Grilling Tips

Many of you have heard about "Dad's grilling tips," the unwritten list of things I've learned about grilling by watching my dad, talking to my little brothers, and experimenting myself. A number of you have requested the list, so I finally took the time to write a few of the grilling tips down. Hope you enjoy:

Grilling Tip #47: Don't get cute with it. Keep it simple. Some of the best steak in the world is Argentina’s asado or Brazil’s churrasco, and those usually have absolutely nothing on them but salt. You could spend all day measuring out just the right amount of vinegar, parsley, garlic powder, peanut oil and soy sauce for your marinade and just the right amount of paprika, thyme, brown sugar, and pepper for your dry rub, but as the great BBQ places in Austin will tell you, it will never be better than a rub of half sea salt and half fresh ground pepper (if you want, you can make it 1/10 cayenne pepper) and a marinade of Lea & Perrins Worchestershire Sauce. Rub the salt and pepper into the grains of the meat in a circular motion, pour Worchestershire on top, flip a couple of times over the course of 30 minutes, and you're ready to start grilling.

Grilling Tip #9: Don't poke your meat. Using a fork to flip meat dries it out, as does slicing into it to see if it's done. Your meat is your friend—you wouldn’t stab your friend, so don’t stab it. Or press it. Always use tongs to flip, wash after each time, and never cut into it—if you know your grill, you shouldn't have to.

Grilling Tip #41: Sides. Sides can make or break the meal. Asparagus (Steph likes it in the oven, I like it directly on the grill with a little olive oil and a lot of fresh ground pepper and sea salt), twice-baked potatoes (these go great with steak), bell peppers (red and orange work best—just put them on the grill before the steaks since they take longer to cook. I get the mini-peppers at CostCo and they’re easy to flip on the grill and get good grill lines. I also do giant red bell peppers when I grill spicy sausage), mushrooms (sautee in a pan with a little Pam, without washing them), onions (sautee for plenty of time over low-heat to cook them all the way through, with a little Pam at first, then a little olive oil or even butter), oven-baked sweet potatoes (so the skin gets a little crispy, with butter and cinnamon-sugar), fried calamari (with grilled cherry peppers and lemon juice), ¼” potato slices grilled for 5-6 minutes per side. They’re all good. My favorite side is blackened corn—pull the husk off, spray the grill with Pam, and put the corn directly on medium-high heat until it’s done (I use fresh ground black pepper and Vermont maple salt).

Grilling Tip #16: Nothin' but the good stuff. Of all the factors that go into good grilling, buying the right meat is the easiest to control since you can take your time doing it without worrying about cook times. This is most important with seafood, which you really need to get at a good place that will prepare it for you, but is also very important with beef. Getting steaks is simple (see Grilling Tip #47)—if you're cooking for only people who aren’t counting fat grams, get rib-eyes. If you're cooking for people who are a little health conscious, get only filet mignon (also known as beef tenderloin or chateaubriand). It’s the best. Older kids get NY strip or T-bone or whatever, and young kids get burgers and hot dogs. Don't be fooled by the fact that fancy places like Peter Luger serve porterhouse—that's a very specific case that involves complex dry-aging and special cooking processes. Filet is the only way to consistently get perfect steaks at home without the excessive marbling of rib-eyes that not everybody likes, so don't cheap out. Since cost is an issue for me, I go to Sam's or CostCo and get tenderloin pre-sliced in packs of four very thick steaks for about 30 bucks (it'll run a lot more at a grocery store). If you're a real pro, buy the tenderloin unsliced, rotate the three sides on the grill, and slice it yourself when it's done—the ends will be medium-well at the same time that the middle is medium-rare. No matter what you get, you want to look for Prime or at least a good Choice cut. The most important thing is that they’re at least an inch and a half thick. For the most part, chicken is chicken, as long as you get skinless breasts so you don’t have to mess with bones and skin. But you do want to think about things like thick vs. thin-sliced as it relates to cooking time and flavor. Avoid the breast "strips" which dry out on the grill.

Grilling Tip #18: Seafood. Fish and Shellfish are some of the easiest foods to prepare on the grill. Most fish filets, fish steaks, prawns and lobster tails can be grilled directly over the fire. Larger fillets and whole fish can be cooked indirectly. Smaller shrimp and scallops are easier to cook on a seafood grill topper. Fish and seafood cook very quickly so keep an eye on them. It’s done when skin looks opaque (fish must flake easily, and shellfish must be firm and white). A great addition to most grilled seafood is lime butter sauce: beat 1/4 cup butter at room temperature, 1 teaspoon grated lime zest, and 1 tablespoon lime juice in a small bowl until fluffy. Let stand for 30 minutes, pat it on each fish steak, and garnish with lime slices.

Grilling Tip #11: Salad—not just for girls. Before he passed away, my good friend Jesse famously used to refuse to eat anything green unless it was a Jolly Rancher, but I’ve come to love salads. Grilled chicken Caesar (with the chicken straight off the grill so it’s still hot and moist), house with ranch, whatever. They’re all good. My personal preference is always spinach. My favorite summer salad is spinach, cornbread croutons, fresh blackberries and cherries with the pits removed, and, if Steph isn’t eating it, pine nuts with thinly sliced red bell pepper. Brianna’s brand poppyseed dressing makes this salad perfect with a steak. In fact, Brianna’s is so good that I eat it on fresh red bell pepper all the time—it’s my favorite snack.

Grilling Tip #32: Fajitas! Like brain surgery and lawn-mowing, this is not the time to be a do-it-yourselfer. John Soules Pre-seasoned Fajita Beef (Wal-Mart, in the purple bag) is better than anything we can ever make, and it's the easiest thing in the world to cook—it's pretty thin, so no concerns about it being underdone. My son could cook this and it would still be great. Your only job is to get tortillas that aren't gross, meaning everything you've ever seen in a store is out. Best practice is to make them yourself (pretty easy, you can get a recipe online and make them in a crepe pan pretty quick and they taste amazing). The difference here is greater than anything else you can spend time or money on in your grilling. But if you don’t want to make them, your next-best bet is your favorite Mexican restaurant—just pick the tortillas up right before you grill. I can't vouch for the Soules chicken because I've never had it, but I'll bet it's good too.

Grilling Tip #36: Be prepared. You always want the grill to be fully pre-heated to your desired heat level before you put anything on it (except for the blackened corn, which needs to go on a little sooner). The easiest way to test the grill us using the hand test (how long you can keep your hand over it without having to pull it away). High heat (1-2 second hand test), medium-high (2-3 seconds), medium (3-4 seconds), medium-low (4-5 seconds), and low (5 or more seconds). Obviously, the more well-done you want your food, the lower you want the heat and the longer you want it on. So I’ll do my wife’s steak for quite a while before I throw mine on and crank up the heat so that it stays rare on the inside and charred on the outside. As far as preparing the grill so that the food (especially vegetables and chicken) doesn’t stick, Pam works but oiling the grill with olive oil is better (don’t use a brush with bristles that will melt—I’ve been there, and it took a month for the smell to leave my grill). Fish doesn’t go directly on the grill—get one of those baskets that let the heat in and let you turn them easily without sticking to the grill surface. Also, you’ll eventually need all of the following, but even without this stuff you can always just throw a steak on the grill (see Grilling Tip #47 and keep it simple): tongs, spatula, grill brush (or aluminum foil ball in emergency), sauce pan, olive oil, brush, skewers (garden rosemary works best), spray bottle (for flare-ups), cutting board, and hot pads. It’s also good to do things ahead of time when possible so that you can worry about nothing but the stuff on the grill. So that morning you can do any marinades, sauces, doughs, garnishes, vegetable cutting, skewering, etc.

Grilling Tip #5: Tastes like chicken. Chicken might be the hardest thing to do well on the grill. We’ve all had someone make us eat their undercooked Salmonella-ridden chicken, or over-cooked rubber chicken. It’s a tough thing to make right. Some people microwave it half way before they put it on the grill, but if you don’t know what you’re doing that can quickly get you to one of the two places I just mentioned. The heat for chicken should be about the same as you’d use to do steaks medium-well (so, lower heat than you’d use to do steaks medium-rare). In other words, you should be able to hold your hand over the flame for about 3 seconds before having to pull away. The key to the chicken is keeping it moist. The best chicken I’ve ever had was Jedd Fowers’ chicken that he soaked in a salt-brine for a day and somehow got thick chicken breasts both thoroughly cooked and perfectly juicy (the fresh mango cubes were also key). BBQ chicken is best when you keep piling the BBQ sauce on all throughout, using a clean spoon to spread the sauce each time. After experimenting with pretty much every sauce at the grocery store I think that KC MasterPiece spicy or original sauce is the best—something about the sugar ratio makes it burn perfectly so that you can get a little charred sauce without overcooking the middle. Jack Daniels also makes several grilling sauces that are great on chicken. Whatever you use, keep the sauce comin’ all throughout grilling.

Grilling Tip #34: Drinks. I love drinks. Because my options are limited as a Mormon, when I find a place like Pops on Route 66 in Oklahoma where Steph’s aunt and uncle take us I feel like I’m in heaven with thousands of choices. In my opinion, the best root beer in the world, by far, is Weinhardt's, but it’s tough to get east of the Rockies. A good back-up is IBC by the 6-pack at the grocery store or by the box at Sam’s, although the difference between Weinhardt’s and IBC is greater than the difference between IBC and every other brand. When I grill I like to make my Marcus-ritas with margarita mix, Sprite, Sweet & Sour mix, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a splash of Rose’s sweetened lime juice shaken over ice.

Grilling Tip #23: There’s always room for dessert. The thing I get the most requests for is my grilled pineapple. It’s not for everybody, but I love it. It’s easy (see Grilling Tip #47). Mix canned pineapple juice with brown sugar and marinade fresh pineapple in a 9x13 dish. I usually cut it in rings, but if I’m feeling lazy I’ll get a big box of fresh pineapple spears at CostCo that are really easy to grill because they are three-sided. Keep pouring the brown sugar pineapple juice on them while they’re on the grill, and then put them back in the same dish you marinaded them in so that they can cool while they suck up the juices.

Grilling Tip #42: Be creative (but see Grilling Tip #15). You can do a lot of creative things on the grill—sliced apples or pears, French bread (sliced the long way with butter and garlic salt inside), etc. Even homemade pizza. But don’t take it too far. Sure, you can theoretically make creme burle on the grill, but isn’t torching it in the kitchen cooler, and isn’t ordering it at a restaurant easier? One creative thing I did once and liked a lot was skewers with steak, onion, red-skinned potatoes, and Yukon gold potatoes directly on the grill (if you don’t have rosemary spears, use steel skewers, not wood, that are flat, not round). Another one that I love, although it’s faster to just run to Chili’s, is baby-back ribs. Those are cooked over indirect heat, so you heat one side of the grill and put the ribs on the other side for about 40 minutes, flipping a couple of times and applying plenty of BBQ sauce. Then you can put it directly over the heat for about 10 minutes on each side to char the sauce. Creative, but, again, not sure it’s worth the time. You can make salsa on the grill by wrapping 6 roma tomatoes (quartered), half a chopped onion, and 1 jalapeño in a large piece of foil and roasting on the grill for 10 minutes or until onion begins to blacken and everything's soft. Put it in a blender (on a low setting) with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons cilantro, 3 tablespoons lime juice, and salt & pepper and lime juice to taste. You can also add garlic, basil, poblano chilies, tomatillos, etc.

Grilling Tip #15: Know your limits. Sure, it tastes great when Capital Grille stuffs your bone-in veal shank with onions and mushrooms and things, or when McCormick & Schmick's leaves the center of their salmon raw to form the perfect blend b/w grilling and sushi, but those aren’t ones to try at home (although sashimi-grade fish can be marinaded in lime juice at home to make great ceviche). Those places do things that aren’t practical at home. That’s why they’re pros. So we should know our limits. At most, I’ll try something like stuffed flank steak at home, but I leave stuff like spicy scallops with wasabi-sake sauce or lamb chops with port sauce to the pros. Nothing beats a salt and pepper filet or rib-eye with the right sides. Keep it simple (see Grilling Tip #47).