Willy Trolove: Funereal flames mark demise of the real barbecue

The barbecue season is here. The evenings are longer, the weather is sometimes pleasant, and the ads between overs in the cricket are conveniently spaced for turning over the chops.

But where once the barbecue season brought me joy, it now brings distress. For I am troubled by the modern gas barbecue.

It calls itself a barbecue but it is not one. It has electronic ignition. It has variable heat settings and a temperature gauge. It has a hotplate. The hotplate is easy to cook on, but because no flames ever touch the food it is nothing more than an inefficient outdoor frying pan that is never washed.

No. The gas barbecue is not a barbecue. It is a stove, outside.

It claims to be portable. Wheels give the impression that it can be easily moved from one barbecue location to another in response to a change in the weather, the movement of the sun, or the fact that you have just set fire to your garage.

But with its hood, its gigantic bottle, and its several tonnes of on-board rotisserie equipment the modern barbecue can be shifted only if you have connections in the piano-moving industry.

Gas barbecues were all very well when they were glorified bunsen burners, little circular things on tripods with dinky gas bottles. But now they are great bulbous giants that have the kind of styling favoured by people-movers and 1970s campervans.

They have absurd names like Super Grande Turbo Roaster, Wonda-Broiler 2000, or Apollo 11 Mega-Burner. Dark and menacing, they lurk on the lawn, useless for half the year, obstacles to be mown around, tangling themselves with garden hose.

Worst of all, modern barbecues are sold in showrooms that resemble funeral homes. Laid out like gleaming caskets, they are ridiculously clean and polished given the grubby job that they do. Coffin-like, with lids open, they await fresh meat.

How did we come to this? How did we discard the trusty old barbecue that has served us so well?

To barbecue is to flirt with fire, that seductress who lured us from the wilderness and separates us from the beasts. The word barbecue sounds like crackling flames, spitting sap, roasting leaves, exploding seed pods. Set fire to a dead gorse bush and it will scream barbecue a thousand times.

In a gas barbecue the fire is trussed, regulated, stifled at the turn of a knob. But in a real barbecue she is alive, temperamental and mesmerising. Cooking on a real barbecue is an act of worship, an infatuation, a tryst with the base elements. We give the fire our undivided attention, and she dances for us.

The best barbecues are made from scratch from whatever comes to hand - a few rocks, an old grill, a petrol tanker.

Ideally the barbecue should be in a sheltered spot near water and within arm's reach of a chillybin of beer.

Fuel is gathered - wood, charcoal, your neighbour's garden furniture - and lit. More often than not the barbecue needs to be lit several times. The firemakers blame their inability to get the fire going on the wetness of the wood, the unhelpful shape of the garden furniture, or the wrong kind of wind.

Everyone is an expert. When the firemaker fails, someone who thinks they know better relieves them of their duties.

Eventually the fire takes hold. More fuel is piled on until the barbecue threatens to become a bushfire or an arson conviction.

The inferno subsides and a heated debate begins about whether the fire has died down enough to put the sausages on.

Put them on too early, and they will be Chernobylised. Put them on too late, and several hours of asthmatic wheezing into the embers are required to get them cooked.

At last the food is put on, utensils are wielded, eyebrows burned off. The smoke follows the barbecuers around the fire until they are blind and weeping.

On a gas barbecue expectations are high. The food can be marinated, basted and seasoned. There is no excuse for poor or uneven cooking.

But on a real barbecue these rules do not apply. No matter how skilful the barbecuer, the finished product will always be encased in a thick black shell that can break teeth.

Inside the shell, food is difficult to distinguish. Pork tastes like chicken. Beef tastes like lamb. Aunty Beryl's satay kebabs taste like inner-tubes.

Thanks to open fire bans and gas barbecues, millions of New Zealanders are being deprived of these experiences.

They are growing up without knowing the delight of building a barbecue, lighting a fire, and turning pieces of perfectly aged prime steak into great dried-out lumps of solid charcoal.

They don't know what they're missing.