Why Would You Grill Beans?
"Fish don't fry in the kitchen,
Beans don't burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin'
Just to get up that hill."
Beans don't burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin'
Just to get up that hill."
Theme Song Chorus - The Jeffersons
You know, I'd noticed something slightly funny about these lyrics way back when I used to watch "The Jefferson's" but it seemed to register mostly in my subconscious. It wasn't until recently when I heard it again that it finally bugged me. Why doesn't fish fry in the kitchen? (I've fried fish in my kitchen, though to smelly results and only years ago when I wasn't a vegetarian.) Why would you grill beans? I have this imagine of someone trying to balance all these little pinto beans on the bars of the grill and the beans falling through and getting burned that way... Yeah, I know, if you were camping or something you might put beans in a pot and cook them on some sort of grill. Cowboys probably did this a lot. But, did the Jeffersons really go camping all that much before they ending up "movin' on up?" Or maybe they were cowboys before he became a dry-cleaner?
So, that said, what does fish frying and bean grilling have to do with poverty (and rather proverbially the price of rice in China) and then moving on up? This is so interesting, really.
A friend of mine said that perhaps they were literally homeless and they put cans of beans on a kind of grill or trash-can with a fire in it. I admit, I've also put canned food on grills when camping and it does tend to burn the stuff on the bottom of the can. This seems to be a possibility. Once they moved up, they wouldn't need to cook canned beans on a grill and therefore the beans would no longer burn there. This is good, but it doesn't entirely clear up the fish part. If you'd been homeless and your fish was frying in the kitchen... No, wait, if you were homeless you wouldn't have a kitchen. Ok, well, say you borrowed a kitchen... So, you couldn't afford much food so you caught some mud cats in some pond and fried that fish in the kitchen. Once you moved up, you probably wouldn't eat those icky little catfish at all, so fish wouldn't fry in the kitchen. Plus- your servants would do the frying if it had to be done or perhaps you'd eat out all the time so the fish might fry in A kitchen but not the THE kitchen which would be your own kitchen (with those fancy silver sub-zero fridges and stuff.) Speaking of which, I'd like to have a kitchen with all those funny commercial appliances and some HUGE rack of copper pots and pans hanging overhead. That would be SO cool...
But, I digress. So, I put the questions to you as the Friday koan - Why don't beans burn on the grill? And why doesn't fish fry in the kitchen? And why would you be grilling your beans? And, finally, if your beans stopped burning on the grill (and your fish stopped frying in the kitchen) how would that assist you to get up that hill?
Happy Friday!
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5 comments:
I alwaays wondered that too. I think the idea is that poor people cook beans more, but when you move up in the world you don't need to cook beans. The grill stuff maybe just sounded good in a song. I have no idea about the fish part.
Then again, maybe the fish and beans is like some racial thing. Is there a meaning to that, like watermelons or somethin? Don't hit me or anything I'm just askin.
Sonny's Answer: Top Ten Reasons why beans are put on the grill:
10. It's how Wolfgang Puck does it.
9. It's healthier than putting red meat on the grill.
8. Miss Manners wouldn't approve...and that's just the way I likes it.
7. You need -something- to go with that cornbread.
6. If it's a Foreman grill, then it's obvious why. Everybody has those things.
5. They taste better hot than cold. Duh!
4. Rumor has it, they don't burn.
3. Fire-roasting them over a spit would just be silly.
2. It gives them a Mesquite-flavored zing.
...and the number one reason why beans are put on the grill:
1. It's a Zen thing, baby!
Simple thing: not a bbq but a hot plate grill used in apartments in the 60s. There were these flat top grill, youd put your cans on the flat top to heat the can of beans and the bottom beans often burned before the rest of the beans were warm. Remember, no microwaves at the time and many apartments were just a room with no stove. So the hot plate grill was all you had.
I may have accidentally solved this. The other day I put a can of beans on on my flat top grill. There was a ton of liquid so I spread everything out evenly. I ended up forgetting about them and ran out to the grill to find all the liquid was a burnt black layer and the beans were perfectly fine resting on top. My mind immediately went to the Jefferson’s song. Then I read ‘beans don’t burn on the grill’ might mean when something is taken out of its natural environment and put somewhere else it remains what it inherently is. Anyway, thats my experience; I did up eating the beans.
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