Grill Maestro

The #1 tip for cooking meat is to let it rest after you’re done cooking it. The #2 tip for cooking meat is to let it come up to room temperature before you start cooking it. The reason is that when you pull a steak out of the fridge, it’ll be cold on the outside [...]

Grilling lobster can be a real summer-time treat if you’ve never tried it before. To start, you have to be working with live or thawed lobster tails. It can’t be frozen. If it’s frozen, boil it for about three or four minutes before you start prepping it for the grill. If it’s live, you’ll want [...]

It’s the holiday season and aspiring grill maestros like myself might be thinking about giving the gift of food. Who wouldn’t love a delicious side of hickory smoked baby back pork ribs hugged in a delicious barbecue sauce just waiting for you under a tree? Well, just partially smoke those ribs (essentially do the 3-2 [...]

On the typical BBQ plate, you have a whole lot of meat paired with a whole lot of other meat. You might slide in some potato/macaroni salad or some bake beans, but want to add something different to the flavor profile? Well, the HPBA teamed up with the BBQ Queens, Judith Fertig and Karen Adler, [...]

One of my best money savings tip for new grillers is to buy a used propane tank to swap out at your local Wal-Mart/Home Depot/Lowes. Where can you find a used propane tank? My #1 suggestion is to scour your local Craigslist or Freecycle sites for people giving away their old grills. The grill itself [...]

Main Street, a pseudo life-style / money blog of TheStreet.com, published a quick hit list of tips near the Fourth of July Weekend. The tips were pretty basic, even to a novice like me, but worth checking out if you’re new to grilling. They briefly discuss the merits of charcoal vs. gas and the use [...]

When it comes to grilling (and cooking general), one of the most powerful tools in your belt isn’t your tongs or your fork or your thermometer – it’s your salt shaker. Salt, technically a mineral and not a spice, intensifies the taste of anything and allows the existing flavor to shine. It’s funny how that [...]

Corn on the cob is delicious. Corn on the cob the grill is heavenly… if you do it right. Fortunately, the right way is pretty easy and there are several “right” ways to do it. I personally prefer the first husk on option, as it reduces the amount of waste, but any of the three [...]

The concept of direct and indirect cooking is crucial whenever you’re talking about becoming a bona fide Grill Maestro (I am not one yet, but I’m working on it!). It sounds simple enough, direct cooking is when you cook directly on the fire or heat whereas indirect cooking is when you let the cooking occur [...]

I love a good hot dog, I’m sure everyone does, and so when I was sent this AOL Food photostream of hot dog toppings around the world I had to check it out. It says around the world but it’s heavily influenced by American regions (there are a handful of international toppings like the TPM [...]