Fabulicious!: On the Grill (4 page)

Make sure you scrape the grill clean before and after each use. If you make it a habit to brush the grill after cooking while it's still hot, you shouldn't have to do much to clean it before the next time.

Also, don't use any kind of lubricant—even cooking oil—to grease the grate before putting the food down. I hear that recommendation a lot, and it's garbage. You're only wasting the oil and encouraging flare-ups. Instead, as you'll see in my recipes, we oil the food or let a wet marinade discourage any sticking to the grill.

You will need a few basic tools for grilling. You might already have some of them in your kitchen. But if you can, keep your grilling stuff together in a toolbox or something like that. And don't buy one of those grilling tool sets—the ones you might think about getting for Dad on Father's Day with handles that look like baseball bats or golf clubs—because they are more attractive than they are useful. (I know a few men like that. . . .)

Here's what you'll need:

Long tongs:
This will be your main turning tool, so it should be easy to use. Get a good set of heavy-duty tongs with wide gripping ends. Look for ones that have locking mechanisms to keep the tongs closed during storage.

Wide, thin spatula:
Kind of like what you would turn pancakes with, but be sure your metal grilling spatula has a long handle so you can reach to the back of the grill to flip your burgers.

Grilling brush:
You want a sturdy, long-handled metal brush made specifically for scrubbing the gunk off of the grill before adding the food and after you're finished grilling.

Basting brush:
A long-handled (do you see a trend here?) brush is the best kind so you can reach all over the grill. Silicone brushes are much easier to clean than the old kind with natural bristles.

Oven mitts or potholders:
Keep a pair to use just while grilling because they tend to get dirtier from soot than the ones you keep in the kitchen.

Instant-read thermometer:
This little guy has a thin metal probe to insert into the food, which works a lot better than the large stem of the old-fashioned thermometer. The instant-read part is important because you want a fast readout to keep the handle from melting. You don't keep this kind of thermometer in the meat while it's cooking, just insert, check, and pull out.

Perforated grilling pan:
Some thin foods can fall through the grate, and delicate ones can stick to the grate. That's when to use this indispensable tool, which sits on the cooking grate to hold the food in a single layer. Looking like a cross between a small frying pan and a colander, grilling pans have replaced grilling baskets for their ease of use and cleaning.

Metal skewers:
For
spiedini
(the Italian version of kebabs), the food is cooked on skewers. A lot of grilling experts recommend bamboo skewers, soaked in water before adding the food, but the wood still burns! You can find metal skewers at just about every supermarket, and they're reusable, so you'll save money over time. You don't need a fancy set because the food comes off the skewer for serving anyway, and no one will see it. That being said, the metal skewers with flat
blades do the best job of holding the meat in place.

Chimney starter
(for charcoal grills only): This metal canister helps ignite briquettes without the need of messy lighter fluid. You put the charcoal in the top part, a couple of sheets of newspaper in the bottom part, light the paper, and that's it. In about fifteen minutes, the coals will be tinged with white ashes, and you can dump them out of the canister (use a pot holder because the handle is hot!) into the bottom of the grill, and get started cooking.

Most of us learned how to grill like this: throw food on grill, and cook until done. You have more control than you think, though. You can actually grill food two ways: using direct heat and using indirect heat.

Direct heat
used to be the only way people grilled. You turn the burners up, place the food directly over the fire, and cook the hell out of it. It's only really good for food that can be thoroughly cooked in less than fifteen minutes though—any longer and you've burnt the outside before the inside is done. You also have to really watch the fat dripping onto the flames, as that's what causes dangerous flare-ups.

Indirect heat
is when you cook food not directly over the fire, but next to it, using the heat rather than the flames. To cook using indirect heat, you would turn on all your burners to preheat the grill, then turn one or two of them off, usually in the middle, and put your food over the unlit burners. The result is juicy perfection. Believe me, some grill masters use indirect heat more often than direct! Don't think you have to char something to make sure it's done on the inside. Here's the solution: think of your grill as an outdoor oven.

Ovens use indirect heat. The entire space is heated, and you trust that your food is going to cook in there just fine. And you don't bake everything at 500°F just to be sure. The same goes for grills. You can adjust the burners to high, medium, and low levels to control the temperature, and you can move the food off the direct flame to keep it from overcooking on the outside only. Just keep the lid closed—no different from an oven.

Indirect heat has become a lot more popular because people are cooking larger cuts of meat on the grill than they used to. Once you get the hang of it, as I have, you'll never go back to scorching things Flintstones-style.

No matter what kind of heat you use, direct or indirect, you do not have to grease the cooking grate with oil. Usually, the oil drips down onto the burners and you get flames where you don't want them. (The exception is breaded food—an old Italian grilling method that you will love—because a little oil on the grate helps keep the crumbs from sticking.) Just oil the food itself (or use a marinade with a little oil in the recipe) to reduce sticking. One thing for sure: Never spray a hot grate with nonstick oil from an aerosol can!

One final reminder about handling raw meat since it will go on a little trip from your fridge to your backyard. Remember that you have to keep raw meat separate from everything else—including your other food, especially veggies—until it's cooked. Be sure to thoroughly clean all counter surfaces that have come in contact with raw meat, and wash your hands in hot, soapy water for at least twenty seconds (about as long as it take you to sing “Happy Birthday” to yourself
twice).

Also, don't use the same plates that you used to carry the raw meat out to the grill to pile it on after it's cooked. You can use two separate plates, or line one plate with waxed paper, put the raw meat on top, then just throw the paper away so the plate underneath is clean and ready to transport the cooked meat. Same goes for utensils. Once the food is on the grill, you should wash the tongs that handled the raw food before using them again to turn the cooked food.

Now that you know everything about your outdoor kitchen, let's get some food on that grill!