Chef's Secrets - Level Up Your BBQ Game

Leveling Up Your BBQ Game

Dreading the start of BBQ season? Maybe it’s time to level up your BBQ game with the right gear and techniques to make you the star of your summer cookouts. Here are a few tips to get you there: • Have you been cooking on a gas grill? Try charcoal. The 22-inch Weber Kettle is a good place to start. It’s cheap, well made, easy to use and has endless accessories to make it more versatile. • Is a grill the only outdoor cooking appliance you have? Expand your arsenal with an outdoor fryer, griddle, smoker, stove, Dutch oven table, portable pizza oven, or broiler. • Grind your own meat. A #12 meat grinder is pretty affordable these days. Buy whole cuts of meat, trim them out properly, adjust the ratio of lean to fat, and prepare to be amazed at the difference! • Use a thermometer to monitor the temperature of your grill surface and the internal temp of the cooking food? You should. You must. Just do it. • Salt! People never use enough of it! You should add salt at around 1.5-2% of the weight of the food. Weigh it out and sprinkle it on. It will look like too much, but when you taste it, you’ll see. You don’t even realize how much flavor you’ve been missing. • Get a broiler torch. The Iwatani culinary torch, or the Searzall from Booker & Dax are my favorites. For some foods, even a heat gun from the hardware store can do amazing things. • Clean your grill! Dirty grills are nasty, and relying on the grill heat to sanitize it isn’t enough. Get the grill hot, scrub the grates top and bottom with an oiled wire brush, then wipe it down with an oiled paper towel. And after all that is done, don’t forget to run your wire brush through the dishwasher on a high temp cycle, because cleaning a grill with a dirty brush kind of defeats the purpose. • Toss fat trimmings directly on the hot coals to increase the “char grill” flavor. • Don’t just fill your grill to the brim with charcoal. Think about how you’re going to be cooking, and weigh your charcoal before adding it, based on how hot your grill needs to be. • Use lump charcoal for fast, high heat cooks. Use briquettes for moderate, long-lasting, steady heat. • Push the charcoal to one side to create multiple heat zones so you can sear, then slow cook to perfection.

Lastly, get to know your equipment. This means you need to cook out a lot. Use your grill for things you would normally cook on the stove or in the oven. Learn how much charcoal, and which brand, produces the heat that you need for different dishes. Then write down your method and results so you can duplicate them every time.

If your grill skills are a bit plebeian, this will get you to a solid journeyman level. But if you want to learn some more advanced tricks, keep an eye on the My Community - Utah Facebook page for more outdoor cooking tips throughout this BBQ season!