Outdoor Cooking TECHNIQUES

Many people mistakenly refer to any type of cooking on their grill as “barbecuing,” but that’s not entirely correct. Let’s compare the outdoor cooking techniques needed for the recipes in this book.

• GRILLING

Grilling involves quickly cooking individual portions of food at relatively high temperatures over a direct heat source. The first step in many grilling recipes is to sear the meat over high heat – between 350 F and 550 F. The higher heat browns the outside of smaller cuts of meat, sealing in juices that would be lost if the meat were cooked more slowly. My mother did this before placing a roast in the oven, and I do it every time I grill a steak. Cast-iron grates on a grill are also highly conductive, which significantly aids the searing process.

Once food is seared, you’ll often finish cooking over indirect heat on another part of the grill. The reason food can continue to cook this way is that there’s still plenty of heat generated by one or more of these sources: (1) convective heat from air heated by the fire; (2) conductive