'Food, fire and friends': Grilling season heats up in Manitoba
CTV
Be it a dry-aged steak seared on a ripping hot gas grill, full-flavoured turkey legs slowly cooked over a bed of wood pellets, or a breakfast spread expertly crafted on a flattop. Barbecue season has arrived in Manitoba, and outdoor cooking is taking off this summer.
Be it a dry-aged steak seared on a ripping hot gas grill, full-flavoured turkey legs slowly cooked over a bed of wood pellets, or a breakfast spread expertly crafted on a flattop.
Barbecue season has arrived in Manitoba, and outdoor cooking is taking off this summer.
“The food’s gotten better, the experience has gotten better, and [people] are just enjoying everything about it,” Phil Squarie, co-owner of Luxe BBQ Company, told CTV News. “It really becomes a passion for them.”
Luxe opened about eight years ago, and co-owner Phil Squarie said there’s been a significant shift in how people are barbequing their favourite foods. While gas grills are still the go-to for many, he said there has been a recent surge of interest in wood pellet cookers and flattop grills.
“It’s always nice to have the gas grill to do hotdogs and [other] quick things,” Squarie explained. “But I think pellet grills have really seen a resurgence because you can do the big long cooks out there really easy – like full chickens, turkeys, ribs, roasts, that kind of stuff.”
A standard pellet grill uses compressed wood shaped into pill form as a fuel source. The pellets are loaded in a hopper and fed into a burn pot. The burning wood creates flames, smoke and heat – along with plenty of flavour. Woods used in pellet cookers include apple, cherry, hickory and maple.
Black Earth Grills, a manufacturer owned and operated by the Crystal Spring Hutterite Colony near Ste. Agathe, Man., builds several different models that use wood pellets.
