endured with it for years. When we moved to our current home, I told myself that I was going to toss that old grill and get myself a good one. I checked a bunch of YouTube videos and found that the Weber Spirit E-310 grill had high marks for around $499. That was the grill for me! By the way, that Weber Grill has the most even temperature throughout the grill surface!! That was the start of my obsession of learning how to cook better.
Even before the new Weber Grill, I got into cast iron skillets. I couldn't stand that every couple of years, our teflon pans seemed to need replacing since the pans would warp and the teflon coating would start flaking. Every time this happened, I'd say to myself, "I'm going to go and get a cast iron skillet and be done with it!" But I never did. We'd just buy another teflon pan.
Then one day, I decided to do a bit of research and found that cast iron wasn't really that expensive. So I ordered a Lodge skillet on Amazon.com and tried it. Of course, I had to fry an egg because that's what I saw everyone with a cast iron skillet do! Well, it turned out terrible! It stuck to that pan so bad that I told myself, cast iron isn't for me!
But a bit more research taught me that you needed some technique (and a well seasoned pan) to get good eggs. I returned that Lodge skillet too because I found that the old vintage skillets from companies like Griswold and Wagner Ware were better because of their smooth cooking surface. I searched and found these old skillets and started my collection. The next thing you know, I kept buying different sized skillets and now I have a bunch of skillets!
I also always wanted a nice wok. Research showed that you needed a lot of heat and a carbon steel wok. Again, going to Amazon.com, I found a wok and burner and now I use that wok a lot for cooking things like crabs, frying egg rolls and more.
A year later, I asked my wife if I could get a smoker. Well, she liked BBQ ribs and surprisingly said, "Yes!" to my first smoker... a Weber 18.5" Smokey Mountain. I first thought about a pellet smoker from Traeger. But the more I thought about it, I didn't like the fact that it took all the challenge out of smoking. You set the electronics, pour in some pellets and walk away. What fun is that? I checked out electric smokers. Really? I thought, that can't be that good, and what if the electrical parts were to break? To me, the only one that really had a challenge to it and also could give excellent results seemed to be the Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) series!
Well, that was the start of my smoking obsession! Just a short time later, I decided that I needed a larger smoker when doing a bunch of ribs for family gatherings. With a couple of rib racks, I could vertically place full slabs of ribs in the 22.5" WSM. I could actually get up to 12 slabs of ribs in there without cutting them down! My wife told me just to cut them down and put them in the 18.5" smoker, but I told her the photos would not look as good. I don't think she understood why that was important to me... really? I'm a pro photographer! Why would it not be important to me?!
After smoking so many items over the year, my wife started getting tired of it. So I started smoking food just for me. I actually lost 50 lbs while eating food I had smoked! People are still amazed that you can lose weight and cook as much as I did! But if you count your calorie intake and just eat certain foods, you can lose weight while cooking what you like! I'd smoke a whole pork butt and eat that thing all week long! I'm the kind of person that can literally have the same thing over and over, day after day and it doesn't bother me. Not my family though. They need variety. Because of this, I thought, "When I only plan to smoke a smaller amount just for me, I should get the 14.5" WSM too! The next thing you know, I have all three sizes of Weber Smokey Mountain smokers!
Why not get another brand and try that out? Why? I already know how to smoke with this series of smokers... why throw in something I don't know how to use? Besides, the quality of the food coming from those smokers are amazing!
I monitor everything with two ThermoWorks Smoke thermometers and use a ThermoWorks Thermapen IV when taking quick measurements. Great products!
Oh, I can't forget my George Foreman grills! My brother had one and I was impressed with how fast he was able to make a hamburger with it. So, I bought one with a Groupon and later inherited my dad's grill and later my mom's too! I use them quite often as a panini press when heating up pulled pork on flatbread!
To me, cooking is fun if there's a challenge to it. But I don't want to use tools that don't work well. So far, I think what I have works great. I know there will be more tools to come in the future!
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