Kendrick Hang

Now that the weather’s warmed up, I’ve been firing up the house grill and grilling most anything I can get my hands on. In the past month or so, I’ve made: herb-rubbed pork chops, jamaican-style steak, vietnamese-style steak, classic steak, classic hamburgers, andouille chicken sausages, grilled portabella mushrooms, grilled asparagus, and grilled barbecue-style chicken. I’m going to make beer can chicken again sometime soon too, although I’ll need some people to help me eat it. I’m really looking forward to try grilling salmon on a cedar plank and trying some more grilled vegetables, and grilled pineapple too. Ok, so time for a couple of my grilling notes:

Charcoal grill versus gas grill — ideally, have one of each so you can be really flexible. But if you’re like me and you don’t have room for both and can’t afford both, just pick one that you would use more. I use a charcoal one here, which I enjoy, but I grew up with the convenience of a gas grill. Just realize that you might have to modify some of the recipes based on the grill you are using. A charcoal grill is more of a challenge, obviously, but I think a charcoal grill is a little more fun.

Charcoal briquettes versus hardwood charcoal — hardwood charcoal is better, although it’s more expensive. Hardwood charcoal has a better smell, burns cleaner, and burns much hotter. Charcoal briquettes are cheap and available in most every store, but are made of compressed sawdust and who knows what else, and produce an acrid smelling smoke when first lit until it ashes over. Either way, you should wait for your charcoal to ash over before putting any food on the grill, but especially so with the charcoal briquettes. I like to use hardwood when I’m cooking something really nice and using briquettes when making picnic style foods. There’s no sense in ruining food you paid good money for by being thrifty on charcoal and not having your fire hot enough to cook it right.

Chimney starter — get one, it’s only about 10 to 15 dollars for one. Throw out that lighter fluid and don’t buy any more of it. It makes the fire stink, it doesn’t light all of the charcoal evenly, it’s toxic (liquid and fumes), and it’s not cheap. A chimney starter is essentially a sheet metal cylinder with vents, a handle, and a grate inside. You stuff two sheets of newspaper beneath the grate inside, and fill the space above the grate with charcoal. Light the newspaper and in ten minutes or so, all your charcoal is evenly heated and ashed over, ready to be poured into the grill, all without a drop of lighter fluid.

Grilling versus barbecuing — it’s not the same! Grilling involves cooking directly over the heat or flame while barbecuing involves cooking using indirect heat. That is, the heat source is not directly underneath the meat (or vegetable). Grilling is generally a fast-cooking method, while barbecuing is a slow-cooking method. I tend to favor the term indirect grilling to barbecuing as barbecue is an overloaded term. As a noun, it means pulled pork with barbecue sauce in the Carolinas. As a verb, it means to slow cook, indirectly, over a fire. As an adjective, it describes an American flavor that most of us know.

Building a two-level fire — master the skill. Part of the challenge of charcoal grilling is that you don’t have handy knobs to adjust your fire with. However, there will be times when you want to cook something over high heat and times you want to cook something over medium heat. (If you want to cook over low heat, consider barbecuing instead of grilling.) The solution is to build a two-level fire. After you empty your chimney starter full of hot coals into your grill, add some more (unheated) coals to one side of the grill to add more fuel to the fire and to raise the level of the coals closer to the grill grate. This hot side of the fire will be very hot. You want to use this side of the fire to brown and sear the meat initially, then you will want to use the lower level of the fire to finish cooking your meat. Recall that browning gives your finished piece not only texture and color, but a whole lot of flavor as the brown color is the caramelization of the sugars and the conversion of all the amino acids into the complex flavor molecules. However, browning is different from burning and blackening, which imparts a very bitter taste to the meat. There’s nothing worse and more frustrating than having something burned on the outside and raw on the inside. I will say that a plain old one-level fire is just fine for hamburgers and hot dogs

Respect the grate — clean and oil your grill rack before grilling anything. Use a stiff wirebrush (you don’t need a fancy one, a cheap stainless steel bristle wirebrush costs a dollar at the hardware store) to scrub the grate once it’s heated. Any particles and chars will come clean off and drop into the fire where it will turn into ash in about ten seconds. Oil the grate by dipping a wad of two or three paper towels in some vegetable oil and using a pair of tongs to wipe down the grate. Oiling the grate wipes off any remaining particles on the grate and prevents food from sticking on the grate.

Enough with the health warnings — I think everyone is too scared about meat not being cooked well enough. Yes, you should follow food safety tips, up to a certain point if you want to maintain some level of taste in your food. Some health agencies tell us to cook our chicken until 180 degrees, while tastewise, chicken is done at 165 degrees. At 165 degrees, your chicken is not pink, it is not bloody, it is done, with juices running clear. At 180, your chicken is about as hard and dry as the rock sitting next to your grill, as overcooking any meat causes the proteins to contract up tightly. I say use common sense.. Buy your meat or fish from a good source, store it at the proper temperature until you are ready to use it, and don’t let it sit around, use it as soon as you can. When cooking, experience helps the most in knowing when something is done (as you literally can feel if it’s done when you touch it), but if you want to use a thermometer, don’t use the temperatures on the chicken package or the temperatures printed on the thermometer as a guide. Check in a cookbook that produces good recipes and results. My rough advice: cook your chicken to well-done at 165 degrees, cook your pork chops or pork tenderloin until there is tinge of pink in the center at 150 degrees, cook your beef strip steaks to 120 degrees for rare, 125 degrees for medium-rare on the rare side, 130 degrees for medium-rare on the medium side, 135 to 140 for medium. Also keep in mind that when you take the meat off the grill, it will continue cooking for a while so if you see pink when you knife-test it on the grill, it may not be there in ten minutes. One safety note though, if you cut into your chicken on your plate and you see pink, put it in the microwave for one minute on high. Chicken should never be pink, but the microwave does a great job of quick-cooking it to well-done when you don’t want to put it back on the grill.

Give it a rest — when you take meat off the grill, let it rest on a plate for five to ten minutes before cutting into it. As the meat starts to cool, it will contract and hold it’s juices in. If you cut into it while it’s still piping hot off the grill, the juices will all run out on to the plate, and the last bite of your dinner will never be as good as that first bite you try on the cutting board.

Have a beer (or glass of wine) in hand and a friend nearby — it makes the whole experience more enjoyable.

Have fun learning! Part of learning is making mistakes, but it’s all good as you’re having fun doing it (and if you have some easy backup foods for dinner). When my housemates and I first moved in, we were grilling on aluminum foil, pouring on store-bought “sauces” (just look at the ingredient list on the back), and most everything we made was burning on the outside and raw on the inside, especially chicken. Chicken is the best gauge of learning how to grill in my opinion. Once you learn the technique of grilling chicken to well-done without burning it, I think you’ve mastered the art of grilling, and it only gets better from there

Happy grilling this season!