Where There's A Grill There's A Way

By David W. Brown

Summer is here and with it comes yard work, (more) mosquitoes, baseball and — best of all — cooking over an open flame. And though I have no solution for mosquitoes, haven’t been to a baseball game since an altar boy field trip over 30 years ago, and have hated yard work for at least that long, if you want information on cooking outdoors, you have come to the right place. By which I mean, I have asked the experts at Rouses Markets, and am sharing their responses here. (I don’t even have a backyard.)

CHARCOAL GRILLING 101

Propane grills are a pretty straightforward affair: They’re clean-burning and fuelefficient, and you can get the grill ready at a moment’s notice. It’s the most stove-like of the backyard cooking arsenal. Charcoal grills, on the other hand, need a bit of TLC to cook at their best.

First, you have to pick your fuel source. Usually, it comes down to natural lump charcoal or charcoal briquettes. Practically speaking, the primary difference between the two is temperature: The natural lump charcoal burns hotter, and will burn longer as well, if you are diligent with the air intake for your grill or smoker. A good burn that lasts longer is essential when used in a controlled environment such as a Big Green Egg, an American-designed “kamado” grill (which is, in turn, a stove typically fueled with wood or charcoal, first developed by the Japanese and in use for centuries). Lump charcoal is made from 100% hardwood, with no additives.

Charcoal briquettes, on the other hand, are not natural, but were developed with the environment in mind. They were invented in the early 1900s as a way to recycle all the scrap wood from the manufacture of Model T cars in Henry Ford’s assembly lines. The idea for such a product was concocted on a camping trip taken by Ford, Thomas Edison and Ford’s relative, Edward Kingsford (for whom the famous Kingsford Charcoal is

named). Briquettes are cheap, versatile and, best of all, you can use them to build a fun little pyramid, douse it with lighter fluid and ignite a flame they can see from the International Space Station.

For style points, however, never use a charcoal lighter fluid to start natural lump coal. I mean, you can do it — you could set your car on fire with lighter fluid, too — but my parole officer tells me that’s not what it’s made for. Lighter fluid is the exclusive domain of charcoal briquettes in a regular barbecue grill. Lump coal has its own special needs. Rouses sells natural starters that use paraffin wax to get a natural lump coal going, and you can adjust the ventilation of your grill to do the rest.

THE HEAT IS ON

Regardless of which type of charcoal you use, once you get a good flame going in your grill, ventilation is also how you regulate the temperature before or during cooking. After the coals get good and hot, the first step is to use a metal grill spatula to spread the charcoal in an even layer. If your grill is large enough, it’s a good idea to leave a little spot somewhere in the pit with no charcoal beneath that portion of the grill. That way, if you find you are overcooking a piece of meat, you can move it to a “cool zone.”

After your charcoal is evenly spread and smoldering, you’re going to want to track how hot it is. When reading recipes, keep in mind that the surface temperature of a grill is not the same as the internal temperature of your meat. (Again, it seems obvious, but half of you are going to blow yourselves up next Thanksgiving by deep-frying a frozen turkey. I’m trying to save you, reader.) Eventually, you’ll develop an instinctive feel for how hot a grill is based on the ambient and radiating heat and the condition of the coals, but until then, a grill thermometer can take a lot of guesswork out of the equation. Medium heat is about 350◦F. High heat is 450◦F or higher. If you want to get your grill hotter, open the vent at the bottom to increase its ventilation. If you want it cooler, close the vent at the bottom. (One of the advantages of propane grills is the ability to be very precise in your heating. To make a propane grill hotter, turn the knob to “high.” To make it cooler, turn the knob to “low.”)

Cook times and temperatures are going to vary based on what you are cooking and how thick it is. According to the U.S.

Department of Agriculture, steak, lamb and pork should be cooked to an internal temperature of 145◦F. Poultry should be 165◦F. A meat thermometer, which is usually stabbed into the interior of meat, will take the guesswork out of all this, and can save you from the bracing thrill of botulism. As for choosing the meat you plan to cook, Rouses team members who work in the meat department are trained to help you find the perfect cut of the perfect animal at the perfect price, and can give you advice on seasonings, sides and cook times to turn out the best backyard grilling experience imaginable.

SMOKING 101

At its simplest, a smoker is a type of grill that uses a relatively low, indirect heat to slowly bring out the fullest flavor of a meat, and different types of smoking woods to imbue flavor into the meat. (See the sidebar on Adding Flavor to Your Smoker for tips and when to use them.)

Grills excel at cooking flavorful foods quickly, and for getting a good, strategic char on certain meats, fruits and vegetables. Smokers, though they take time, have historically been the domain of backyard kitchen connoisseurs. The low heat of a smoker allows ample time for smoky flavors to insinuate themselves into meats being cooked, and for the tissue and collagens in meats to soften and tenderize into gelatin. The fat in the meat keeps it from drying out. All this makes smokers the best way to cook particularly tough meats. (You aren’t limited to tough meats, of course! It takes about an hour to smoke hot dogs, and 30 minutes to smoke hamburger patties.)

Tim recommends using a Big Green Egg for smoking meats. This kind of grill looks like a big green egg. As the company’s website explains its success: “In the beginning, there were wood, dry leaves, lightning and eventually, fire. Early man soon learned the flavor benefits of cooking meat over this exciting discovery, which quickly gained acclaim as far superior to gnawing on raw Tyrannosaurus ribs!” While I would dispute the sentiment overall — tyrannosaurus tartare and stegosaurus sashimi are no-brainers, quite frankly — you cannot argue with the popularity and proliferation of Big Green Eggs. Their advertisement style is word of mouth. You go to a friend’s house, sit outside, smell the meat smoking slowly, and then finally taste it…and the next day you go to the store and buy your own.

That’s how it happened for Tim. “A friend of mine got a Big Green Egg and I went over to his house the night he first got his, and it was great. I said, ‘I have got to get me one of those,’ and my wife bought me an extralarge one!” That was quite a few years ago, he says. “Now I have three — an extra-large, a medium and a small one as well.”

Believe it or not, you can even prepare your charcoal grill in such a way that it can be used as a smoker, though it takes a little effort up front, and for best results, sometimes requires you to brine your meat in advance.

HOW TO MAKE A SMOKER

To get the effect of a smoker without the expense of buying one, the first step is to soak wooden smoking chips in water. You’ll want to use a good amount of said wood chips for this — at least one cup. You’re doing this because the water that the chips soak up will create more smoke than if they were dry. Meanwhile, get your charcoal grill going as normal. Once they’re good and hot (it takes about 30 minutes), spread the charcoal as you normally would, but leaving half the grill with no charcoal at all. Because you do not want to cook your meat directly over the coals, when you spread the charcoal, do so off to one side, leaving half the pit bottom clear.

Next, get a fireproof metal pan — a thick, disposable pan is perfect — and fill it with warm water. To regulate the heat of the grill, you’re going to place it carefully, wearing fireproof mitts, on the clear side of the grill, adjacent to the coals. After they’ve soaked for an hour, drain the water from the wood chips and enclose them in an envelope or sachet made from heavy-duty aluminum foil. Poke some holes in the aluminum pouch and set it directly on the coals.

Note that you can use a propane grill as an improvised smoker as well. The process is pretty simple: Only turn on one half of the burners, let the grill get good and hot, don’t worry about the pan of water, and set the wood chip packet on the hot side of the pit, beneath the grill. In both cases, you want the grill to be at the appropriate low temperature, so be sure to get a grill thermometer if you don’t have one. When those wood chips start smoking and the heat is just right, you are ready to begin cooking by placing the meat on the non-flame half of the grill. Bear in mind that smoking can take all day, and the packet will have to be replaced every two to three hours. Soak more chips while your food is cooking so that you can replace the packet at the appropriate times.

COOKING WITH SMOKE

For beginners, says Tim, pork spareribs are a great meat to start with if you’re going to use a smoker. The key is to first lock your smoker into a low temperature — somewhere around 225◦ to 250◦F — and understand that, unlike with a grill, you will be cooking on indirect heat. (Different smokers have different ways of getting your temperature dialed in for the long haul. If you threw away your instruction manual, Google can help.)

Flavor- and texture-wise, says Tim, “The longer period of time you cook, the better off you are.” If you’ve never cooked with indirect heat before, you might be surprised by how much it will elevate your backyard cooking game. (“It made me a believer,” Tim says.)

For spareribs, the first step is to peel away the membrane from the back of the ribs, which makes it easier to cut the ribs at the end, once you have finished cooking them. Rinse them, pat them dry, and rub some yellow mustard on them. The mustard imparts a subtle flavor, but more important, it helps the dry rub stick to the meat, which is the next step in the process.

Add your dry rub to the ribs — both on top and underneath — and do so generously. “You don’t want it too thick, but you want it everywhere, and rubbed well into the meat,” says Tim. Get your smoker to 225◦F, and be ready to smoke for about three hours before fiddling with the meat. At that point, pull the ribs from the smoker and spritz them with apple juice before wrapping them with foil, then back into the smoker they go. Let them smoke for another two hours. Next, unwrap them, and put them back in the smoker, uncovered, for one final hour.

“I don’t like to use barbecue sauce or anything like that,” says Tim of his ribs. Instead, he reaches for Rouses Honey. “I squeeze honey onto the ribs, and brush them to spread the honey out.” In that last hour of cooking, the honey forms a glaze on top of the ribs.

To take the flavor of the spareribs to the next level, apply the mustard and dry rub seasoning early in the morning — 6:30 a.m. or so — and let them rest in the refrigerator and really soak up the flavors. After a few hours, remove the ribs from the fridge and let them come down to room temperature. Then put the ribs in the smoker around noon. Around 6 or 6:30 p.m., dinner is served.

That’s a pretty short day compared to some items you cook in the smoker. Boston butt will require between eight to 10 hours in smoke. Beef brisket is next-level — 14 or even 16 hours in the smoker, and it can even go overnight on low heat. So plan accordingly. If you’re making it for a party, make sure everyone brings pajamas.