Grilling 101

While on our excursion to Esquipulos, Allan and I found a grill. YES. A grill. and we were pumped. The thought of being able to grill chicken instead of cooking it on the stove made our mouths water for a little different flavor. We negotiated the price at the Market and ended up buying a little tiny grill. We were pretty excited.

After thanksgiving, I thought it would be really nice and special to cook a nice, different dinner for Allan upon his return from the USA. I thought "now would be the perfect time to use our grill for the first time!" So I went to the store and bought some charcoal. I bought some vegetables, skewers, and chicken to make kabobs on the grill just like I have seen my father do. I had everything ready and cut up so we could just "design" our skewers when Allan got back to Copan, put them on the grill and eat a good dinner.

I guess I have never really paid much attention all these years to the thousands of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken breasts, etc. that have been grilled by my father, uncle, college friends, etc. It actually takes time to get the charcoal to the point where you can grill. I guess I was thinking about those handy gas grills we have in the USA.

I quickly learned that charcoal grills are nearly impossible to start on a windy evening with no lighter fluid to catch the charcoal on fire. So what did we do? I had the brilliant idea to move the grill inside of the house and use the fire from my gas stove to heat the charcoal. Fail. It heated the charcoal...and started a little fire :)


We decided to just put the skewers on the grill inside and see what would happen. Also not recommended. After about 40 minutes of cooking because the chicken would not get done, We ended up not being able to eat the ones we cooked on the grill because they tasted like gas, and finished cooking the vegetables and chicken on a skillet. So much for a change in dinner! Back to the skillet dinners!