American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
Future Reflections Special Issue on Cooking MEETING THE CHALLENGE
Charcoal and Challenges
by Dr. Marc Maurer
From the Editor: From 1986 until 2014 Dr. Marc Maurer served as President of the National Federation of the Blind. The previous NFB President, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, was his long-time mentor and friend. Dr. Jernigan loved to grill meat, and outdoor grilling became a rite of passage for first-time visitors to Federation headquarters in Baltimore. In this article, Dr. Maurer remembers how Dr. Jernigan introduced him to the art and challenge of grilling.
I became a student in the program of rehabilitation at the Iowa Commission for the Blind in 1969. At that time Dr. Kenneth Jernigan served as director of the Iowa Commission, and he had created the most innovative program of its kind in the United States.
A few weeks after I got there, Dr. Jernigan told me that we were going to cook some hamburgers on the grill. He showed the grill to me and handed me a bag of charcoal, inviting me to put some in. Each time I poured some charcoal into the grill, he would check the pile and say, “More.” Soon most of the bag was in the grill.
Then Dr. Jernigan invited me to clean my hands and form hamburgers from a package of meat he had brought. Each time I made a burger he would say, “Use more.” Soon the burgers were enormous!
Dr. Jernigan showed me a cooking rack and asked me to put the burgers in it. Then he asked me to put some lighter fluid on the charcoal. When he thought we had enough, he told me to light it, which I did.
In a short time, a lot of flame was coming out of the grill. Then Dr. Jernigan handed me a pair of welding gloves, instructing me to put them on.
“Now,” he said, “put your hand in the fire.”
I thought he had lost his mind, but he had his own hand in the fire, so I put mine in, too. I discovered that it is possible to put your hand into the middle of a fire if you are wearing a welding glove and if you don't leave your hand there for very long.
After we had placed the cooking rack over the charcoal, we added the burger rack. We cooked the burgers for a few minutes, until Dr. Jernigan instructed me to turn them over. It is easy to turn burgers in a cooking rack without having to turn each one separately.
After a few minutes the burgers were done. They were some of the best I have ever eaten!
Later we experimented with cooking steaks. A fairly gentle fire is good for cooking hamburgers because the grease drips down from them and catches on fire. The grease makes the flame too hot for burgers unless the fire is gentle.
Steaks demand a much hotter fire. They should be sealed on the outside and have a juicy center. The fire does the sealing.
Cooking on a charcoal fire was one of the lessons Dr. Jernigan used to demonstrate the capabilities of blind people. Often we are told that many aspects of life are too dangerous for blind people to approach. Yet these experiences are not dangerous at all if the blind person uses good techniques. I have taught hundreds of people to cook steaks. I still cook burgers on Christmas Eve over a wood fire when a grill is available. A grill is always available at my house.