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 - 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.