There are several ways to cook even without the use of fire. Cooking is just a word used that expresses that the food is not raw. The cooking techniques we will talk about  first are direct heat cooking , and then indirect heat cooking methods.

The direct heat method is what most of us are accustom to, like: When Grilling. Cooking with direct heat. This grilling technique is what most people are doing when they fire that back yard charcoal or gas grill up and say there going to barbecue, but in essence they are grilling, and that’s fine since most of the time people will be cooking the food that requires grilling like temperatures, ie over 300 degrees. If you want to cook steak, hamburgers, chicken, fish, mostly anything can be cooked direct over the heat source and be enjoyable, but there are a few thing you can do to improve on the flavor of these foods if you understand a few more things about cooking indirect and using wood to accentuate the flavor experience, and we will touch on that more throughout  the discussion.

When Grilling over direct heat consider these few things before the food hits the grill and the quality of the food will go up instantly. Temperature of the fire. If you are cooking delicate meats such as fish the fire should be in the area of 300-315 F chicken can withstand higher heat and Steaks even more heat. Some guys will try to sell you on the IR burner Infer red burner that is and they will make these outrageous clams always to that's how so and so Steak house does it. Well Ill tell you this I have measured temperatures upward to 1500 degrees F internal to a pile of hot coals but that's not a temperature I would cook at unless I was in a hurry to ruin the food. Secondly, I would recommend that you let your food sit outside of the refrigerator for whatever time it takes to reach room temperature. The time this requires is dependent on the thickness of the meat. Letting the meat come to room temperature will relax the tissue of the meat for one as well it will eliminate the over cooking that occurs due to the resistance of the cold interior of the meat, and the moisture created from the cold meat will be eliminated. When the interior of the meat is really cold and you place the meat on the hot cooking surface the reaction internally to the food is one that drives the juice out of the meat into the fire and that will create an even bigger fire. If you take charge of the cooking temperature never having a higher temperature than the meat can withstand and then start cooking with meat that has become room temperature you will find the finished results more than pleasing.

The next thing to consider when cooking with charcoal is this ( sorry gas grill guys this wont work for you ) Only charcoal grillers will be able to experience this. Lower your cooking grates right on top of the coals until they make contact with the coals. The reason for this is to eliminate the oxygen gap between the fire and the food. Do this and you can grill the best ribeye steak you have ever eaten. When you cook a steak like ribeye or another cut with a fair amount of fat in it what will happen is as the steak starts to cook the fat will melt and hit the coals and that air gap between the coals and steak will ignite causing the flames of the fire to lick at the steak and embedding the flavor of burnt fat into the steak, it don’t matter who you are or how great the cut of meat once you have a fire burning around that steak the flavor is tainted, and we have all done it or seen it happen especially on gas grills, I cannot help but to feel sorry for those guys when I see them fighting those fires with the squirt bottles because there isn't much they can do except try to cook indirect at high temp, but the water content in propane will still force the juices out of the steak resulting in a floppy rubbery wished I was cooked with charcoal steak.

Try using these 3 simple tips and I guarantee you will thank me.

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