Grilling has always been an art. There is no doubt that grilling involves more than just cooking food to eat. From a BBQ party in your backyard to a small elegant gathering, grilling has always been associated with social elements. This is why your grilling game should always be in tip-top shape, especially when you take into consideration that you’re not only grilling for yourself but others as well. It’s not uncommon to find yourself overwhelmed by all the different methods, types of grills, smoking techniques, and other grilling strategies. To help you wrap your head around the most effective tips that will help your grilling game, we’ll be listing 7 great tips.
1. Add Funk to the Meat
While the process of grilling itself is important, the meat you’re cooking is supposed to be at its finest if you truly want your grill to produce something amazing. The preparation of meat should always include dry-aging as much as possible, which is what all fancy restaurants do to their steaks, and it can triple the price of a piece of steak. The key to dry-aging is drying out only the exterior of the meat and not rot it from the inside. By giving bacteria a license to increase on the exterior, it adds a lot to the flavor once it’s grilled. You should leave it for up to 4 weeks in a mini-fridge for optimum taste.
2. Always Keep the Grill Clean
You wouldn’t believe how the gunk and molten fats can ruin the taste of your meat and make it unevenly cooked. You don’t want to find meat jammed between the grill, adding an untasteful burnt aroma. One of the best grilling tips we recommend is cleaning the grate thoroughly after every grilling session if you want to make sure your future BBQs always taste the best. You can use some oil and a brush to remove any debris smoothly and quickly.
3. Warm the Meat First
One of the most common pitfalls that people often fall into is taking the meat out of the freezer and putting it into the grill almost instantly. Cooking steak on high flames shouldn’t take long, so you need to make sure that the steak is at room temperature. Once you take it out of the freezer, leave it out for around 30 minutes to defrost and reach room temperature. You can take advantage of this time by preheating the grill. Around 15 minutes of preheating are enough to kill any bacteria and ensure that no meat sticks on the grill.
4. Generous Seasonings
The best thing about seasonings is that it is hard to go wrong with them. A lot of people are afraid that if they add too much seasoning it will ruin the meat and its taste, but in fact, you need a lot more than you think to actually make it taste bad. As a good rule of thumb, you can add double the amount of seasonings you think you need and still be nowhere close to ruining the meat.
5. Avoid Flare-Ups
Flare-ups are bound to happen no matter what. The key is not trying to only reduce them, but also move around the meat. You need to make sure that the meat is moved away from the hottest areas to ones with lower temperatures. You can reduce the chances of flare-ups by keeping the lid closed on the grill, which limits the oxygen inside. You can use a few sprays of water to dampen the charcoal if it’s too hot.
6. Use Thermometers
While touching the meat with your thumb to see its state can be a useful method to gauge how cooked it is, the best and most accurate way to do it is by using a thermometer. Timing is very important in grilling, and a thermometer can reduce a lot of timing errors by allowing you to depend on a numerical measurement. You can always know the exact temperature of the meat without worrying about bacteria or undercooked areas.
7. Give the Meat Some Time
Once you’ve grilled the meat and made sure it reached the right temperature and texture, take it off the grill but don’t touch it. Giving your meat a chance to rest after being grilled helps the juices flow back into the core of the meat. Slicing it once it’s off the grill will reduce the moisture inside and waste precious juices. It’s better to put them on an aired cooling rack and not a plate to ensure both sides are in contact with air.
Grilling is a very fun activity that you can always improve upon with experience. Practice the mentioned tips and you’ll find that your grilling game is one to behold. You’ll begin to find yourself inclined to use certain techniques and patterns after you experiment around with a few different variations of grilling.