Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why A Barbecue Is Better Than A Microwave
Given the weather we have had so far this year, the chances are you’ve already had a barbecue. If you haven’t though – and you still insist on taking your microwave to the park for a picnic – then you really need to pay attention. Sitting on the sofa this week is Robert Plastow. A man who has important things to share about nuclear attacks and leather. Yes, we know, you like him already. Here’s Robert:
- This isn’t Robert. This is a Beefeater 900 Series Classic 3 Burner Gas Barbecue. But you knew that.
1. Friends. Having friends over to hang around your microwave for a few beers isn’t as thrilling as having a BBQ party. For one, you’d need quite a big kitchen and quite a big microwave. Even then the anticipation of fervent hunger wouldn’t be as satisfyingly met by the nonchalant ding of a microwave as it would be by the crackle and hiss of mesmerising flames as they lick the dripping fat from a perfectly cooked burger. It might be quicker but microwave cooking is about as sociable as J.D Salinger impersonating a hermit crab in an underground bunker with the lights off.
2. Outdoors. Unlike a barbecue, you can’t take a microwave to the beach or to the park. Barbecues can be portable, which means that if the sun is shining you can be cooking over a mini fire and dining al fresco wherever you are. The great outdoors becomes your friend as every landscape becomes a potential dining table where you can feast upon the bounty of nature in both body and mind. Meanwhile, back at home your microwave sits in the kitchen like a dormant robot awaiting the signal for the rise of the machines and the ensuing mechanical apocalypse. (If you have been taking a microwave to the park for a picnic recently, you should talk about it with someone who knows you well and who you feel comfortable around. Ask someone whose opinion you value and see if they think you need to be referred to a therapist.)
3. We Are Man. Sitting by a fire and cooking flesh brings out the masculine caveman instinct, whereas sitting by a microwave probably gives you ball cancer. There’s no medical evidence to support this claim but I challenge any man to happily sit naked on top of a microwave whilst it nukes a spud for 10 minutes straight. Whereas BBQs are different. Men throughout the ages have been more than happy to hang around a fire whilst perpetuating an overused stereotype of primitive masculinity attached to carnivorism. Grunting and farting as they proudly cook another creature’s flesh, it’s easy to see why men prefer to assert their dominance over fire and beast alike rather than frying their nuts in accurately timed bouts of microwave radiation.
4. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Microwaves could destroy Australia, while barbecues make it what it is. You can’t throw another shrimp on the microwave. Not unless you want it to rot along with all the other detritus that has been lost in the sands of time behind your beeping radiation cupboard. Australians would lose their entire culture if microwaves replaced barbecues. They wouldn’t survive the cultural upheaval and havoc that newer phrases would wreak on their well-established parlance. Can you see an Aussie saying “reheat another plate of leftovers in the wavey mate”?. Australia, in its very being, is itself an argument for the prevalence of barbecues over microwaves. Would you deny the culture and population of an entire country for the sake of a conveniently cooked ready-meal?
5. The World Of Leather. A microwave ‘leatherises’ meat. Try cooking a steak in the microwave and see what happens. Seriously. Go and spend a good chunk of money on a really nice fillet steak and put it in your microwave set to max power for 5 mins and watch it shrivel into a poor impersonation of a mummified chihuahua. Alternatively, season and lightly oil it, then flame grill it to perfection over the glowing grill of your beloved gas barbecue. If you eat the one from the microwave you’ll be confined to the smallest room in the house whilst your barbecuing friends will be drinking all your beer.
6. Nuclear Attack. A microwave destroys the nutritional value of food, whereas barbecues lock it in behind walls of chargrilled deliciousness. Microwaving is not called ‘nuking’ your food without reason. When nuking, you are heating your food through a process of molecular friction, which destroys the delicate molecules of vitamins and phytonutirents. And that’s SCIENCE. Read it and weep. You might as well take something really healthy, sniff it and then eat warm cardboard – it is pretty much the same experience you will get from microwaving your food. I challenge any microwave fan to a scurvy cook-off. You try living off of microwaved food alone for 3 months while I’ll take my vitamins barbecue style. Whoever gets scurvy first, loses.
7. Active Pursuits. Microwaves are the tools of the obese and lazy living dead. Get up off your fat bum and barbecue something before the last vitamin in your radiated body gives up and dies. Get outside, breathe in the air, enjoy the sunshine with all its energy giving vitamin D and use your fat covered muscles to drag your grill out of the shed before they waste away. Barbecuing takes time and has to be done outdoors which means you get the benefits of both exercise and of being in your evolutionary home: nature. You remember nature don’t you microwave fans? Or are you too removed from it in your automated, mechanized matrix of sloth to only recall images of the outside world when beamed to you through the pixels of an electrified screen? Get outside and barbecue now!
