That’s right friends and neighbors! It’s open season again. That glorious time of year when flavored smoke wafts about suburb neighborhoods everywhere, whetting appetites, and causing even the manliest of men to wear aprons. The time of year where husbands actually volunteer to run errands, just so they can head out to the home improvement store and lust after the grills on display.

I’ve been hooked on grilling for some time, and I’m quite excited for this years season. I’ve used gas grills exclusively for some time now so top on my to-do list this year is to get a charcoal grill/smoker and start experimenting with that. I’ve wanted to do that for a while now, and needless to say, I have several things planned already (insert eeevil laughter here).

To kick the season off right I wanted to share a couple of quick grilling tips that had a BIG impact on my grilling:

  1. Use a timer. I don’t know why it took me so long to start using a timer regularly, but it has had a HUGE impact on my cooking. I can’t share many specific times with you as it will vary greatly depending on the dish and on your particular grill, but I can tell you that for a lot of the common grill meat such as burgers, chicken, and steak, the less opening of the grill and the less flipping you do, the better off you’ll be. For example, lets say that with your particular patties and your particular grill, it takes 3 minutes per side to cook a burger. If that’s the case then you want to put them on, set the timer, then NOT TOUCH IT until the timer goes off unless you absolutely have to. Then flip and repeat. If you get the time just right they will come out perfectly cooked. This also allows you go to figure out times for well, medium, and rare so you don’t have to cut your steak in half to see if it’s done.
  2. Let it rest. I find that with ground meats like burgers, brats, or dogs, this step isn’t very vital, but if you are grilling whole meats like chicken breasts, or steak, then it’s crucial! This is something that practically no one does, but it’s absolutely vital if you want juicy meat. When it’s done cooking, you don’t slap it right on a plate and start eating it, instead you take it off the heat and let it sit for a bit. A big fat steak may need to rest as much as 15 minutes, but usually you can get by with less. The idea here is that meat is made of small cells which is what holds in the moisture. When the meat is heated, the water expands and escapes the cells. Some of that comes dripping off your meat to cause those flare-ups we are oh-so familiar with, and the rest of it will be lurking kind of in between the cells just waiting for a way out. If you stick a knife in it at that stage, all the juice will come running out, BUT if you let it rest, then it will settle back into the cells again instead of running all over your plate. If you find yourself saying “I can never seem to get a juicy steak on my grill” then give this a try!
  3. Time to brine. The making of a proper brine deserves it’s own post, and I’ll probably write one eventually, but I’ll give you a sneak peak now. Obviously when you grill it’s best to get meat that has never been frozen, but that’s not practical for a lot of us all the time, and if you DO have frozen meat you don’t want to use the microwave to defrost it because some of it will end up partially cooked before you even put it on the grill. So what a lot of people (myself included) end up doing is putting the meat in some warm water for a while to thaw it out. What you may not know is that this is a perfect opportunity to add some additional flavor and moisture to your meat! Instead of just putting the whole darn package into a bowl of water, instead remove the frozen meat from the package, and rather than putting it into plain water, make up a brine! In the hour or two that it takes your meat to thaw out, the salt and the flavors of your brine will infuse into your meat kicking up the flavor big time. I’ll let you do your own googling to find a brine recipe, but basically you want very salty water, plus whatever additional spice and flavors that will work well with the dish you are making. Yum.

Hopefully those three things will kick your grilling up a notch and make you the envy of the neighborhood! I’ll be kicking in more tips as the summer goes on as well as sharing some of the things that I’m making. Stay tuned!