Grill Maestro

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 [...]

Let’s say you’re smoking or grilling in the early afternoon, simply because the mood strikes you, but you find out that your friends will begin descending on your abode for dinner. You know that if you toss the cooked meats in the fridge and then bring them out later, it won’t taste as good. You [...]

Whenever cooking burgers, I usually cook to both time and touch. That means I cook until the burgers to what I consider an adequate amount of time and to a firmness is what I associate with a particular level of doneness. This, however, can be dangerous according to some studies. In fact, courtesy of Megan [...]

In the mood to grill some fish but don’t have a basket or cedar planks to grill on? Try making a temporary grilling platform using a piece of cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil. That’s right, stiff cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil is a great way to create a small platform for you to grill fish [...]

Consumer Reports offers up, as their tip of the day for May 17th, some very useful gas grill shopping advice for those of you looking to get your own propane grill (or replace and old clunker ready for the scrap heap). Some solid advice includes bringing a magnet to figure out if you have a [...]

When it comes to grilling and wood, the rule of thumb is to soak the wood in water for thirty minutes to an hour. Whether it’s wood chips and chunks for the smoker or cedar planks for when you want to grill up some fish, you should always soak it for more than thirty minutes [...]

My good friend Scott, one of the masterminds behind the Ghent Bar Tour, which, through their charitable efforts, recently reached $50,000 in total donations to the Make A Wish Foundation; sent me a package of cedar grilling planks as a wedding gift. That’s a true friend right there. While I haven’t had the opportunity to [...]

It always pains me to see someone flip a steak with a fork when they could just as easily use tongs. You never want to pierce a piece of meet on the grill because it gives the meat’s juices the opportunity to escape! That leaves a piece of meat that’s less juicy and less tender [...]

Woah! Did I just recommend that you don’t cook food thoroughly on the grill!? Hold your horses, I did just say that in the title but let me clarify and explain why I wrote that. When you cook something on the grill, you’re heating it up right? When you pull something off the grill, it’s [...]

The point of searing a steak is to trap the juicy juiciness inside and keep it there so that you can enjoy it after you’ve plated your dish. With that in mind, here are a few steak tips that help maximize that flavor and may keep you from messing things up!

If you start with your [...]