7 Professional Grilling Tips
1. Always start with a completely clean grill. The fish that you cooked last week was tasty, but unless you want a hint of fish with your hot dogs, burgers or steak, you need to clean your grill before cooking. You should clean you grill each and every time you use it. Wait until it cools down, and then clean the surfaces with baking soda and the racks with grease fighting dish soap and water.
2. Before you begin cooking, spray your cooking area with a nonstick cooking spray. This will prevent your meat from sticking when you are rotating or removing it. If your meat sticks and tears, you will lose a large amount of juice, and your meat may dry out.
3. Never place food on the grill until the temperature is correct. The fluctuation in temperatures will cause your food to dry out or burn. If you are using a charcoal grill, make sure that the coals are completely gray before putting the meat on the grill. This will allow the temperatures to level out, and the majority of the lighter fluid to burn off.
4. While marinating before you cook will add flavor, covering your meat in barbeque sauce before cooking will dry your meat out, and may even cause it to burn. This happens because most BBQ sauces contain high amounts of oil and sugar that will burn quite easy. If you use barbecue sauce, only add it in the final moments before removing your meat from the grill. Just remember that meat has a natural flavor that is brought out by grilling and you don’t want to ruin that flavor.
5. Searing you meat will lock in the juices and taste but you don’t want to cook your meat at that high temperature for the whole amount of time. Once you have seared both sides, reduce the heat to medium. This will ensure that your meat is full of flavor and tender.
6. Once meat is cooked, never put it back in on the same plate you had it on when it was raw. This could cause the spread of many serious food-borne diseases. Also don’t handle cooked meat with the same utensils that you use for raw meat. I like having two sets of thongs with different colored handles to make this easy.
7. Never poke holes in your meat while it’s cooking. Puncturing the meat will cause the juice inside to leak out into the bottom of the grill. This make your food dry and make for a messier clean-up.