Monday, May 28, 2012

The Quest for Fire


The Quest for Fire

In honour of the impending long summer days with hours of outdoors time that will be spent and the grills that are just begging to be used I figured I would start off my second week of this blog with a little something about outdoor grilling.

I just first off before I really get into any of the real meat of this entry I should give you all the caveat that I do NOT ever use a gas grill, I believe if you want to cook with gas get a gas oven or stove top but leave the BBQ-ing to real burning wood and charcoal. Thus everything I write will be under the assumption that you will also be using a proper BBQ and although some of what I write may be adaptable to a gas grill I assert that a traditional grill is not only tastier but more versatile in many cases and just as easy for the most part to use.

Getting started with outdoor grilling...

OK so we have decided we want to do some outdoor grilling now the question arises what do we need? Well the list of required items is fairly short but the are basically as follows.

A BBQ- Now this can be as simple as a hole dug in the ground with a grate over the top of it to one of the many variety of BBQ grills out there on the market. But assuming you are going with a store bought BBQ there are a few things you should look for in choosing what one you want. The basic things to look for regardless of anything else are; how heavy is the construction, generally heavier construction = better product, how is it put together is it mostly welds or nuts and bolts also if nuts and bolts are they flimsy or heavy nuts and bolts, and finally is it deep enough to get a decent spacing and allow for decent heat control when cooking. From there you would look at the more personalized options like how big a cooking area will you require and what kinds of cooking are you going to want to be doing, will you just be grilling or are you going to want to try smoking food as well. Personally I would always recommend going just a little bigger that you think you are going to need as you never know you may decide you want to grill that really big fish or a turkey or something similar. If you want to do smoking you will want to go bigger yet again or get yourself an offset smoker which is basically a 2 chamber BBQ so you can keep you fire in one chamber and cook your food with the smoke and indirect heat in the second chamber. I will go more into Grills in a later post

Something to Burn- Usually when home grilling as it is a bit easier to control we use charcoal but wood or a combination of the two can be used just as easily. If using just wood in most commercial grills you have to use only dense hardwood and the denser the better as it will burn slower as a general rule. Now on the other hand if you are using charcoal I would generally recommend going with a 'Natural Lump' charcoal over a 'Pressed Briquet' style as it generally gives you better tasting results. I find the 'Pressed Briquet' style of charcoal sometimes imparts a bit of a “fuel like taste” which you can also get if you use a petroleum based starter without giving it ample time to completely burn off, therefore if using a petroleum based starter you have to give it alt least 25-30 minutes to burn before cooking to insure you don’t wreck your food even if the grill is up to heat before then. This can of course be avoided by using the “Chimney” method and using paper as a starter but this also requires you to have a chimney starter which you must then either buy or make yourself.

Cooking Utensils- I find in general unless using a larger grill that normal kitchen spatulas and tongs will do the job just fine as long as they are metal not not really flimsy but in the case that you have either a very large grill, plastic utensils or flimsy utensils you may want to go out and pick up a BBQ set. These can be picked up quite cheaply at a wide variety places like dollar stores, grocery stores and hardware stores.

Now that we have acquired the basics it's time to fire up the grill...

From Flame to Plate

Lighting the grill is very easy but it something many people put way to much thought and consideration into often getting the job done sub-optimally. Quite simplay the 2 easiest ways are either the chimney method or the pyramid method. With the chimney method you take a 'chimney which can be as simple as an apple juice can with the top and bottom cut off and a few holes in the sides for air flow to some reasonably fancy ones you can buy already made. You then crumple up some paper put in under the charcoal grill (most BBQs will have two 'grills one deeply recessed in the BBQ that the coals sit on and one that goes above the coals that you put the food on), put the chimney above the crumpled paper, fill chimney with charcoal, and light the paper. It will take about 20 minutes for the coals to catch completely at which time you use some tongs to remove the chimney place down the cooking grill and get ready to cook. With the pyramid method you pile the coals in a pyramid or cone shape and either try to light from below with paper like the chimney method (this can be hard) or with a small (note small) amount of petroleum based fire starter. Once the coal have caught spread them out a bit put the cooking grill into place and you are basically ready to cook.

Now all we have to do is wait from the grill to heat up a bit and make sure out flame is at our more or less desired cooking temperature. To regulate the flame in a fixed height open pit grill the only method really is to have a spray bottle of water on hand and if the flame is too hot them to spray the coals just a little bit. On a typical closed grill we have more options though. On a typical closed grill we have a set of vents one at the base of the grill that regulates the amount of air intake possible to the grill and one on the lid that regulates air/smoke exhaust. By opening these op you can increase airflow thus increasing the heat of your flame and by closing these you can reduce the heat by reducing airflow. The exact amounts you have to open and close the vents will take some experimentation and will vary but its fairly simple to get the hang of.

Everything is finally ready to put our meat or veggies on the grill,...YAY!!!

Depending on what you are cooking times will very and if you haven’t done much cooking you may find having a meat thermometer to be very helpful in getting your food cooked correctly. You also may or may not, depending on what you are cooking, want to sauce your food during the cooking process but really the grilling itself especially done with wood or wood chips should impart enough flavour on its own that nothing else should be necessary (not that it can't add to the experience).

We have now covered a lot of the BBQ basics and will be ready to discuss some more techniques and some recipes in our next instalment.

Bleeding Teddy – The Bachelor Gourmet

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