The incredible story of Weber Grill: a grandson of the German emigrant Brodthuhn revolutionised barbecue culture some 70 years ago
Berlin - 22 August 2021 - This year, summer is showing a rather mixed face in many parts of the country. But that doesn't deter true barbecue fans from indulging in their barbecue pleasures. A barbecue with a lid is always helpful during downpours. It turns the fire grate into a mobile cooking station. But who actually invented the kettle grill and what prompted his discovery? This is a story that spans several generations and continents. Thanks to the historical documents digitised on ancestry.de, however, it can be reconstructed fairly accurately.
A North German named Brodthuhn seeks his fortune in the USA at the end of the 19th century
Heinrich Brodthuhn was born in 1854 near Braunschweig, more precisely in the pilgrimage village of Küblingen - today a district of Schöppenstedt in the district of Wolfenbüttel. The name Brodthuhn and various other variants of the name occur especially in the Eichsfeld in Lower Saxony - matching Heinrich's Braunschweig origin. The name probably goes back to a dialect form of 'Brathuhn' and refers to lovers of fried chicken or Brathuhn cooks. Keeping chickens was the only way for most citizens of the 19th century to get meat, at least on feast days. Heinrich was less interested in keeping chickens, but proved to be a skilled craftsman, learned the trade of roofer and married Karoline, née Samte, who was about the same age, in 1879.
Thanks to the passenger lists deposited with Ancestry, we know that Heinrich set off a few years later to seek his fortune in the 'New World', like millions of others before him. Industrialisation in the German Reich made many craftsmen unemployed, while the USA was happy to take in people with skilled hands. So on 26 May 1882, Heinrich boarded the steamship 'Hansa' in Hamburg, which took him to Hull via Liverpool. From there he continued west to Illinois, near Chicago, where he made his living as a house painter. His wife Karoline followed a few months later.
There, in Cook County on the shores of Lake Michigan, the daughter of Heinrich Brodthuhn and Karoline née Samte, Caroline M. Brodthuhn, was born in 1884 [6]. Her marriage to George A. Stephen (Senior), a US-American ten years her senior, on 15 April 1909 resulted in the loss of the name Brodthuhn, but not of her resourcefulness and fondness for poultry. The joint son George Stephen (Junior), as a welder at Weber Brothers Metal Works and later father of eleven children, not only had many mouths to feed, but was also passionate about barbecue. But until 1952, the year the kettle grill was invented, hot bricks were still mainly used, even in the motherland of barbecue.
The greatest successes are often preceded by a mishap
Barbecuing with hot bricks requires a lot of skill because of the high temperatures and is not suitable for every type of food. For example, during a barbecue at his family's first home in Mount Prospect near Chicago in the early 1950s, George Stephen's food burst into flames because he simply could not control the heat of the bricks. Now you have to know that George Stephen's (Junior) employers, the Weber Brothers, produced the buoys for the Chicago docks at that time. It was precisely these hollow bodies made up of two hemispheres that gave the welder the ingenious idea of fitting legs to one of the buoy halves, punching a few holes for the air supply and using the second half as a lid. With a handle and a grate, the first kettle grill was born and with it the 'indirect grilling' that is so popular today, be it with charcoal or gas.
Sign up free to join
Get full access to the hospitality industry news
-
Latest News
-
Collaboration between WebBeds and TAT for 'IMPACT' Event in Bangkok
-
Cross Hotels & Resorts Emerges as Top APAC Hotel Operator: 5 Key Reasons
-
Business Leaders in the UK Call for the Scrapping of £3.5bn Apprenticeship Levy
-
Mandarin Oriental arrives in the Balearic Islands with a refreshing breeze
-
New experiential boutique hotel set to debut in Petaluma, California