1. You need to cook your food perfectly every time: Everything else is just frosting over the cake. If the steaks are not properly cooked, they are not worth eating. Although everyone has their own liking but generally for burgers and steak it should be medium - rare, a little beyond medium for pork and fishes and chicken until the pink color disappears. Flip Burgers Once and Only Once. Cook 2 minutes per side for rare, 3 for medium-rare, 4 for medium, and 5 for well-done. Keep grill at a steady heat.
2. Apply salt strategically: One way is to cure the meat by seasoning salt overnight. Sat will slowly extract water from meat thereby concentrating its flavors. The other way is to treat the meat, especially pork and poultry with brine water. This imparts moisture and flavor to the meat. Although it is used by cold cut manufacturers and high end restaurants, you must give it a try. I bet you will be highly satisfied. (Will give the basic brine recipe in the next post).
3. Have hotter and cooler side of the grill: Build your charcoal fire and once the charcoal is burned, its ready for grilling. Then move all the charcoal to one side of the grill and just very few on other side. This way we can grill big meat on slow side of the grill covered. Small meat can go on the higher heat side.
4. Smoke effect: You can give the smoke effect by adding small wood-chip tray to the grill setup. Charcoal grill can take wood chips directly but electric grill can have small wood-chip box or a packet.
5. Spices give life to grilling: Have your own blend of spices to add flavor to the meat. as much possible make spice blend from scratch and not use the store bought ones, which are no match to home made ones. It can be slat, pepper, cumin powder, cayenne pepper, crushed fennel, coriander seeds, etc are some examples.
6. Home made sauces are the best: Make sweet sauce with ketchup,honey, brown sugar. Salty by soy sauce, peanut butter. sour with vinegar, lemon, orange juice and spicy with chili sauce, Dijon mustard, etc. Thick sauce is good for small pieces of meat but thin sauce can be coated to big meat pieces that are slow cooking.
7. Mopping is essential: Basting over open flame with liquid constantly is important to tenderize the meat. It can be any liquid you can imagine like beer, booze, oil, juice, etc. I generally use Worcestershire sauce for beef, vinegar for pork and orange juice for chicken.
8. Don't waste the heat: Instead of wasting the big heating surface with just a few pork chops or sirloin, try to add skewers of mixed vegetables, fruits (grilled) for desserts, etc. It will help us save money and time too.
