Much of my post was in jest....
It's as simple as that, really.
As was mine. Just playing the Weber zealot.
The Weber griddle plates do not work well at all. I spent yesterday trying to clean up the greasy mess left in a Summit Platinum D4 where in typical aussie style the owner had the griddle plate fixed for 9 years on the RHS.
It then gets used as the primary cooking plate for most things, often with the lid up. We tend to cook a lot of lamb, both chops and sausages, which tends to be quite fatty. The weber griddle plate has a fat gutter at one end of the plate, so the liqiid fat is scraped to that area, and drains through a central hole on to the very back or front of the grill area, draining down to the far end of the flavorizer bars. Some of the draining fat gets vaporized, most only half so (it's hitting in one spot at the end of the bar or missing a bar completely) and ends up being a greasy mess.
A good griddle, traditional aussie style, has a fat drain point that you scrape the fat to, it then falls through to a catching tin (in the old days a beer can with the lid removed) which when full of fat is thrown away, and replaced by a new tin.
As the griddle plate is used for everything, often at a very high temp, it is not uncommon to have the lamb fat from your sausages and chops catch fire on the top of the griddle. Over time the griddle plate ends up a greasy black thing, traditionally cleaned prior to the next 'cook' by heating it up and then pouring beer over it, boiling it off while scraping into the drain hole. Eggs, or pancakes cooked on this, tend to pickup bits of black stuff from the griddle, and taste vaguely of old lamb fat.
The concept of cooking on open spaced grill bars gather than a solid plate, has only been accepted here in the last twenty years. My first memories of a 'barbecue' were the disk plough carried in a hessian bag in the boot of my fathers car. some large rocks would be placed in a circle, wood gathered, a fire made, the plough disk placed on the rocks over the fire, the disk heated to red hot, cememonously cleansed with beer, and the 'fat bags' (sausages) and lamb chops placed upon. Often the disk was so hot, the sausages would squeel in delight, and when the fat started to flow, to the deliberatly left open square hole in the center of the disk, the flaming fire underneath would then flare and emit clouds of sooty black smoke. If you were lucky, the fire coming up through the centre hole would ignite the fat on the disk plate, (which would then be doused with beer), but it resulted in the very special taste of a fatty lamb sausage, crunchy carbonized on the outside, and not really cooked in the middle.
Weber kettles did become very popular in Australia, but not really to indirectly cook your sausages/chops/steaks. Those we did on our open griddle plate barbecues. There was a big market for cast iron griddle plates to sit on the Webber kettle grills, so you could cook sausages/chops/steaks with the lid off.
The only time you cooked with the Kettle was Christmas/ New Year (when it is rather hot here in summer) to cook the traditional large pork or lamb roast, to get the hot cooking out of the hot kitchens. It is a great place here to pick up old kettles in great condition because so many of them were only used once or twice a year.
Weber Australia found that they could not sell the gassers here, we had no concept of cooking anything with a lid down, so they introduced the FT-400/600, which is just a Summit without a lid.
We thought the lid on a barbecue was to keep the rain off the griddle when you were not using it, with the secondary use of being able to hide the greasy griddle plate.
In recent years, cooking with a lid down has become a much more common practice, a lot to do I think with the acceptance of the Weber Q here and a general improvement/interest in good cooking practise.
I like the idea of a specialised griddle cooker, with a proper fat drainage system, and easy to keep spotlessly clean, and, you can never have too many toys, but I am bemused that it has taken we aussies 40 years to 'see the light' and move away from direct griddle only cooking, and those from the land of Weber seemingly becoming more interested in griddle/discarda/mojoe cooking.
And as an aside, I found two weeks ago, in our garage, what I thought was long lost,my fathers plough disk 'barbecue'.
It's smaller than I remember.
Enjoy cooking 'traditional' aussie style on the Blackstone- it looks a good peice of gear!
