"I am a company man to say the least," says Albert Gonzales, executive chef for Weber Grill's Chicago location, and it's true. After starting his career in hotel kitchens, Albert started with Weber in its Lombard location, opened the Schaumburg location, worked in Wheeling (now closed) and recently transferred downtown to man the monstrous grills at the Weber Grill flagship location at Ohio & State. "It's pretty much the only job I've ever had. I've just cooked."
That experience serves Gonzales well not only in his kitchen, but at barbecues throughout the summer – and it can help you, too. Centerstage checked in with the grillmaster to find out how to get the most out of the season.
People probably assume that you're just called "Weber Grill" but you use a standard kitchen. I don't know if people realize that you're cooking on actual grills with burning charcoal back there.
We cook on authentic Weber charcoal kettles and that's probably what surprises people more than anything. Especially our [Chicago] location, we have a lot of tourists [and] a lot of out-of-towners, and obviously we have the red kettle hanging out front, which really brings people in the door. The look on peoples faces when they come in and see those grills...it's a look of amazement that we actually do use giant Weber kettles, very similar to our ranch kettles. These are stainless steel for restaurant purposes, but to date I think the thing that people are most surprised about is that we do use charcoal on our grills.
I've taken a quick look into your kitchen - your grills are absolutely huge. How much charcoal do you go through?
On a good weekend, I burn well over a ton of charcoal. We do have five of those giant charcoal grills, and also three gas grills that we use for our barbecue. But on a busy Saturday, I can use 1400 lbs. Of charcoal. It's quite a bit. When loaded up, each of those grills can be loaded pretty much to capacity with a bag and a half of charcoal. When you load that much charcoal in there, the internal temperature in there ranges from 1400-1800 degrees.
That sounds like it burns a lot hotter than an at-home grill. How do your kitchen kettles compare with home grills temperature-wise?
Typically, the standard kettles that most people use are 26 inches, ours are 38 - significantly larger in diameter. Even [in] those 26-inch kettles - charcoal just burns hot, that's what it knows how to do – you can soar up to anywhere from 800 to 1000 degrees. But we get quite a bit more out of it because our grills are specially designed for restaurant use. What we've done is open up the bottom a little bit, to let a little bit more of that ash go through. Most people at home aren't cooking on their grill for 12-13 hours straight. It's usually [for] an hour or two then you shut it down. But since we are going for such an extended period of time, we actually designed our grill with a large opening in the bottom so we can keep dumping ash into our ash catchers. But because of that big opening, it also feeds in a lot more air than your average home kettles. And that air really allows those grills to get as hot as they get.
I wanted to ask you about the Pittsburgh steak that's on your menu, also known as a black & blue - do you sell a lot of those?
We get a fair amount of them, actually. The whole Pittsburgh thing came from back in the days of the Pittsburgh steel mills, the steel workers didn't get a long lunch break, but it was hard work. So what they would do is they'd actually bring a raw piece of meat to work with them, take a sheet of steel and put it over one of the heating cauldrons, and that piece of steel would get superhot - they'd take the steaks, throw it on there, and it would char and blacken the outside but it happened so fast that the inside would stay very rare. Because we do burn our charcoal at such a high temperature, we actually can accomplish that exact same effect really well, and I think you'd be surprised at the amount of people that really like that nice charred outside and the rare cool inside. We probably get the same amount of Pittsburghs as we do plain rare steaks.
I've always considered the "marked" steak a real macho thing - for the guy that says "knock the horns off and put it on the plate, give me something nice and bloody." I tend to assume that people who order the Pittsburgh don't know what they're getting into. Do you think that's true - and then are they surprised they enjoy it?
Oh, yeah. Like a lot of things, there's such a shock value to it, [as in] "I like it still mooing, just dead on the plate," absolutely. And I think people that like their steaks rare get into the Pittsburgh, since you do char it you develop a little bit more of the flavor. So not only do you get that cold rare steak, but you get that a little bit of that external flavor that you're looking for as well. But yeah, I believe the vast majority of the people who eat it like that order it the first time not sure what they're getting into, and then stumble on something that they actually like.
What are the three main steps, in your opinion, for a quality grill experience?
The first thing is: A clean grill. You gotta have a clean grill. You can do it before or after, and either one is fine - I 'm the kind of person that after I'm done grilling, I clean my grill the next time I use it. I like to get my charcoal stoked up nice and hot, make sure it's all covered in a grey ash already, and I keep the lid on - that's going to build up the heat and get all those bars nice and hot. Once those bars get nice and hot, it brushes off very nice and easy. You get rid of all that burnt carbon and you have a clean surface. The reason a clean grill is so important is that it's going to keep your food from sticking, and it's also going to help from imparting any kind of an off flavor. It's going to give you more true, authentic flavor to what you're actually cooking, as opposed to what you cooked last time interfering with it.
Second: If you're using charcoal - which we're big proponents of - no more lighter fluid. Get rid of the cans of lighter fluid. We use Kingsford Briquettes, lump charcoal works [as well], but what we do is we use a chimney starter. All it is is a metal tube with a handle and you can buy paraffin wax cubes that ignite the charcoal without imparting any kind of flavor. Any time you think about lighter fluid, everyone knows the smell of lighter fluid immediately. Well, smell and taste being so closely intertwined, any time something has that strong of a smell, it's going to have a lingering taste as well. Getting rid of that lighter fluid is what's going to preserve the purity of the food. You're not going to add any off flavors, you're just going to bring out the flavor of the food that you're cooking. No more lighter fluid.
My third and final one is: know the product you're cooking. If it's the first time you're going to be cooking something, maybe that's not the best time to be cooking that for a group of guests. Practice once or twice on something at home. For instance: if it's the first time you're cooking fish filets on the grill, give it a run before and realize that you might have to lightly oil the fish. Knowing your product, and knowing the steps that you're going to be going through, is really going to help eliminate a lot of the guesswork and a lot of frustration. In my eyes, the whole summer grilling experience is very social - it's having a good time and being around friends. The last thing you want to do is be frustrated with all the outside variables.
Is there one main thing that nearly everyone does wrong?
Absolutely. We do monthly cooking classes in our Schaumburg location, and one of the things we always try to let people know is "stop being grill-peekers." We use direct and indirect heat. We start it over the charcoal and get our nice marks, and then we pull it off the charcoal and finish it. And one of the things that I notice people do constantly is the second they get their protein or their vegetable on the grill, they want to get in there and turn it right away. A little bit of patience, you know? Let it spend a minute right on the direct heat so they get those sear marks, they get that nice cross pattern. Don't open the lid of the grill any more than you have to.
Every time you open the lid of the grill, you lose a good 60 degrees of heat immediately. That's how you get the chicken that's got the skin all shredded off - if you have a nice hot, clean grill, putting that chicken right on that hot grate will let it sear and come off the grill very nicely - but it is going to take time and a little bit of patience.
In your opinion, what is the perfect grill food?
Oh, that's a great question. If it's me, the perfect grill food is a nice bone-in ribeye, little bit of salt, little bit of pepper. That's all I need. Very simple, nice hot charcoal fire, a little bit of that flavor, and get a great steak on the grill.
When you're invited to barbecues, how long is it until someone inevitably asks you to take over on the grill?
[laughs] If I'm over at my mom's house, I've already learned to expect that any time it's a family function, I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to be doing most of the cooking. As far as friends go, they're all pretty good about it until somebody runs into a snag. But I can't remember the last time I was at a barbecue and I didn't somehow wind up rolling my sleeves up and getting involved. But you know, to say the least, I'm a very fortunate person in that I love what I do. Despite the fact that we work five days a week and we have long hours and we grill all day long - those two days off, if it's nice out I'm grilling. Without a doubt, it's a passion that carries over into my personal life as well.
Well, it really is a male dream job. I also think that a lot of guys believe that the grill is the only place a "guy" can cook.
Absolutely they do. There's a strict division for some reason - like "the women can have the kitchen, but me, I'm the one outside on the grill." A lot of times, what we do is we take that charcoal grill and with just a little bit of manipulation, we turn it into an oven. We do a breaded tilapia dish that we bake, for all intents and purposes, on our charcoal grill. And we never burn the breading, because it is the same principle. I think a lot of men would be surprised to learn that they can transfer a lot of what they know on the grill right over into the house.
Most of those "grill-only" guys probably don't realize that most of these high end steakhouses don't use grills; they use broilers and ovens.
There's a good number of places that will start off with on some sort of broiler or a grill to get those marks, but they'll finish it off right in the oven and that's a standard method of cooking. When I speak about direct and indirect, we keep all of our charcoal loaded in the back of the grill to mark our steaks - to get that nice char mark, to get that cross-pattern, to get that grilled look that everyone strives for. But after that, we pull them all off to the front of the grill and we shut that lid, which is great about the way the Weber grill is designed - once you shut that lid, and you have that heat in the back, that heat all rolls along the top and you basically create a giant convection oven inside your grill. For all intents and purposes we use our grills to "bake" our steaks.
I have to ask - working around all these big fiery grills all day, what's the worst burn you've ever had in the kitchen?
I've been pretty fortunate and I haven't had any bad ones. Typically, when people do burn themselves in the restaurant, it's actually not on the grill. They are so massive and so hot, there's an intimidation factor, even when you deal with them every day. You've learned better. You know. When we burn ourselves here it's typically on a sheet pan that's coming out of an oven. The worst I've ever had, I was working an Asian concept and I was working a wok...I got a little too much oil in there and it splashed on my hands. I had some pretty good burns for a month or so. I decided to give up my career as a hand model when I entered this industry.
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