BBQ is a delicacy that people of all ages seem to enjoy. It has been one of the soughts for cuisines for an extended period of time. A great BBQ is an art. To create such an art, you need a lot of passion and determination. However, you will find people who always look for BBQ cooking tips to enhance their skill at barbecuing.
I admire those who try to give their all to cooking. That’s why I will share some BBQ cooking tips that will help you to increase your BBQ knowledge. These BBQ cooking tips will also make your task easier. So, let’s get started:
7 Essential Cooking Tips For The Perfect BBQ:
Here are 7 essential BBQ cooking tips that will help you to cook the perfect BBQ:
1. Charcoal (Choosing And Arranging The Right Way):
If you are opting out for charcoal BBQ, this tip is for you. We all love charcoal. I personally prefer it because of the texture it gives off. No other type of BBQs gives off such great taste. Here is why choosing and placing charcoal is the most crucial part of your cooking.
The first BBQ tip we have is to try to set up your charcoal in a two-zone arrangement. This will provide you higher control over your grilling: one direct heat side and another indirect heat side.
For this, you will need to pile your charcoal on one side and the other with no charcoal or less charcoal. The side with the piled charcoal will work as direct heat for searing your meat pieces and the indirect side to slow cook them.
Also, there is another thing that you need to keep in mind before you start grilling. That thing is choosing the best charcoal for preparing your grill. There are various kinds of charcoal available in the market. You just need to select from the fresh ones. There are many varieties of charcoal available, such as briquette charcoal, lump wood charcoal etc. you may choose any one of them as you like.
There are other BBQ cooking tips that will help you with the charcoal arrangement. Such as placing a pan of water on the cooler side of the grill. The cooler side of the grill has less amount of charcoal. The water pan will absorb the heat. It can also help to keep the meat moist by minimizing the evaporation process.
2. Preparation Is The Key To A Successful Dish:
If you ask me what is the most important part out of all the BBQ cooking tips, I would say that preparing should be on top of the list. Before getting down to cooking, you should first check if you have enough space around you.
A congested area can make you feel suffocated. If the area you are cooking is too dense, the heat from the BBQ grill will increase the temperature of the place. This increased temperature will cause suffocation if there is not enough space for the air to pass.
You also need enough space to move around freely. No one can cook standing in a tiny place. If you are doing a BBQ, you sure do need a fair amount of space to move around. This will allow you to stay away from the heat and then come again to check it afterward. Also, you might need to move to places if you need to fetch spices or sauces for the BBQ. That’s why a fair amount of space is needed while barbecuing.
Make sure your utensils and essential tools are close to your hand while cooking. Some experts seem to avoid this tip because they find it too obvious. Since I want my bits of advice to be helpful to you in every way. That is why I am giving you this tip, too, along with all the other BBQ cooking tips.
BBQ is very sensitive. It can burn anytime if you don’t pay close attention. To avoid such circumstances, you need to make sure all your necessary tools are at your arms’ length. By ensuring this, you will reduce the chances of you going here and there to grab a thing, and the chances of your food getting burnt will be lessened.
3. Keep Separate Trays To Keep Food Or To Arrange Them:
Ensure if you have separate trays for raw food items and cooked food items.
Keeping your raw food items from the cooked ones is one of the most basic hygiene precautions. It can also be labeled as one of the essential BBQ cooking tips.
Raw foods contain many bacterias. They can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and many other stomach diseases. Sometimes they can even cause death. These bacterias die in the heat. So cooking food is important. Also, keeping them away from raw food is also important. That is why trays are needed.
Trays can also be used to keep the ashes away, or can also be used to keep the food waste. When you are using a gas grill, you can use a tray to keep the grease or ashes. Later you can just throw it away with other garbage.
The trays can also be used for many different purposes. For example, it can be used to keep the garbage away to throw later on. It can also be used to serve cooked food to your friends and family.
Trays can be a great help when you are throwing a party and want to arrange the foods you prepared for the expected guests. At a party, great food matters, but at the same time, top-notch presentation is as much essential. You cannot just throw your food over your guests. Serving them in a posh, arranged way is a basic manner.
Trays help you to organize food items according to their types. Such as, burgers will be kept in the red trays, juices will be in the yellow trays.
This is how trays help you out in many ways.
4. Marinate And Brine Your Food Items Before You Get Your Cooking Started:
The term ‘marinating’ means to soak your food item in spices and sauces for a period of time. It can be from one hour to a day. Brining is also the same, but it only includes saltwater. It means brine is just a salt-based solution.
One of the most excellent BBQ cooking tips that all the chefs suggest worldwide is marinating and brining your food before BBQ.
Being an expert myself, I highly recommend you to marinate your food for at least an hour. If possible, for over a night. The more, the merrier.
The flavor and texture of the meat can be significantly influenced by marinades.
Learning to marinate will not only add a ton of flavor to your barbecue masterpieces, but it will also help you create yummier, tender meat and get the most out of less expensive, firmer cuts.
Marinates should include items containing acids such as lemon or vinegar. It should also have dairy items such as buttermilk or yogurt. Acids and dairy products will help to break down the existing tissue in the external part of the meat, tenderizing it and enabling more moistness to enter.
The more you dissolve the meat in marinated solution, the more the outer surface tissue gets broken down. This is why the experts say that you should marinate and brine your meat as long as you can.
5. Check The Temperature of Your Meat Or Whatever Food Item You Chose To BBQ:
Always make sure to check the temperature of the food item you are cooking. Usually, it is a matter of concern for meat items. They can get overcooked or remain undercooked.
This is one of the BBQ cooking tips that will help you to master the art of BBQ in a precise manner. The first step is to buy a thermometer. Not just any thermometer; Make sure you buy a good meat thermometer to check the temperature from time to time.
Making sure you cook your meat thoroughly is something that must not be avoided at any cost. If anyhow, the meat remains uncooked, then it can cause many diseases. It can even cause death. That is why using a thermometer is needed.
If you are planning to make a steak, you need to know about the right temperatures to get the perfect desired texture of your steak. The temperature chart is given below:
| Rare | 125 – 130 Degree Fahrenheit |
| Medium Rare | 130 – 140 Degree Fahrenheit |
| Medium | 140 – 150 Degree Fahrenheit |
| Medium Well | 150 – 160 Degree Fahrenheit |
| Well Done | 165 Degree Fahrenheit or more |
- Rare:
A ‘rare’ steak is not the same as an uncooked steak. You cannot call it a raw steak. A rare steak will be seasoned and placed on the grill while you cook it. The exterior part of the steak will sear, but the inside will stay quite soft. After cooking, the inside part will stay draughty to the tongue of the person eating the steak.
- Medium Rare:
A medium-rare steak is a bit more cooked than the rare one. The middle portion of a “medium rare” steak will be warmer than a rare steak. The outside of the steak will begin to get stiff, but the inside portion will remain moist and delicate. Around the edges, a little ring-like texture of pink color will appear, but the steak will stay mostly red in the middle.
- Medium:
Medium steaks are those kinds of steaks that need to be cooked in a bit higher heat than the rare and medium-rare steaks. A medium-rare steak will be primarily pink in color. A little ring of grey color may emerge on the exterior part, with a strip of red remaining in the center. It needs about 140 degrees to 150 degrees. This is the temperature at which the fat of the meat starts to meltdown and impart richness to steaks with higher browning and searing.
- Medium Well:
Medium well steaks need more temperature than the other types of steaks that I discussed earlier in the article.
A medium-well steak will be harder and more firm than the previously mentioned steaks. It will completely turn into a grey color, and only the silver hue will remain. The silver tint of the pink will stay in the core.
- Well Done:
The inside part of a well-done steak will be completely grayish in color. The well-done steak will be quite hard, and most of the meat juices will have dried out. The steak will have shrunk significantly in proportion after most of the fat and moisture has been drained.
6. Cleaning Tips For Your BBQ:
Hygiene is an integral part of any cooking. According to my point of view, this is an excellent tip among all the other BBQ cooking tips. Here are some BBQ cooking tips below regarding cleaning:
- Cleaning Your Ingredients:
Cleaning your ingredients is one of the parts which some people don’t follow religiously. It is a terrible habit. Some people tend to wash the vegetables with just water for a few seconds.
They sometimes just throw them in the pan. Some don’t clean the meat thoroughly. This is a very bad habit. Viruses and bacterias can cause so much harm to your health. This habit can even cause death.
- Cleaning Your Utensils Or The Tools You Will Use:
Cleaning the essential tools is as important as cleaning the food items used in cooking. It’s not always that we use a brand new tool while cooking. Food greases, sauces, or fats from old foods remain in them. This creates bacteria on them.
That is why it is necessary to clean your utensils before you start to cook. Even if the cooking tools are new yet they need to be adequately cleaned.
- Cleaning The Area, You Are Going To Cook:
It is said that a clean mind resides in a clean environment. I like to twist the saying as ‘a clean chef can only exist in a clean cooking space’. If the area you are cleaning is dirty and full of bad smell, you cannot cook in such a place.
You will not only get disturbed by the foul smell, but the prepared food will also be unhygienic. That is why before you get to your cooking journey, make sure you have cleaned the whole area you will be cooking into.
7. Taking The Safety Measures:
Many people take the safety part very lightly. But no one can foresee accidents. That is why it is said ‘prevention is better than cure.’ by the experts. Here are some tips for safety tagged along with other BBQ cooking tips:
- Wearing Gloves:
Barbecuing includes tasks that are mostly done by your very own hands. You take help from any tools while doing a few things while cooking, but hands are dominant here.
So it seems like a necessity to protect your hands from dangers like heat or fire itself. The spice mix can create a burning sensation on your hands. Hot oils can spill over your hands. That is why wearing gloves should be a must.
- Wearing Face Mask:
Not everyone will agree with me on this point, but as someone experienced in barbecuing, I would always recommend wearing a face mask. While making BBQ, a massive amount of heat is produced.
This heat is not suitable for our face and skin. Inhaling it can also cause harm to our lungs. On the other hand, many germs in our breath can be transferred to the food. That is why wearing a face mask is necessary.
- Keeping Children and Pets Away:
A BBQ grill is scorching hot. Anything can get burnt if it touches the grill.
Children and pets cannot anticipate the danger ahead of them. They are curious enough to go and touch almost anything they see.
It is the duty of the adults to keep them safe from any sort of danger. That’s why I never leave the BBQ unattended. Even if you are done cooking, make sure to remove the BBQ to a safe place properly.
- Keeping A Fire Extinguisher Nearby:
As it has been discussed earlier that BBQ can get really hot, so as to the point that it might catch fire. There are many incidents where even the experts couldn’t control the flames.
Unfortunately, it sometimes turned into massive destruction. Houses can get burnt down completely. Faces or body parts can also get burnt. Sometimes people throw water into them to blow out the fire. But water has oxygen in it which can amplify the fire even more. It is strictly prohibited to use water to stump out the fire.
That is why experts always suggest keeping a fire extinguisher nearby. It can come in handy in many situations, and it is also ideal for putting out the fire.
Conclusion:
In this article, I tried to explain the essential BBQ cooking tips in a comprehensive manner. By reading my article, all of your confusion about cooking BBQ will be removed as well, as you can get to know many unknown BBQ cooking tips. So, don’t forget to share my article with others.
