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 - 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.