I love barbecue but seem to know very little about it! I cook lots indoors but haven’t had much practice outdoors or with big meat
To make sure my next BBQ goes better than the last: What are your favourite places (websites, YouTube channels, blogs, etc) to get barbecue advice/knowledge/ideas/inspiration?
Alternatively: what are your best pieces of advice for BBQ novices? :)
Thanks in advance!
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Book: Meathead: The Science of Barbecue used to be the goto
Transfer any dish you know well inside that requires an oven as a starter. With the oven mentioned, there’s no shame in doing a chicken in the oven and finishing it off in the BBQ and this works in reverse wrap what you’ve cooked in foil and hold it in the oven don’t just crowd the grill esp don’t mix raw and cooked.
Food safety is the biggest contender you’ll have, cooking outside will create so many more variables and the nature of BBQ esp when starting out can really mess things up if you just assume, even upper end stuff like Green eggs and Blackstone need adjustments on a windy day. Get decent thermometers (not one) and run through some good food safety tutorials.
With that in mind, have a raw to cooked flow with separate tools I go left to right using colour coded tools red = raw, yellow =cooked do what works.
Low and slow is the way to go
Remember it’s the rendering of the fat hitting the heat source that does the BBQ flavours this is (fun as a veggie), so if you’re doing steaks and such start heavy and work down to lean.
Fire triangle: Air Fuel heat: once your going Air becomes the dominating force, don’t forget your airflow.
Find a good source for meat if your local butcher is good, becoming a regular is basically BBQ school with deals.
Keep doing it, prob we have here in the UK is there’s a mentality only to do BBQ when it’s a special occasion and the weather is perfectly sunny. Just fire that thing up for any reason, I don’t get why we wait until 20 relatives are round Uncle Jim’s already pissed halfway down the kids slide, and the FIL is starting you down to try and one shot it :D
Thanks for this, really helpful stuff :)
That book looks great! I love how-to-cook books instead of just recipe books (i.e. Salt Fat Acid Heat or Sohla’s Start Here) and that looks like a great BBQ version.
wrt food safety, I should be alright! One of the reasons I haven’t BBQ’ed much in the past is that I’m very safety focussed.
Another reason is that I don’t eat much meat unless I’m planning on making it really delicious! Meat thermometers will definitely help (with both deliciousness and safety).
The Number 1 reason I don’t BBQ more often is that my garden is down a ladder at the moment! Once we’ve got stairs, (and meat thermometers!) there’ll be nothing stopping me :)
Did you have any advice for cooking for veggies? (a lot of my friends are vegan and they deserve good food too!)
Awesome stuff, I’m glad it helped.
I’m a veggie, so I can be a bit more up to date with my references, love the attitude of good food btw. BBQ is pretty meat focused thing and veg/veg isn’t cool :D
Biggest thing, don’t cross contaminate, esp when cooking for vegans. Us veggies obviously eat things like cheese and for me personally I wouldn’t be bothered about same tools surface etc, but someone who is avoiding all animal products this needs to be cared for. That being said, most of the vegans I know also wouldn’t really care if accidents happen, so don’t fret it too much.
My Brother in law cooks all the veggie stuff first then meat, but you could also do separate cook surfaces he has a little green egg and a big one, so our stuff goes on the little guy as veggie stuff doesn’t require a lot of cook time.
Remember the fat thing, there’s a weird psychology that veggie/vegan has to be healthy this is nonsense as cookies exist. Coconut oil is a great fat for BBQ as it’s got a really high flashpoint, and you can use it a bit more like bacon grease unless you live in a hot place.
Vegan ALT meats are really good now be sure to either buy more or hide some for the people that need them as non veggie and vegans will eat most of them as a curiosity and leave no options for them. Super awesome people want to try new things and I wouldn’t care in a social gathering, but sometimes it’s your main meal of the day that you save for. This happened at my Mums wedding they just put all the veggie sausages and burgers out together and there wasn’t much to start with so we had dry bread rolls with coleslaw wooo :)
There are so many cool recipes out there, maybe find a veg/veg guinea pig to test on before a big event what wouldn’t pass for a meat eater could be amazing for a veggie.
Halloumi is peak for everyone no wait not vegans,
Marinades plants are all about transporting stuff about stick em in something nice for day before even watermelon?
If you want to really wow people check out SauceStache he likes to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things and even just one of these will have people requesting them :D
I definitely agree about veggies/vegans getting stereotyped as too-healthy :) Although I do find that, even if a recipe has technically same level of unhealthiness, the vegan equivalent of a meal never makes me feel quite as unhealthy as a meaty one.
I think veggie/vegan creativity makes for much better meals than just your standard unseasoned beef and bread combo. If I’m going to use meat, I might as well use it wisely, but if I can get the deliciousness of meat, without using meat, then that’s even better! So SauceStache is a perfect recommendation, thanks! I’m going to watch a lot of his videos (especially the one on DIY Beyond meat).
I’ve tried bbq-soy-sauce-feta-watermelon once before - I think I was the only person who genuinely enjoyed it. I might end up being my own guinea pig if I end up being too adventurous again :)
Two pieces of advice:
- Get a meat thermometer
- Take the meat out of the fridge early so it comes to room temperature before you start cooking
Practice heat control in your grill. Learn how to create different zones with it for direct and indirect cooking. Experiement with dry brining your food. Get a good instant read meat thermometer and a good leave in thermometer with a couple of probes. Cooking on a grill is essentially the same as cooking with anything else once you know how to get your grill setup.
I have an egg so I lurk on the Big Green Egg Forum and check The BBQ Buddha from time to time and have had really good results with Car Wash Mike’s baby-back rib recipe. Your milage may vary based on what you’re using.
More generally, I also just picked this book up for recipes that aren’t just American BBQ. The author is awesome, and put the book together to be as grill-agnostic as possible.
Beyond that, keep it clean and don’t cross-contaminate. If you have a gas grill, keep the drip pan empty, gently clean the tubes, and scrape all the accumulated grease and soot off the inside of the grill with a rubber spatula. If you have a charcoal grill, keep the ash cleaned out and store it in an airtight metal container to keep any stray embers from re-igniting. Either use separate tools to handle raw meat, or wash them thoroughly before you touch cooked food with them.
And have fun! Some stuff won’t turn out, but I’ve only made one truly inedible thing when I set my gas grill on fire (I forgot to clean it.) The more you practice, the better your results.
Book purchased! As well as the other one mentioned by Destide earlier. Excited to learn lots, thanks for the recommendations
We’ve got a gas grill, but didn’t know you had to clean the tubes. I always look in all the crevices to check for spiders anyway tho, so hopefully no future accidental fires
Also: I didn’t know what a big green egg was until earlier today but they look fantastic! Hope your eggy barbecue dreams are coming true with having one :)
Yeah I had an old toothbrush I’d gently brush them out with and I assume it did something? That’s what the manual said to do.
The bigger issue imo is scraping the accumulated grease and grime off the inside of the firebox and emptying the drip pan regularly.
The local cats love the grease trap.
One thing I would add to the great advice already given is keep your kit clean. You do not want grease accumulating and catching fire.
