Читать книгу BBQ For Dummies - Carey Bringle - Страница 31

It may take a few hours to get your grill or smoker ready. Preheat your grill or smoker and get it up to the temperature that you need to cook.

Use a charcoal chimney or a wood- or paper-based fire starter to get your coals started. You can choose from several varieties of wood- and paraffin-based starters on the market.

Avoid lighter fluid at all costs. You can find an easy way to get coals started without too much fuss and mess and avoid the off-putting odor and aftertaste that come with lighter fluid.

Make sure that the charcoal you use is high quality, clean, and dry. Charcoal that sits outside can get damp, and if it gets damp, it can gets moldy, which can affect the flavor of your cook.

Likewise, make sure that the wood you use to smoke is dry and handy so that you don’t have to interrupt your cook to get more wood. Lay out the amount of wood you think you’ll need to keep the smoke consistent throughout your cook.

Decide on your cooking method ahead of time:

 If you’re cooking over indirect heat on a grill, get the fire started at least half an hour to an hour before you want to start cooking. By starting early, you get a sense of how many coals to add at what intervals to keep your temperature consistent and even. You place the fire to one side of the grill and cook on the other side.Figure out how you can add fuel to your fire without disrupting your cook. Some grills have a hinged grate that allows easy access to the coals in the grill. Others have a door to the fire box that you can open without disrupting the grate. If you have to lift the grate — and maybe your meat — to add fuel, just make sure that you plan for it ahead of time and have any tools you need close at hand to make it quick and seamless.

 If you’re using a smoker, get your fire started an hour or two before you put the meat on to cook. That way you heat up the outer walls of your smoker, which can seriously affect the time and temperature of your cook.

Never underestimate how outside weather can affect your cook or the temperature of your smoker or grill. Smokers and grills with thin walls can be especially affected by the ambient air temperature, which can also greatly affect how that smoker or grill performs or how the temperature varies.

Altitude is another factor that can seriously affect the time of your cook, so if you’re at a higher elevation than recipes are written for, take that into consideration. (All the recipes in this book were written for an elevation of 575 feet.)