Your father never taught you
how to barbecue correctly because he didn't know how himself. When you start spouting off
about cooking meat after reading this, he will be looking up to you! Hey, it's no
secret that the more you know about cooking meat, the more of a man you are. Luckily,
things have changed some since the times when we could just club some animal, drag it back
to the cave, and hang it over a fire until it turns black.
"Pit Talk" will show you your way around the grills, teach you the differences between grilling out and barbecuing (yes, there IS a difference!), and show you some killer recipes. Oh yeah, we'll also debate such hot topics as gas versus charcoal and whether vegetables should ever touch your grill without a branding iron pressed to your right temple.
Since this isn't about the Yen of grilling, I can't get away with an answer like "not much and yet more than you can imagine." So, let's break it down into several ways in which grills differ:
Gas is very handy - quick to start, quick to heat, no messy charcoal. It's a great way to cook during the week when you have less time, and is usually healthier than frying, broiling, or baking since it pulls more natural fat and oil out and away from the meat. You'll get a surprise once in a while when the gas runs out mid-meal if you don't watch the level closely. Gas also tends to have a higher heat range in the cheaper models and makes it harder to cook meat slower and/or smoke wood chips for flavor.
Charcoal tends to give more flavor to the meat. We men also love to pour 1/4 can of lighter fluid on a nice pyramid of briquettes and lose our eyebrows. Of course, the odorless lighter fluids these days can't be considered much of an accelerant and are too safe for fun. You can also start charcoal briquettes with electric heating coils or by placing them in a metal "chimney" with a small amount of paper underneath. I personally think that by the time the chimney has the top coals started and ready, the bottom coals have already turned to ash too much and are wasted. I use the tons-of-lighter-fluid-light-add-more-lighter-fluid-carefully-when-it-burns-down-and-then-relight-woooof" method, which you won't read about in any books. Well, maybe down at the local fire station.
There are exceptions: cooking with gas can taste great if you avoid flare-ups and use flavoring chips like mesquite or hickory, and cooking with charcoal can taste bad if you use too much lighter fluid or use match-light briquettes during the cooking process. Or overcooking with either method: charcoal on a plate tastes like charcoal on a plate.
This is pretty simple: most uneducated meatheads who think they are barbecuing are really grilling out. Grilling out is just that - cooking your favorite meat on gas or charcoal to get a better flavor or cook healthier. There's nothing that makes meat taste better than grilling it out.
Except Barbecue. Barbecuing meat is a long proposition and involves slow cookin' your meat for hours at lower temperatures. This becomes an art: creating your spices and rubs, slow cooking with special basting sauces, and cooking your famous family recipe for BBQ sauce. Cooking times for a big hunk of meat will likely run between 4 and 18 hours, depending on your dedication!
Which lead me to another benefit which is often overlooked: standing around the grill drinking and bonding. I've got two parts of my "barbecuing kit" I usually put together: 1) a large snap handle plastic bin in which I keep my charcoal, mesquite, wood chips, lighter fluid, matches, and grilling glove. 2) a large Coleman TM cooler with the meat on ice, diet cokes and rum, limes, onions, knives, onions, etc. It also provides a nice seat while I am "manning the post" at the grill. Family gathering getting to be a bit much inside? Yep, time to check the meat!
Boy, I hate to share all my secrets, but here are a few. Bring meat to room temperature before cooking if you can. Starting with a hotter fire and turning sooner can help sear the meat and seal in juices, then move to a more moderate heat to finish cooking. After pulling the meat off the grill, squeeze a few lime wedges over it. This really "wakes up" the flavors and most people can't even pick out the lime taste afterwards.
Grilled Turkey
Tradition dictates that I grill out the traditional Thanksgiving turkey, and we have a lot of relatives in the area so that means that the standard 12-pound turkey just won't cut it. The hunt begins a week before T-Day: the search for the ultimate "Jane Russell" bird. Breasts the size of your head. Usually I find one that weighs in around 26 pounds and scares the extremely young or extremely old relatives. You also need a rotisserie rig for your kettle. Drop the rotisserie rod and motor off to the side; we're just using the ring to give us more height. Otherwise the grill top will rest on the breastbone and create an unsightly grey circle, and just ruin your pictures. I always wonder why people take pictures of the cooked turkey or dinner table all set up. Have you ever looked at those again? "Hey son, remember that table setting back in 1972? What a doozey!"
Shopping List:
Turkey, disposable heavy duty aluminum roasting tray with handles, garlic, butter, a few quartered onions, mesquite chips soaked in water, quality briquettes, drink of choice.Start the fire. Use indirect heating on each side, and use a grill with flip-up sides positioned over the charcoal piles since we will need to drop in some extra briquettes from time to time. Rinse the thawed turkey very well after removing the nasty parts from the various orifices. Wrap these semi-frozen bags of nasty parts in garbage from your trash can and push it way down to the bottom of the trash so your mother doesn't find them and use them in the gravy.
Use paper towels and dry the cavity as best as you can. Sprinkle copious amounts of salt in the cavity. Place the turkey in the roasting tray and rub the skin with butter. In each corner and the turkey cavity, drop a couple pats of butter, a couple onion quarters, and some garlic. Put a cup of water in the tray. Do NOT stuff the bird. Stuffing belongs in the oven, where it can be cooked evenly, doesn't soak up all the turkey blood, and gets nice and crispy. I recommend a spicy cornbread / hot sausage / apple stuffing. Trust me.
When the two charcoal piles are ready, drop half of your soaked and drained mesquite chips on the two charcoal piles and quickly put the turkey on and slam the top shut. This initial smoking is essential to good flavor and irritating the neighbors who are eating their Hungry Man Turkey TV dinners around the TV.
Cook for 1/2 hour, put the rest of the wood chips on for another round of smoking. From here on out, you need to check the turkey every 1/2 hour or so. When the turkey starts draining juices into the roasting pan, use a baster to keep the grease on the skin. If there is too much juice, remove some. You don't want the bird completely boiling in it's own juices. Keep these juices and use an oil separator. The remaining stock should be made into gravy - the smoke flavor is unbeatable! At least every hour, add a handful of briquettes to both piles to keep the fire going, and re-baste the turkey. This is important: Do NOT allow all the ice in your drink to melt at any point in this process. The skin will soon become a beautiful dark color. If it starts getting too dark you can make a foil cover for the roasting pan. Don't form it around the turkey, just make a nice big tent.
Large birds can take 4-5 hours. 8-10 pound birds take 1 1/2 hours; 12-16 pound birds take around 2 hours, so extrapolate. The size of your charcoal piles is the big variable of course. The turkey is done when the middle of the breast reaches 170 °F. If you have (shudder) stuffed the turkey, the center of the stuffing should have reached 165 °F. Bring the turkey inside and quickly remove most of the juices from the tray to make gravy. Let the turkey sit for 20 minutes before carving and removing stuffing.
Brine
Lately, I've been brining my turkeys every time. It really makes it moister and adds to the flavor. Here are the ingredients I've settled on:
1 gallon water
1/2 C molasses
2 T pepper
1 T thyme
1 T oregano
3/4 C Kosher salt
1/4 C lemon juice
1/2 C sugar
1/2 T ground ginger
1 1/2 T crushed garlic
1 oz maple flavor (optional)
1 Liter ginger aleBring mixture to boil mixing super well, cool to room temperature. Stir in a fair amount of ice to bring the temp of it way down. Buy a cheap small rectangular kitchen trash bin that just fits your turkey, with at least 6" to the top. Put a trash compactor bag (very thick) in the bin. Take the neck and bag of nasty parts out of the turkey and throw them away before your mother tries to use them in the gravy. Rinse the turkey well (cavity, neck cavity, armpits) and put it in the bin neck down / butt high, and fill it up with the brine enema solution. And correct, I'm not in marketing, good eye.
You need to cover the turkey completely. If you need quite a bit more, make more brine. If you're pretty close, add more ginger ale until covered. Burp all the air out of the bag and twist tie shut tightly, then put a healthy amount of ice on top of the bag. This should soak overnight if possible, keeping it cold enough so you may need to remove water and replenish the ice on top of the bag. When ready to cook, remove turkey and rinse well. Cook as above. Watch it closer because I've found a brined bird sometimes cooks faster than normal.
Unless you have a thermometer measuring the temperature inside the grill and you're checking it very often and tweaking the coals and air flow constantly, this isn't an exact science. Even if you are (we'll just start calling you 'Beaker' now...), there are still at least half a dozen variables that will affect cooking time: average temperature of the bird before cooking, meat to bone ratio for the bird you picked, heat lost to wind, and probably mood of the turkey at time of death. In other words, the cooking times fluctuate so we are the last defense against undercooked (health issue) and overcooked (they use the oven next year) turkeys. Consider it job security!
Anything to add or feedback? Email me at "pittalk at aftershock dot org"