How To Barbeque - Managing Your Heat

Whether you are using gas or charcoal, you need to know how to manage your heat source, because it affects everything you cook. If you're using gas, then it's in the burner management, and if you're using coals, then it's all about how the briquettes are prepared and laid out.

The key to consistently good grilling is having control over the temperature. The only time you should have any variation in heat is when you build it that way. That means you need to create one area for indirect cooking, if that's what you need, and another for direct cooking.

We'll cover gas in a minute, but knowing how many coals to use is one of the first secrets of being a grill master. The number of charcoal briquettes you use will depend on the size of your gill, the amount of food you will be cooking, weather conditions and cooking time.

As a general rule, plan on using about 30 briquettes to cook 1 pound of meat. A standard five-pound bag contains 75 to 90 briquettes. You want to make sure that you have enough briquettes to cover the grill's pan in a single layer, extending out about 2" beyond the area of the food on the grill.

Until you can just eyeball that amount through experience, you'll need to place the briquettes in the grill's pan to determine the quantity. If you're a total rookie, then stack them up in a rough pyramid shape to light. Soak the briquettes with approximately 4 ounces of lighter fluid, and let set for a few minutes before lighting. Coals will be ready after you use another quart of lighter fluid, have two more beers and run out of matches!

If you want to look like this "ain't yer first rodeo", go down to the hardware store and buy a charcoal chimney. Cost you about $15. Also grab one of those funny lighters that look like a gun with the long barrel. Cost...$5. Be careful, some of them are child-proof...ask your kid for help! Great for lighting candles, gas fire pits, real wood fires and barbecues! Lasts way longer than you think, as long as you don't light everybody's smokes with it!

Some people aren't sure how to use the chimney, so, real quick...turn it over, wad up two full sheets of newspaper (that's one section, pages 1-8, no more than that!) Pour a little lighter fluid on the newspaper. It will help it ignite and burn evenly. Remove the grilling surface and place the funnel upright in the bottom of the barbecue. Pour in the amount of coals you need. Light the paper once through a breather hole and phwump, the lighter fluid ignites the paper all the way around and your towering inferno is under way. It smokes like crazy for about a minute, but after that, it's no muss, no fuss, the coals are ready in 10-15 minutes and your hands aren't even dirty!

Okay, rookie, the coals are ready when you see flames at the top of the coals and they are just starting to change color to gray.

Put a glove on the hand you're going to use to flip the funnel over. Amazing, I know, but trust me...it's hot! Dump the coals, spreading them evenly where you want direct heat. You can use your scraper to spread them evenly if you messed up. Place the funnel out of reach of small, inquisitive children who don't know what fingerprints are yet or why they might need them, and replace the grilling surface.

Once you have mastered the art of lighting charcoal, you may think it's time to step up to the big leagues. Not so fast, Mr. Semi-pro-ball! Grill Masters like to have a controlled temperature variation...a hot area (direct) and a not so hot area (indirect). In grilling this is called a two-level fire. If you have a dual burner gas grill just set one burner on high and the other on medium. The advantage to doing this is that you will have one area to sear foods and another area to cook them through.

For a charcoal grill, you will want to set up half of your fire grate in a single layer of coals and the other half in two or three layers of coals. This will give you the hot and medium areas to do your cooking. This method is also good if you are cooking different types of foods at the same time. For instance, if you were grilling fajitas, you would sear the meat over the high heat and cook the peppers over the lower heat. Once you have mastered the two-level fire you will quickly see the advantage of this method and it will be the only way you want to build your fire.

The other type of fire you need to learn how to build is the indirect fire. The simplest form of this of this fire is to put all the coals on one side of the grill, only. For a gas grill this is simply turning the burner on one side on and leaving the other off. It doesn't work quite as well, because many gas grills don't have any way to adjust thedepth of the heat source or cooking surface, so it tends to cook more on the top than the bottom. It will take more practice to judge how much more often you'll need to turn your meat, as well as the time to recoup the loss of heat when opening the lid!

Personally, I use the indirect method for almost everything except beef. Pork ribs requires both, but chicken, sausage, boneless pork, lamb and almost all of your vegetables will do much better with indirect heat. They won't scorch, burn, or dry out, once you know what you're doing.

With a charcoal grill, like a Weber kettle, or something a little more 21st century, you can do much more than this. The ring of fire is an excellent strategy for an indirect fire if you are using the kettle style of grill. To build this type of fire, after the coals are ready, push the coals to the outside of the coal grate, leaving the middle empty. This method gives you an even heat around the entire grill and a good indirect cooking space.

In the "my grill's better than yours" category, the bottom of my grill is divided into three sections by removable metal separators. One quarter on the right, a quarter on the left and half in the middle, or any other arrangement I want to play with. That way, I can fill the center half tray with coals and have indirect on the sides, or if I'm doing a turkey or roasting a leg of lamb on the rotisserie, I can put coals on the outside and have the indirect in the middle. Did I mention the rotisserie...?

Another thing to consider when building a fire is using hardwood. Using slow burning wood chips will add asmoky flavor to your food. If you are going to add wood chips to your fire, then you will want to prepare a specific place to do that. For a gas grill you can use a firebox or wrap the moistened wood chips in foil. For a charcoal fire you will just need to leave a small area of the coal grate with just a few coals. This makes a good place to put wood chips and they will smoke, but not burn away quickly.

Now that we've covered the tools that you'll need, the mechanics of your grill and how to build your fire for both direct and indirect cooking, we can move on to different styles of grilling, which I'll cover in How To Barbecue - Grilling Methods.

By: Robert "Bubba" Q D Lischus

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Robert "Bubba" Q. D. Lischus, renowned grill master, currently resides in Northern California, but grills globally. He recently released "The Layman's Guide To Great Barbecue", available for download at no cost. Follow his wit and pith at Bubba's How To Barbeque Blog or on Facebook

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How To Barbeque - Managing Your Heat