Jamie Purviance - Webers New Real Grilling: The ultimate cookbook for every backyard griller

foreword

BY MIKE KEMPSTER

I was born in the early wave of baby boomers. It was the early 1950s, not long after our troops returned home from World War II. It was a time when the American dream really took root and people began settling into new homes and optimistic new lives. Back then, you knew you were doing well if you had a car with gigantic fins parked in front of a new home, a lush lawn, and a backyard patio decked out with a barbecue grill and picnic table. Life was good. Dads everywhere were stepping up to the grill, and a passion for grilling was beginning to burn across the land.

I grew up watching my dad use some of the first grills that were mass-produced for homeowners. Little did I know back then that grilling would become such an integral part of my adult life.

The year was 1952. George Stephen, a metalworker and father of twelve, loved to barbecue, but grills on the market at the time were far from ideal. Most were open braziers, making it impossible to control flare-ups. George thought that a lid with vents might help control airflow, prevent flare-ups, and keep the ashes and the elements at bay.

It's been said that necessity is the mother of invention, and that was certainly true when George invented the Weber kettle. He was working at his father's company, Weber Brothers Metal Works, at the time, welding metal spheres into buoys. He was just about to weld two sphere halves together when it hit him: he could make a grill out of the two halves. So he did just that, and the classic Weber kettle was born. Over the next two decades, George grew his invention from a curiosity into a backyard staple.

I started selling Weber grills when I was a teenager working in a Kansas City hardware store. I never imagined that I would be hired by George Stephen and go on to become a lifelong Weber salesman and barbecue fanatic. In the early 1970s, growing the business meant hauling grills around from store to store conducting grilling demonstrations. We even published little paper pamphlets that we sold for fifty cents. Each had a dozen or so recipes and grilling tips, and boy, were they popular. So we decided to go a little bigger.

We published our first hardcover cookbook, Barbecuing the Weber Covered Way , in 1972. Some of the recipes and ingredients wouldn't stand a chance now, but we had fun reminiscing and thought we'd share some with you.

As the years have passed, traditional barbecued meals have evolved. Grilling enthusiasts are more adventuresome, and their palates expect to be treated to the wide range of food and flavors that were not popular or didn't even exist ten or twenty years ago.