Object of the Week: Highlighting the LCHA Collections

Gridiron: It may not be on TV, but we have it!

There may not be gridiron football, but we have the original from which the game-with-a-ball got its name.

The cooking implement is used to grill meat over coals on the hearth.

Gridiron

It can be turned to ensure even cooking. Ours is a top of the line version, and they also came square or rectangular, without the turning feature. More complex ones were made with wider bars that had a slight indentation in them, and they were on a slight slant, down into a trough to catch the fat (which was saved all year to make soap—see our post about the “Ash hole” for more info).

The result of grilling your meat on any one of these wrought iron implements, as you know from your BBQ, is meat with parallel lines seared into it. In theory an American football field looks like this – and it is the only football field with so many (10 yard interval) lines on it.

So when the game is available, you can enjoy your gridiron BBQ first and then enjoy the gridiron game – both with lots of lines!

Perry Palmer, LCHA Collections Committee