Ruhlman's Twenty (46 page)

WE GRILL FOOD OVER OPEN FLAME
because fire makes food taste so good. It’s not the only reason we grill. We grill because it’s too hot in the kitchen to cook. We grill because the power’s out, and it’s the only way to get heat into the food. Grilling can be a communal act and so we grill to entertain and to share the cooking. We grill because it’s fun. But mainly, we grill for flavor.

The key to successful grilling, like all of cooking, is heat management. Grilling is different from other forms of cooking in that the heat is alive. Unlike a 300°F/150°C oven or a medium-high burner, the heat is in continuous flux. Moreover, we don’t usually have a temperature gauge, so grilling engages our senses in ways that other forms of cooking don’t. We sense how hot a fire is by standing near it, holding a hand over the coals, or sensing the heat on our face (that’s a hot fire!). We think ahead about how the food is going to change the fire—whether rendering fat will generate smoke and flames.

The smells of grilling food satisfy us in ways that smells generated by other forms of cooking don’t. The smell of chicken being sautéed doesn’t come close to delivering the aromatic happiness of chicken on the grill. The smell of hamburgers grilling at a summer barbecue is relaxing.

All this is why grilling can be so much fun—because it engages our bodies and minds more than any other form of cooking.

And this accounts for half the reason I don’t like gas grills. When we trade the act of lighting natural materials and waiting for them to become hot embers for the convenience of turning a knob, we’re preventing some of those bodily and sensory pleasures available to us when we build and cook over a live fire. The other reason is that we have less control over the cooking when we cook on a gas grill—in fact, when we use a gas grill we give away more control over our cooking than when we use any other kind of heat. We have less control of the direct heat—it tends to be low or high—and we have less control over the ambient heat—the grill is either open or covered, but with large holes that can’t be sealed off. Imagine driving a car with only two speeds—would you feel comfortable doing that? It would be a nightmare. That’s what cooking on a gas grill is, for me, except I’m not going to kill anyone.

Some preparations, such as a whole grilled chicken, I can’t recommend cooking on a gas grill. It’s kind of like upside-down broiling in the oven, with all the fat falling on the heating element. Frankly, I don’t always mind giving up the sensory engagement of a live fire, and am grateful sometimes for the immediate heat of a gas grill. If you do a lot of grilling, gas can’t be beat for mid-week, bang-it-out cooking. But I hate the control I relinquish when I cook over gas. There’s nothing wrong with gas grills, as long as you recognize that a gas flame below ceramic briquettes is a different kind of heat than live embers, so much so that I almost think of them as separate kinds of cooking.

What I have to say about grill technique applies to gas flames and natural coals alike, but they differ so much that the lessons we learn from grilling over gas are only half as many and half as deep as those we learn when we cook over live coals. Here, I focus on cooking over live coals. Much of this chapter will apply to gas grills, but not all.

When we grill, we use two categories of heat: direct and indirect—and with indirect, we typically put ambient heat, a subcategory, into play.

Direct means the food is cooked directly over coals. The temperature is hot, and the food is dripping liquid onto the coals, which return flavorful smoke.

Indirect means the food is not directly over hot coals. The side of the food that’s on the grill is not getting appreciably more heat than the side away from the heat. It’s receiving a gentler, more uniform heat than were it to be directly over coals.

Almost always when we use indirect heat, we cover the grill to take advantage of the strong ambient heat contained in a covered grill. When we use direct heat, we usually don’t. We cover food over direct heat to prevent flames and to increase the heat on the top and sides of the food.

How and when to use which? Understand what you’re trying to accomplish—think. We grill for two reasons, to cook the food and to flavor the food, and each reason requires a distinct strategy depending on what you’re cooking and flavoring. If you’re cooking something tender, you don’t need to cook it for long, so you usually cook it over direct heat for high flavor (lamb chops). If you’re cooking something that you need to make tender, you need to use indirect heat. Most often, because direct heat generates the flavor and indirect heat achieves tenderness, you can use both
(see the butterflied/spatchcocked chicken).
Think of your covered grill as a smoke roaster or simply as a really hot oven with smoke in it. Smoke clings to the meat, cooks there, and deepens in flavor.

The last thing you want to consider is how hot you make your fire. Do you want it really hot (resulting in a flavorful crust, desirable for a strip steak)? Or do you want it gentle (so that your food becomes thoroughly tender, desirable for spareribs)?

A number of smaller issues make grilling more or less successful. When you spread out the coals and put the grill rack over it, allow it to get hot before putting food on it (just as you would let a sauté pan get hot), which will help prevent sticking. It’s helpful also to coat the rack with some oil, which prevents sticking. Spray it with vegetable oil or rub it with a vegetable-oil-soaked cloth. Some food benefits from being rubbed with oil first, which helps heat transmission to the food. I rarely use wood chips in normal grilling; I think food gets plenty of flavor from the coals. I prefer regular charcoal briquettes to other fuel sources, but that’s a matter of preference. I usually use a charcoal chimney and newspaper to start a fire, but that’s a cost issue rather than a flavor issue, as far as I’m concerned. Most grill aficionados think using lighter fluid gives the food a bad flavor, but I grew up with a dad who only used lighter fluid and grilled a lot, so I have a nostalgic fondness for it. I prefer using a chimney, but if I need a large fire—more coals than will fit in a chimney—or am in a hurry, I use lighter fluid.

But again, the primary concerns when grilling are flavor and texture. Anything that can be sautéed, poached, or roasted can be grilled, including virtually any meat and fish. Fruits such as pears and peaches are excellent grilled. Most vegetables, even lettuces, can be grilled to great effects; the only issue here is whether or not the vegetable would fall through the rack. We grill for flavor, and as you’re developing that flavor, you also need to be cooking the food properly, that is, quickly for tender food, slowly for tougher food.

Sausage, one of the most commonly grilled items, is also one of the most difficult to do perfectly. The flavor of smoke goes really well with sausage, so grilling is the best possible way to cook most sausages, but they require special attention. You need to flavor sausages with the fire, but also cook them gently enough that the interior cooks through before the exterior is overcooked. The worst that can happen over live flames is that the sausage cooks too quickly and the expanding air and juices split the casing open, causing all the fat and flavor to fall onto the fire, and generating bitter, unhealthy smoke residue. The result is overcooked dry sausage, or sausage that’s overcooked on the outside and raw at the center. Sausage, meat tenderized from the grinding, nevertheless requires some indirect heat, or very low direct heat. To cook sausages, start them over a medium-high flame to get some color on them, and finish them in indirect heat, inside a covered grill.

Unless I’ve got to grill a lot of items at once, I almost always give myself a good amount of cool space on the grill if I need to slow down the cooking— or, more accurately, let the cool interior catch up to the hot exterior of the food.

All this means is that I put enough coals in the grill to cover half the bottom when I spread them out. This gives me a hot area and a cool area, and when I put food onto the cool area and cover the grill,
such as for the Butterflied Chicken,
I cook that food in what amounts to a 450°F/230°C smoky oven.

Grilling is all about heat management, so be sure to give yourself options. Build a fire on one half of your grill so that your food can be in any of three different temperature zones: hot direct heat, hot indirect heat, and warm indirect heat (on the cool side of an uncovered grill).

This is one of the most useful grilling techniques I know. I use it when I want to grill a large piece of meat, one that benefits from the flavor of the grill but also needs a lot of time to cook all the way through. The pork shoulder for the
Carolina barbecue
is a perfect example. So is the
grilled prime rib
. The method is also great for cooking a whole beef tenderloin and full pork loin.

The method and the idea are simple. Build a very hot fire (for flavor). Grill the meat over direct heat until it is well seared, and has begun to drip juices and fat that result in smoky heat. Remove it from the grill, place it in a low oven, and cook it until it reaches the desired internal temperature. The flavor of the fire stays on the meat, and even seems to bake in and develop a deeper smoke flavor from the extra time in the heat.

This is an ideal method for entertaining. Often, I’ll grill the meat early in the day and finish it later in the oven. You can even grill it a day ahead and keep it chilled in the refrigerator, finishing it when you need it. If you chill the meat, it’s important to take it out of the refrigerator long before you need it so that it can come to room temperature before you put it in a low oven.