10 BBQ Photos From Wikimedia Commons That Will Make You Never Want to Fire Up The Grill Again

They’ve clearly gone for a fancier brioche-style bun, only to fill it with meat that’s turned a brand new color. Is this a cured hamburger? I also spy onions in there, an addition I’m on board with, but not in huge chunks that are clearly from the tough, outer layers of the onion. Top that off with a slice of cheese so thoroughly unmelted you could probably still return it to the grocery store.

Great job on the garnish, buddy, but it’s feeling a little like one of those Kias with a huge spoiler. Did you try to grill this with a Bic lighter? What we have here is an E. coli ridden oval of, at best, warm beef tartare, topped with bacon that looks like it was maybe boiled? 

You know the texture on this thing is crazy, like, “What if one bad bite was a whole sandwich?”

Maybe the goal here was simplicity, to embrace the flavor of chicken. But chicken isn’t the right meat for that, and especially this particular batch of chicken. These shish kabobs look like they were marinated in Windex. I hope this was taken at a barbecue for sick, elderly dogs.

This looks like the sort of thing they’d serve at a hospital on Fourth of July — half a dry bun, half a mouthful of meat that’s a color that gives you no indication on whether it’s fully cooked or not. It’s not like every food needs to be pulled from Studio Ghibli, but it also shouldn’t look like it’s hungover.

Ah, everyone’s favorite part of ribs: the bone! Unlike the other entries on this list, I’ll admit that this looks like it actually does have some real flavor. Unfortunately, it’s also a choking hazard. You might as well put a wet rub on a bag of Legos. Dial the first six numbers of your dentist’s office and dig in!

Mac and cheese, like pizza, is pretty hard to fuck up. As long as the two main things are in there, and at least arguably combined, you’re good. Which is the first problem here: You’re going to end up eating a half pound of bland wet noodles and then have a plate full of lizard-skin-like cheese to chow down on. The choice of noodle is also hugely unwise. There’s no way to suck up long pasta without stripping whatever minimal cheese makes it from plate to fork.

I am straight up unfamiliar with this move. According to the information included with the photo, this is pulled-pork spaghetti. So… two forms of string eaten together. I’m a fan of chili mac, but that’s because chili has the backbone to support the pasta. This is more of a “ran out of Tupperware to store leftovers” situation.

Not that any photo of potato salad looks particularly phenomenal, but a mistake was made here. I get what they were trying to do, adding blue potatoes for a burst of color versus the traditional beige mess. Unfortunately, once cooked, this looks exactly like a bowl of raw dark meat chicken, which, given that we’re talking barbecues, is very likely next to a real bowl of raw chicken. A decision that, at worst, results in a bacteria-heavy blunder, and at best, crosses some unfortunate mental wires.

Sausage succeeds despite the things working against it. Everyone knows it’s an unlikely combination of meat products, jammed into animal intestines. Thus, it’s your duty as grillmaster to make them look less like stuffed intestines. A single grill mark would go a long way here. Instead, this looks like a dish sitting in a battlefield medical tent.

Low and slow is the way to go, but not like this. First, there’s the fact that these steaks are orange, suggesting they’ve been cooked at some sort of forbidden temperature. The fact that the coals beneath them seem to be completely cold doesn’t help either. Then, of course, they’re being grilled inside a space filled with more ash than a 1950s airport bar floor. 

Removing these for serving without getting them covered in gray dust is a feat of dexterity rivaling open-heart surgery.