Can a Grill Change a Girl’s Life?

As the saying commonly goes, the world is divided into two types of people, and for the purposes of this article, I’ll pick the ones that apply here: people who are hosts and people who are guests. (I suppose there are people who should just stay home altogether, but that’s too bleak to think much about.) I am a host; I love cooking and having people over and while I am realizing while writing this that I also am happy to be a guest, to serve this world division, we’ll stick with the binary. This makes, in the eyes of some guests, what hosts do miraculous: that you enjoy cooking and can balance that while also taking some time to set the table baffles some minds.

But there is one type of cooking that I as a host have long feared, and that is one that traps me right in the middle of a stereotype: grilling.

Grilling…let’s just say I always left that to the most consistent men in my life—my partner, and my stepfather. The latter is so passionate about grilling that he gave away his practically-new grill because he just had to get a fresh one. He will grill on an uncovered patio all winter long. But last year, I moved into a new place that had outdoor space for me to use for the first time in my life living in New York City. Suddenly, unsatisfied with merely my planters of fresh herbs, I felt the call of the outdoors, and the itch to confront my fear of grilling. Inspired, I must admit, in part by TikTok sensation Wishbone Kitchen, I would get over being a sexist stereotype—besides my hatred of driving, of course—and make this the summer I joined the club of a #girlswhogrill.

But first, I disappointingly had to consult a man—said partner who had previously done most of the grilling in our lives, whether at vacation houses or on the extremely janky one that the previous dweller of our home left behind and has since been given away on Facebook Marketplace. We decided that, if I wanted to become a Grill Queen, propane was the only way to go in terms of speed and cleanup. I wanted something that we could and would use as much as possible, so it had to be good-looking enough—this is Dwell, after all—that we’d put it right outside our backdoor. All grills might look alike to some, but anyone regularly reading this publication knows that the devil is in the details.

There are several well-known “good-looking grills”: in the portable category, grills that are stainless steel from companies like Snow Peak; the infamous “Big Green Egg” smoker; and the classic Weber charcoal grills even come in fun colors now. After much research, I reached out to Monument Grills. Founded in 2016 in Atlanta, I had my eye initially on one of their colorful small ones, which seemed like the kind of thing someone in a city with limited space should and would buy. But they suggested something else: for the full test experience, I should try their Eminence 605, one of their highest-end offerings, in that it retails at above $1,000. It has all the bells and whistles, even a rotisserie option. At first, I was daunted. But then I thought: if I was going to grill, I might as well go grill or go home, right? Now we were cooking with gas. (I’m sorry!)

A grill is really just an oven and a stovetop in one, but here are some of the details behind this guy. It’s a six burner, which, according to my partner, who turned it on first when I was out of the house and sent me the following text, “gets hot as fuck lol.” It has an aluminum finish, with stainless-steel burners, and also comes with a side searing station, the ability to attach it via a natural gas line if you so choose, a Bluetooth app for temperature readings (with meat probes that plug into the grill), and the aforementioned rotisserie kit. Essentially, it’s like learning to drive on a top of the line really fast car [insert relevant brand name]; as established, I also am really bad at driving.

Unpacking my new grill 

The Eminence came in two very large, very heavy boxes, much to our FedEx delivery guy’s extreme displeasure. (The cover was shipped separately.) It was packed smartly; everything was boxed together clearly with the intent to flat-pack as much as possible. On the flip side, all that efficiency in packing meant that things were not always easy to identify; my partner said his main feedback was that the pieces could have been labeled more clearly, such as whether they were for the left or right side of the grill. Other than that, one bottom piece came slightly dented, but was easily banged out and luckily not visible, and the grill wasn’t affected function-wise anyway; fairly impressive given the vagaries of shipping in our modern world. Putting the grill together took my partner and me (but mostly my partner) at least four hours one evening, eventually by flashlight. It’s a complex piece of machinery, so you’ll need to set aside a good chunk of time to really commit to it. I was on cleanup duty, and we ended up with four trash bags of cardboard and styrofoam packaging. 

But once it was together, we marveled at how good-looking it was—and all our (his) hard work.

Test driving 

I made it my mission to use the grill as much as possible—for every home-cooked meal I was making for a few weeks in the thick of summer, I’d use the grill to bring it to life, and only with occasional assistance. As everyone had promised me, this proved easier than I thought, and a fun challenge. I started off with chicken thighs and corn, a winning combo. (I used this recipe from the New York Times, if you’re curious). I was pleased at, yes, how easy the Eminence was to turn on, to get going, and how intuitive it was to figure out the temperature—it’s the reason people like open flames of all kinds, and induction and electric stoves are a tough transition. Like any cooking device, it’s taking time to figure out the different temperature zones, and when to take things off—when the meat releases!—but we’ve successfully cooked a lot more corn, chicken, and, one memorable night, incredible pork chops with seared peaches. Everyone always says grilling is nice because it’s so fast, and I never believed them because of the mental hump—or maybe it was the speed itself that gave me pause. The grilling world doesn’t make it easy for women to take a step in; I’ve spent more time on various YouTube channels, the r/grilling SubReddit, and BBQGuys.com in the past few weeks than I ever thought I would, and let me tell you, there are a lot of dudes there.

Cleanup has been simple—you can do the classic high heat/burn off/scrub, but I’ve also removed the grates to really clean them in the sink and test that process, and since they’re stainless steel, it’s been simple. A lot of the learning process has been less about cooking and temping (though obviously, especially with cooking meat, that’s always a concern) and more about the order of operations—turning it on, what temperature the burners are, what burners you’re using, etc.

What about that rotisserie option? 

This was the add-on I was the most excited about—never had it occurred to me I could rotisserie in my own home. While we were first going to test this function with a full chicken, that seemed a little intense for a first try, not to mention seasonally not exactly what we were in the mood for. So instead, we attempted Monument’s actual recipe (well, again, sort of; I changed some of the ingredients, but kept the order of operations) for making your own gyros at home. While the setup—shoving a ton of gloopy, marinated chicken thighs onto some sharp pointy sticks on a rod and then placing that rod over a hot oven—was not the most pleasant thing I’ve ever done, once it started rotating, I was filled with childlike glee. The Bluetooth aspect, which seemed like just a bell/whistle, was really helpful for paying attention to temperature and knowing when to adjust if things were getting too hot or cold, particularly when we were using the grill more like an oven. And an hour later, we had some of the best homemade gyros I’ve had—well, maybe the first homemade gyros I’ve ever had, but they were the best. It only took a few weeks of experience, but I’d overcome a lifetime of counterprogramming. The old adage my partner would go on to reiterate was true: “Man that thing is sweet, it gets so hot.”

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