BBQ :: Tips & Tricks

There’s nothing quite like the rich savoury smell of barbecue floating through the air. 

Barbecuing is typically done outside by smoking meat over charcoal or wood. Of course, you can also barbecue fish and vegetables as well.

There are a number of different techniques that can be used when barbecuing. This includes grilling, roasting, and smoking. The technique after which a barbecue is named incorporates cooking while using smoke at very long temperatures, as well as long cooking times.

Everything you do when preparing a barbecued meal changes the flavor of the end product.

So, here are a few tips on how to have a blast with your barbecue!

1. DON’T USE A GAS GRILL

There are a lot of different ways to cook barbecue—direct heat, indirect heat, with charcoal, with wood chips, with split logs—but one thing that most experts agree on is that a gas grill isn’t the way to go. The smoke is an ingredient in itself!

2. DON’T CHECK THE TEMPERATURE REPEATEDLY

The proper technique for cooking barbecue can be summed up with three words: “low and slow.” Be patient. Try not to check the temperature more than every half an hour at most since it cools things off when you do. As the saying goes, if you’re looking, it ain’t cooking.

3. LET THE MEAT SIT BEFORE EATING

After removing your meat from the grill, let it sit for a few minutes. This seals the juices and keeps the meat from drying out. Do not cut until you are ready to immediately serve and eat. Another juice-saving tip: don’t poke holes in your meat while it’s cooking. Also, to turn meat, do not use forks, but barbecue tongs or spatulas.

4. AVOID LIGHT FLUID-FLAVORED MEAT

If you’re using lighter fluid to get your charcoal fire started, make sure that the fire is completely out before you introduce meat into the mix. If the fire’s not out, then there’s still some lighter fluid that hasn’t been burned away, and you do not want that taste on your food. You’ll know it’s time to start cooking when the charcoal is mostly an ash-gray color with a little bit of glowing red underneath. It should take about a half an hour.

5. LAY DOWN ALUMINUM FOIL FOR EASY CLEAN-UP

You may like cooking, and you may like eating, but nobody likes cleaning up afterward. To expedite the process, line the inside bottom of your cooker with a couple of sheets of aluminum foil before you put your briquettes /coals in. This will give you a quicker and easier clean-up of the gray coals and ash once you’re done barbecuing.

6. KEEP YOUR EQUIPMENT CLEAN

This one’s for barbecue newbies, or those who have just invested in a new smoker. Before you use it for the first time, build the biggest fire you can and let it rage for 45 minutes to an hour. Doing so seals up the pores of the metal and incinerates any remains and by-products—oil, grease, metal shavings, and any other gunk—of the manufacturing process… This is also a good thing to do if you haven’t used your cooker in a long time and don’t clean it regularly and the inside is covered with rancid grease or mold. 

7. PROPER AIR CIRCULATION IS KEY

Meat shouldn’t touch anything—other than the surface it’s sitting on, of course—while it’s cooking. Other meat and the sides of the cooker are both a no-no. Before you buy your smoker, consider how big a cooker you’re looking at. You don’t want the meat smushed up against the edges. It needs to have space around it for airflow.

8. USE ALUMINUM FOIL AS A GRILL BRUSH

If you’re not quite so serious about the craft of barbecue, to the point where you don’t have all the tools on-hand, don’t worry. In place of a grill brush, you can just crumple a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil until it’s the size of a navel orange and pick it up between locking chef tongs. The tongs will act as the handle. Holding onto the ball of foil, brush away.

_{(Adapted from: https://www.mentalfloss.com/)}