How To Barbeque - 10 Simple Rules

Nobody likes rules, I know, and if you don’t want to follow them, that’s up to you.  Maybe you want to consider them “best practices” instead.  Great grill masters are more like artists, anyway, but if you talk to them and watch them, you’ll see that they treat their barbecue the way a restaurant chef treats his kitchen…with precision.

Rule 1:       Keep your grill clean

• A clean grill will give you better tasting food and is less likely to cause your food to stick to the grate.
• If your grilling surface is cast iron, use mineral oil to keep it from rusting in the off season.  It's tasteless, odorless and natural, so it won't hurt anything  
• It’s easier to clean the grill after the coals have heated the grilling surface, so if you don't want to miss out on the food and conversation, you can do it when you fire up the grill the next time!

Rule 2:       Don’t turn your food too often when using direct heat

• It has a tendency to dry the meat out.  
• If it sticks, you are probably turning it too early, or the food was too cold when you put it on the grill.  Let meat get to room temperature for the best results. 
• Never turn a steak more than once, unless you’re searing!  You can sear in flavorful juices by turning the steak after a minute, then again, then leaving it to grill for six to eight minutes per side. 
• If you're doing a Tri-tip, or any cut of meat that's thick, like a roast, turn it after ten minutes on the meat side and eight minutes on the fat side, and baste it with marinade every time you turn it, so it doesn't char. 

Rule 3:       When using the indirect method, you must keep the lid closed. 

•  The temptation, while grilling, will be to keep opening the lid and checking on your progress.
• Remember, opening the lid allows heat to escape, so keep a balance between checking and flipping.
• Every time you open the lid, it's like opening your oven door, and it takes some time to recoup that loss of heat.
• A confident griller knows when to flip his food and minimizes heat loss.

Rule 4:       Don't leave your grilling unattended for any length of time.

• A flare-up can occur at anytime and leave you with charred food if you are not there to attend to it, and you don’t need that aggravation!
• Try not to leave your grill if you you are using the direct heat method
• If you are using the indirect method, you have more leeway, but if you don't have a pan beneath to catch drippings with something to absorb them, you can end up with a fire under your food.

Rule 5:       Know how many coals to use

• Most rookie barbecuers think, the more coals they use the better, probably because they like the taste of lighter fluid!
• Too many coals creates too much heat, burning everything, like putting a roast in the oven on broil, instead of bake.
• Learn how to control the temperature of your grill
• Build an area for direct cooking and an area for indirect cookin 

Rule 6:       Do not use a spray bottle of water to control a flare-up

• Stuff falling onto the coals, into a pan that doesn’t have something in it to absorb or dissipate the flammables, or just collecting on the grilling surface, represents a fire waiting to consume your meat.
• Trimming excess fat from the meat and moving the meat to a different area of the grill when turning is the best way to control flare-ups. 
• Water just moves the grease fire around, since oil and water don’t mix. 
• Move the food to a cooler area on the grill until the flare dies down.  
• Small flare ups can be controlled by closing the air vents (wear your gloves!) and closing the lid.
• Sometimes it’s better to leave the lid open if you have a large flare up and can move the food out of harm’s way.  The accumulation will burn off faster. 

Rule 7:       Most BBQ sauces contain sugar, which caramelizes and causes meat to burn 

• If you plan ahead, which I don’t, you can apply the sauce and let it sit overnight so the flavor gets into the food and the sugar is absorbed.
• If you don’t, then only apply it towards the end of the cooking process and monitor closely for flare-ups.
• Try to find a non-sugar based marinade that has great flavor and works on all kinds of meat.  Since applying the marinade to indirect cooking foods leaves the lid open too long, causing heat loss, I wait until the food is done, then apply the marinade generously, again, and throw it back on direct for twenty to thirty seconds before serving.

Rule 8:       Spice and marinate your food about one hour before grilling 

• Try to use marinades that don’t have too much sugar or oil in them.
• It’s ok to leave the food out.  It reacts to the grill better at room temperature and sticks less.
• Trying to spice things on the grill usually ends up missing the food, over applying in some places and wasting a lot of spice
• The best way to spice your meat, if you're not using a marinade, is to use a rub
• Aged beef requires no spices or marinades, just careful grilling and appreciative taste buds.

Rule 9:        Do not use a fork to turn your meats

• Only rookies, who know nothing, and pros, who know everything, use a fork to turn their meat.
• Forks puncture the food, releasing oils and fat that are stewing inside, so you'll never see a pro do that.
• Pros pre-poke sausages so that, as they heat up, the juices can seep out and not split or blister the skin.
• Same applies to whole poultry, which you shouldn't be turning to begin with!
• Poking some foods while on the grill, may cause juices to shoot out and either cause flare-ups or hit inquisitive little Johnny in the eye!
• A long set of tongs is the best for turning steaks, chicken and other cuts of meat. 
• A long handled spatula is best for burgers.

Rule 10:       Make sure that meats are completely thawed before grilling

• If you forgot to take the meat out of the freezer, but it didn't thaw in time and you decided the grill would cook it any way, whatever meat it is, will look great on the outside, but be raw on the inside.  
• You can cheat a little with chicken (but not much) as long as you’re cooking indirect, but you need to turn it more often and cook it a little longer.  Better to just go get more, fresh, or use the microwave to defrost.
• Frozen pre-made hamburger patties taste like cardboard anyway, and have a high fat content to help you burn them, so do those one more time…before you learn how to really cook!

How To Barbeque - Appetizers

I’m sure your magnetic personality and charm are enough to draw the hoards to you as you carefully nurture and tend to the grilling, but if the silly hat and apron don’t do the trick, then you can step into the pro arena of barbecue mastery and try your hand at some appetizers!


You can prepare tasty appetizers such as mini pizzas, mini tacos, Buffalo wings and potato skins on the grill and they will be tastier than if you prepared them in your oven. The main difference between cooking appetizers on the grill and cooking them in the oven is that a grill has a much more intense heat, even if you are using the indirect method. But if you coat the cooking surface with oil, use indirect heat, the upper rack and keep a close eye on your food, you will have everyone eating out of your hand...literally!

A tool that can be very useful when grilling vegetables or appetizers is the grill topper. It’s a tray-like device that won’t impede the heat from your grill.  You can find grill toppers at hardware and department stores and once you put it to use, you'll keep on using it! You can use it as a tray and transfer everything to the preheated grill at once, then, when  the food is cooked, just remove the grill topper and serve, straight from grill to table!

The trick to making the best appetizers for your gathering is to do as much of the preparation as possible in advance. (Once your wife knows that you can handle the heat, she won’t mind helping you out.) You can prepare most of them a day or more ahead of time and refrigerate, or even freeze them.  The mini pizzas, potato skins and Buffalo wings can even be bought "ready to cook" and will just require a little heating on the grill, and nobody will be the wiser. The grill will heat them up fast too, so you won't need to stay around the grill…too long.

Just like at any party, you want the appetizers to compliment the meal and not fill people up so they don’t enjoy the rest of your efforts.  If you can, get pre-marinated chicken or beef strips, skewer them with some mushrooms or light veggies and dip.  They taste great, but aren't filling.

Virtually anything you can do in the oven, you can do on your grill.  I already enjoy doing corn, mini bell peppers, mushrooms, Belgian endive, cabbage, crook necked squash and any number of legumes on the grill for our sides.  (All using the indirect method, of course.)

Use your imagination! Once you feel confident in those, try doing some of our favorites, like stuffed jalapeno poppers, or roasted artichoke with aioli dip.  There's a special tray for the poppers that makes things a breeze and you you make several different fillings (indirect, 15 mins.)  The roasted artichokes need to be boiled for ten minutes first, then seasoned, indirect heat for ten minutes, then direct for five.  Look up any recipe for the aioli dip or use Hollandaise or French Onion, or whatever dip you think you can do with confidence.  It's different and it's fun, and everyone has to eat with their hands!

Start paying attention to menu appetizers, particularly those you enjoy at some of your favorite restaurants.  Usually the servers are pretty good at spilling the beans on what goes into some of their specialties.  But, if you’ve been paying attention, you won’t have any trouble modifying or replicating your appetizers, just through experimentation.

Hopefully, as you apply the techniques that I have presented in this series of articles, following the rules and the tips, you’ll gain confidence in using your grill as more than something to send smoke signals with and experimenting with new flavors and techniques will become second nature.

How To Barbeque - Bubba's BBQ Boot Camp Secrets

Learning to master the grill can take years and years of practice, depending on how often you do it.  You know the old saying… “there’s no substitute for experience”.  But, nobody said the experience has to be your own, so I’m going to throw some tips at you so that your learning curve is going to be drastically shortened, and your friends, family and neighbors will wonder what Barbecue Boot Camp you went to!

Whether you are using a charcoal grill or a gas grill, there are certain tips you need to know that will make your experience more enjoyable and put you on the path to being a grill master. I don’t recommend that you start out using these additional techniques, but once you’ve gained a little confidence and think you can handle some “controlled experimentation”, you may enjoy them.

The addition of wood chips and chunks to your coals can add awesome smoked flavor to your food. You should soak mesquite, alder, hickory, or pecan chips for one hour before scattering over the hot coals.  Soak wooden skewers in water, also, for an hour before use. They are best used for foods that can be cooked quickly, like vegetables and fruits.  Use flat metal skewers when cooking kebabs. It’s harder to turn food on round skewers.

I hate overcooked vegetables, because they get mushy. Tomatoes in particular, so I make my meat skewers and vegetable skewers separately.  Beef goes over direct heat and gets flipped once, like steak.  Lamb and cubed chicken over indirect heat get flipped twice.  Vegetables on skewers, over indirect heat, flipped once.   Not as pretty on the skewers…but it sure tastes better!

Roasts, turkey, leg of lamb and anything else you may rotisserie, requires more time and therefore, some additional, sometimes tricky, temperature control.

• To lower the cooking temperature, you can raise the cooking grate (or lower the coals), spread the coals farther apart, or adjust the vents to half-way closed.
• If you need to raise the temperature, you can lower the cooking grate (or raise the coals), tap ash from the coals, move the coals closer together, or adjust the vents so that they are opened further. You can also add more charcoal to the outer edges of the hot coals.
• When the weather is cold or damp, you will need to use more briquettes to achieve an ideal cooking temperature. Grilling will also take longer.
• Wind will tend to make the fire hotter.
• On a humid day, the coals will burn slower.
• The colder and thicker the food, the longer it will take to cook.
• Fires using hardwood will burn hotter than charcoal briquettes.

Until you are confident and have enough experience, use a meat thermometer to check if your meat's internal temperature.  That applies especially to roasts, chicken, turkey, lamb and pork.  It may be a little embarrassing when your guests ask for “a little more fire”, but you’ll overcome that a lot easier than if everyone calls the next day to see who else got sick!

As a rule, I like my chicken bone-in, skin-on, dark meat. Thighs are my favorite.  I do those over indirect heat, flipping the cut bone-meat side after ten minutes and the skin side after eight, for an hour.  Comes out perfect every time, and people say they’ve never tasted chicken like it…tender, juicy, rich and flavorful, with a hint of smoke.  But, that’s just me…and everyone I know!

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts, for you health fanatics out there, don’t have anywhere near the flavor or character, regardless of how much you try to marinate and spice them up.  Why’s that?  Because the skin is fat, and fat translates to flavor.  But, if that’s what you do, cook it indirect, flipping every five minutes, for twenty minutes and everyone will pretend to enjoy it as long as you don't dry it out!

How do you like your steak?  If you said something beyond medium rare, then you really don’t like steak, you just don’t like the idea that your meat isn’t dry and gray, which represents cooked through to you.  I recommend that you never order Filet Mignon!  I love Rib-Eye, but a New York will do in a pinch.  I like them an inch and a half thick, with nice marbling, for that full, rich flavor and lip-smacking crispy fat edge.  Some people like to sear in the flavor (one minute, flip, one minute, flip, then normal cooking time), but mine come out tender and juicy on direct heat, seven to nine minutes a side, depending on conditions.

Standard rookie mistake…?  Cutting into the steak to test the doneness!  If you must test, do it under the guise of “chef’s taster prerogative”, and cut a piece off of the end for yourself, or whichever drooling dinner guest is sitting closest.

If you don’t want to cut an end off, or don’t think that’s appropriately manly, you can stick your eyeballs down close to the grill surface and lift a corner of the steak to take a peak.  If the grill has left a nice, black char mark, it’s probably good to turn.  After a while, you can tell what’s going on, on the bottom, by what’s happening on top.  I look for the juices forming on the top of the steak, if I forgot to check exactly what time I put the meat on or I have been enjoying the witty banter and a few adult beverages.

I know you all have different cuts of beef, depending on where you live, so these are general rules that should apply to most every steak.  I’m not going to engage in a discussion on aged beef, other than to say…it’s worth the money!  But don’t try it until you’ve achieved Master status.

The problem with Porterhouse and T-Bones…which, I know, are many people’s favorite cuts of meat, is that they are almost impossible to get right.  Ever notice, when you cook one, or order one at your favorite steakhouse, that the meat one side of the bone tastes completely different than the meat on the other?  That’s because they are two entirely different cuts of meat that taste different and react to cooking differently.  If you get the New York side of it medium rare, the filet side is too rare.  If you get the filet side medium rare, the other side is medium…as in tough and tasteless.  My wife loves Porterhouse, and so I’ve figured out how to do the happy medium-rare for her, but it takes a lot of attention and careful placement, and I still don’t know if she’s just being polite!

Boneless beef ribs and boneless pork ribs (country style), are some of mine and my guests’ favorites.  Do the beef on direct, flip once after ten to twelve minutes.  Tastes like steak!  Boneless pork, do indirect, flip every eight to ten minutes, depending on thickness, thirty to forty minutes.

Here’s something you ought to try to do…!  Nope, I told you I wasn’t doing recipes.  Whenever meat is served at a large barbecue gathering, your guests are stuck using nasty little plastic knives to cut it.  That takes a lot of enjoyment out of the experience.  Do your guests a favor and invest in a good, sharp, serrated, barbecue knife.  Your grill surface makes a fine cutting board if you let the knife pass between the bars.  Put on your gloves, grab the ribs with your tongs and slice them into manageable little pieces, small enough to put on a plastic fork and eat whole (guys) or take a bite off (gals).  The appreciation level will go through the roof!  Don’t dare do it for steak, though!  Have enough steak knives on hand, for that.

Doing a Tri-Tip?  Cook it on direct, forty to fifty minutes, total time.  Flip every ten minutes, but monitor the fat side to make sure your not burning it too bad. It can always be cut off, if you do as mentioned with the boneless ribs, but if you keep it moist by applying some marinade to it every time you turn it, it’ll come out perfect!

What kind of sausage do you like?  Most sausage you get today is pre-cooked and comes in a great variety of flavors: Cajun, pineapple, sun-dried tomato, pepper and cheese-stuffed, etc.  Poke some holes in the skin or run a knife across the top a few times, so that the skin doesn’t explode or blister as the juices in the sausage heat up and create steam that needs to escape.  Use indirect heat, or the top rack if you have one, turn every five minutes, for ten to fifteen, total.  Italian sausage or chorizo, or anything else that isn’t pre-cooked, same as above, twenty to twenty-five, total.

How much meat can you cook...?   Well, my grill is about 32" wide and 20" deep, and with one funnel of coals, I can do twelve chicken thighs (indirect), boneless beef ribs (direct), a tri-tip (direct), boneless pork ribs (indirect) and sausage (top rack), all arriving at the table at the same time, enough to feed twenty-five people and still have some left-overs! True, I can't get the sides on the grill, but I may have already done some appetizers!  Besides, with that many people, someone else can deal with pot-luck sides, or I can pick up salads in bulk!

That ought to be enough to get your mouth watering and give you plenty of things to practice on.  When I think you’re ready, we’ll talk about doing Baby Back Ribs, the Thanksgiving turkey and using the rotisserie for prime rib, leg of lamb and roasts.  But, speaking of appetizers...check out How To Barbeque - Appetizers for some cool ideas!

How To Barbeque - Grilling Methods

Probably the most important aspect of barbecuing, once you know how to control your heat is understanding what needs to be grilled over direct heat and what needs indirect heat, and how long it will take to achieve the desired result.

If you think about your barbecue as an oven, because now you know how to control the heat, the area directly over the heat is likely to be somewhere between 450-500 degrees F.  The indirect area is more like 350-375 degrees F.

If you’re cooking something that has a higher fat content, or that has been marinated in oil of some kind, the drippings are going to create flash fires, so if you walk away from the grill, and the lid is closed, be prepared to come back to a black charred mess when you realize that smoke is billowing out of the air vents.  That’s one of the main reasons why you use tongs instead of a fork, to turn food.  Don’t puncture the food while it’s cooking…don’t release the grease.

Cooking with indirect heat affords you more time to attend to other things. It’s also more forgiving because you are cooking your meat at a lower temperature, so as the time approaches for everything to hit the table at the same time, you can test it and if it needs a little extra heat, you can move it over the direct heat source.  The grill should always be kept covered when cooking with indirect heat.

Direct heat cooking is uncomplicated. Learning the temperature of the coals is the only real skill. If you are using a gas grill, you just need to set the heat settings at the proper level. The coals are ready when 3/4 of them are gray and coated with ash. You can check the temperature of a charcoal grill by very carefully holding your hand just above the grilling surface and counting the number of seconds it takes before the heat becomes uncomfortable enough for you to pull your hand away.

• 5 seconds equals Low Heat
• 4 seconds equals Medium Heat
• 3 seconds equals Medium-High Heat
• 2 seconds equals High Heat 

You can use the following descriptions to check cooking temperature by observing the coals:

• When the ash coating thickens and a red glow is just visible this would equal a low heat.
• When the coals are covered with light gray ash this would equal a medium heat.
• When the coals have a red glow visible through the ash coating this would equal a high heat. 

A simple and effective method for indirect heat cooking on a charcoal grill is to place an equal number of charcoal briquettes on each side of the grill pan and leaving a space in the center. If the food is likely to drip fat or oil, place an aluminum dripping pan under the food.  Some like to put water in the pan to prevent flashing, but I prefer to put some used ash in the pan to absorb anything that may be flammable and likely to flare up.

For indirect heat cooking on a dual burner gas grill, set the drip pan on the porcelain briquettes, or lava rocks, on one side of the grill and add about a half inch of water. Preheat the other burner on high for 5-10 minutes. Turn the temperature down to medium, then put the food on the rack over the drip pan and cover the grill. 

For indirect heat cooking on a single burner gas grill, preheat the grill on high for 5-10 minutes. Turn the temperature down to low, and place a large foil baking pan on the rack. You can also line half of the cooking rack with a double thickness of heavy duty foil. Place your food in the pan or on the foil, cover and cook.

Now that you know how to prepare your grill for direct and indirect cooking methods, and have the right tools at the ready, let's talk about what you should cook over the two distinct methods.  You can find that information in How To Barbeque - Bubba's BBQ Boot Camp Secrets.

How To Barbeque - The Basics

If you've been struggling with your barbecue grill for any length of time, you know, as does your family and probably the neighbors, that it takes more than just repetition  to get it right.  Just like any other form of cooking, you have to become familiar with the tools of the trade, learn some basics, experiment, make mistakes and move on. Whether you want to turn it into an art form or go on to be in barbecue competitions is up to you.  The purpose of this article is to familiarize you with the mechanics of a barbecue, the different methods of cooking, what works and what doesn’t and general guidelines for putting on a successful barbecue, that you can feel proud of.

The most important part of barbecuing is maintaining a consistent temperature in your apparatus.  It takes quite a bit of practice and experience to understand, not only how to build your fire, but also how your personal grill treats different meats.  Whether using the direct or indirect method, the other major components of the grill that will affect your timing are the fuel source, the grilling surface, the depth of the heat source and its ventilation.

Whether your grill's fuel source is charcoal driven or uses natural or propane gas, it operates pretty much the same way.  Think of it as a combination of your kitchen stove and your oven…only with less control over the heat.

Whatever kind of grill you have, charcoal or gas, there should be enough room on the cooking surface to have two distinct cooking areas.  Using the area directly over the heat source is referred to as the direct heat method. Think of it as your cook-top or broiler.  Using the area near the heat source but not over it is referred to as the indirect heat method.  Think of this like your oven, presuming that the lid is down to capture and retain the heat.

My personal preference is a charcoal heat source.  (At least, that’s until it’s declared a major pollutant by the health freaks in California who only eat raw carrots and oat bran.)  I guess it stems from many years ago when propane grills were convenient, but didn’t use porcelain briquettes like today, so it was like cooking over an open flame and the food always tasted slightly gas-tinged, instead of smoked.  

I think grill manufacturers do a much better job today, and in taste tests, almost nobody can tell the difference between charcoal and gas cooking anymore, so if I were starting over, I might choose the convenience of natural gas.

Yes, I said natural gas…not propane.  You can run a gas line to your BBQ and put a regulator on it, available at any good BBQ or hardware store.    There’s nothing convenient about running out of propane half way through your Thanksgiving turkey!

Why’s the cooking surface important?  You’ll know when you use it, but I prefer a cast iron surface.  It’s a thicker, solid surface, which distributes the heat more evenly and is easier to clean.

Why’s the depth important?  The ability to adjust the distance from heat to food gives you the most control over the heat source that you use.  Coals have a burning lifespan, usually about an hour, so if you’re still grilling as that span starts to lapse, you need to either add coals or move the heat source closer to the food.  Sometimes you need that if you’ve been more attentive to your guests and waited too long to put the meat on the grill…not that I’ve ever done that, of course!

Once you understand what the variables are with your cooking apparatus, like sheets on a sailboat, what they do, how they work and how they affect your outcome, you can learn to control the smoke-belching beast and the neighbors can finally take the Fire Department off of speed dial.

Quick note on tools:  If you use charcoal, particularly, you’ll want all of the following (Think birthdays, Christmas and Valentine's Day... You'll find a lot of this to the right under "Stuff You Might Need")

• gloves, if you value the skin on your knuckles, 
• a charcoal chimney starter
• several sets of tongs, long and medium, 
• a solid single piece scraper (a 4” wide solid tape knife works much better than the one on the back of the brush), 
• a long handled, heavy bristle brush for cleaning the grilling  surface, 
• some sort of timing device besides the clock in your head, 
• a couple of good knives, a long one for carving and a short one for things with bones in them, like ribs
• a meat thermometer
• a cutting board with a blood groove, to catch the drippings.

Now that we've gone over the mechanics of the process and what tools you'll need, look for my next article How To Barbecue - Managing the Heat.

How To Barbeque - Managing Your Heat

Whether you are using gas or charcoal, you need to know how to manage your heat source, because it affects everything you cook.  If you're using gas, then it's in the burner management, and if you're using coals, then it's all about how the briquettes are prepared and laid out.

The key to consistently good grilling is having control over the temperature. The only time you should have any variation in heat is when you build it that way.  That means you need to create one area for indirect cooking, if that's what you need, and another for direct cooking.

We'll cover gas in a minute, but knowing how many coals to use is one of the first secrets of being a grill master. The number of charcoal briquettes you use will depend on the size of your gill, the amount of food you will be cooking, weather conditions and cooking time.

As a general rule, plan on using about 30 briquettes to cook 1 pound of meat. A standard five-pound bag contains 75 to 90 briquettes. You want to make sure that you have enough briquettes to cover the grill's pan in a single layer, extending out about 2" beyond the area of the food on the grill.

Until you can just eyeball that amount through experience, you'll need to place the briquettes in the grill's pan to determine the quantity.  If you're a total rookie, then stack them up in a rough pyramid shape to light.  Soak the briquettes with approximately 4 ounces of lighter fluid, and let set for a few minutes before lighting.  Coals will be ready after you use another quart of lighter fluid, have two more beers and run out of matches!

If you want to look like this "ain't yer first rodeo", go down to the hardware store and buy a charcoal chimney.  Cost you about $15.  Also grab one of those funny lighters that look like a gun with the long barrel.  Cost...$5.  Be careful, some of them are child-proof...ask your kid for help! Great for lighting candles, gas fire pits, real wood fires and barbecues! Lasts way longer than you think, as long as you don't light everybody's smokes with it!

Some people aren't sure how to use the chimney, so, real quick...turn it over, wad up two full sheets of newspaper (that's one section, pages 1-8, no more than that!)  Pour a little lighter fluid on the newspaper.  It will help it ignite and burn evenly.  Remove the grilling surface and place the funnel upright in the bottom of the barbecue. Pour in the amount of coals you need.  Light the paper once through a breather hole and phwump, the lighter fluid ignites the paper all the way around and your towering inferno is under way.  It smokes like crazy for about a minute, but after that, it's no muss, no fuss, the coals are ready in 10-15 minutes and your hands aren't even dirty!

Okay, rookie, the coals are ready when you see flames at the top of the coals and they are just starting to change color to gray.

Since I know you have gloves, now, put a glove on the hand you're going to use to flip the funnel over.  Amazing, I know, but trust me...it's hot! Dump the coals, spreading them evenly where you want direct heat.  You can use your scraper to spread them evenly if you messed up.  Place the funnel out of reach of small, inquisitive children who don't know what fingerprints are yet or why they might need them, and replace the grilling surface.

Once you have mastered the art of lighting charcoal, you may think it's time to step up to the big leagues. Not so fast, Mr. AAA ball!  Grill Masters like to have a controlled temperature variation...a hot area (direct) and a not so hot area (indirect). In grilling this is called a two-level fire. If you have a dual burner gas grill just set one burner on high and the other on medium. The advantage to doing this is that you will have one area to sear foods and another area to cook them through.

For a charcoal grill, you will want to set up half of your fire grate in a single layer of coals and the other half in two or three layers of coals. This will give you the hot and medium areas to do your cooking. This method is also good if you are cooking different types of foods at the same time.  For instance, if you were grilling fajitas, you would sear the meat over the high heat and cook the peppers over the lower heat. Once you have mastered the two-level fire you will quickly see the advantage of this method and it will be the only way you want to build your fire.

The other type of fire you need to learn how to build is the indirect fire. The simplest form of this of this fire is to put all the coals on one side of the grill, only. For a gas grill this is simply turning the burner on one side on and leaving the other off.  It doesn't work quite as well, because many gas grills don't have any way to adjust the depth of the heat source or cooking surface, so it tends to cook more on the top than the bottom.  It will take more practice to judge how much more often you'll need to turn your meat, as well as the time to recoup the loss of heat when opening the lid, just like your oven!

Personally, I use the indirect method for almost everything except beef.  Pork ribs on-the-bone requires both, but chicken, sausage, boneless pork, lamb and almost all of your vegetables will do much better with indirect heat.  They won't scorch, burn, or dry out, once you know what you're doing.

With a charcoal grill, like a Weber Kettle  you can do much more than this. The ring of fire is an excellent strategy for an indirect fire if you are using the kettle style of grill. To build this type of fire, after the coals are ready, push the coals to the outside of the coal grate, leaving the middle empty. This method gives you an even heat around the entire grill and a good indirect cooking space.

In the "my grill's better than yours" category, the bottom of my grill is divided into three sections by removable metal separators. One quarter on the right, a quarter on the left and half in the middle, or any other arrangement I want to play with.  That way, I can fill the center half tray with coals and have indirect on the sides, or if I'm doing a turkey or roasting a leg of lamb on the rotisserie, I can put coals on the outside and have the indirect in the middle.  Did I mention the rotisserie...?

Another thing to consider when building a fire is using hardwood. Using slow burning wood chips will add a smoky flavor to your food. If you are going to add wood chips to your fire, then you will want to prepare a specific place to do that. For a gas grill you can use a firebox or wrap the moistened wood chips in foil. For a charcoal fire you will just need to leave a small area of the coal grate with just a few coals. This creates a good place to put wood chips and they will smoke, but not burn away quickly.

Now that we've covered the tools that you'll need, the mechanics of your grill and how to build your fire for both direct and indirect cooking, we can move on to different styles of grilling, which I'll cover in How To Barbecue - Grilling Methods.

How To Barbeque Like Bubba Q, The Video

I put together this little video to spice up the blog a spell.

Too much readin's bad for your eyes...!  Besides, I was readin' somethin' just last week, and it really chapped my hide.  So, I decided to do somethin' about it, an so I decided...I'm givin' up readin'!

Click on this link below here, and prepare to feast your eyes on what you could be doin' yourself, after you get my Free book, "The Layman's Guide To Great Barbecue"

How To Barbeque Like Bubba Q Video


Now, head on over to The Smokin' BBQ Pit to get your free copy!

What's In A Name

The story of Robert "Bubba Q" D. Lischus



That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!

Historical Trivia and the Origins of Barbeque

One of my favorite words is  factoid.

If you're like most people out there, and you just go along to get along, I'm gonna bet that you think the definition is something like a little-known, interesting fact or tidbit.  Well, I by no means, consider myself a scholar, but I remember my Daddy comin' home from work, sometime in the mid-seventies, talkin' about some yahoo, name of Ted Turner, who did a piece on a show and used factoid as a tid-bit of information.  "Ruination of the English language", I can remember him muttering!  So, I went and looked it up.  I do that...a lot.  Got a whole library, now!

Just so's you know, a factoid is a piece of erroneous or incorrect information, that gets spread and repeated so often, that people believe it to be true!  Thus, a factoid about the word factoid is, itself, a factoid!  Ain't that something?

So, ever since then, I've tried to be kinda careful about how I use words.  English teacher of mine, when I was in grammar school, came up with a pretty saying I remember, too.  He said, "Bobby, words are the tools and language is a skill.  But communication...that's an art."   I kinda' liked that.

Anyway, what's that got to do with barbecue?  Well, seems all kind of folk want to know where the word comes from, 'cuz it's not as easy as grill.

The word barbecue sounds funny, so it must be foreign.  If it's foreign, it must be French.  Plus we associate it with the Southern states, like Louisiana, which, as I recall from my fifth grade history, used to be sort of French.  But we like to blur the lines  just a little more, like that friend of a friend that told you he heard someone who said that thing you can't quite remember...so the story goes somethin' like this.

Way back when, French sailors in the Caribbean saw a pig being cooked whole in a pit and reportedly described the method of cooking as barbe à queue, meaning from beard to tail. More likely, it was just part of the description, because they were somehow awed that anyone might eat more than the hams with their oeuvres! The French, being clever and all, use the same word for barbecue as we do now, so I guess Steve Martin was wrong when he said "those French have a different word for everything!" .   But word historians, etymologists, they're called, say that beard to tail tale, just ain't so.   Just because it sounds close, don't necessarily make it so…it's just a common thread in folk-etymology explanations.  Almost as bad as explanations for cuss words that say they're acronyms...guess again or look it up. I did!

Now, on account of us Americans likin' barbecue so well and kinda takin' it as our own, another claim is that the word barbecue comes from the acronym BBQ,  supposedly from roadhouses and beer joints with pool tables that advertised "Bar, Beer and Cues".

Dumbest thing I ever heard!  What kinda' bar needs to advertise that it has beer?  And I've never been to one that had a swimmin' pool inside, so I don't even know why you'd say "cues" instead of "pool". "Think I'll ride my hog on down to the no-beer-servin' roadhouse for a nice cool lemonade and a game of cues, tonight.  You comin'?" According to this fairy tale, the phrase was shortened over time to BBCue, then BBQ, using IFFY (pronounced "iffy") - Inaccurate False and Foolish Yammering. Maybe that'll catch on...but I doubt it!

So, all you can get out of the above is the correct spelling of the word, barbecue, (and yes, I know what the title of my blog is, and that's 'cuz so many people misspell it!) and some cool stuff to tell your friends and neighbors, while you're standing around the barbecue pit, burnin' somethin'!

The actual origins of both the activity of barbecue cooking and the word itself are, as you guessed, not so clear cut.  Most etymologists believe that barbecue derives ultimately from the word barabicu found in the language of both the Timucua of Florida and the Taíno people of the Caribbean, which then entered European languages in the form barbacoa.  The word translates as sacred fire pit, and describes a grill for cooking meat, consisting of a wooden platform resting on sticks.

So, now that you understand that what you been doin' in the name of barbecue, is actually the desecration of the sacred fire pit, maybe you’re ready to learn how to barbecue and earn the admiration of your friends and neighbors and maybe even win back your wife’s love, by not messin' up another get-together and learnin' how to barbecue the right way...the Bubba Q way!