Grilling and broiling are quick cooking techniques used for small, portion-sized, tender cuts of meat, poultry, or fish. For grilling, the food is placed on a grate and cooked with radiant heat from below. The heat source may be wood or charcoal fired, gas, electric or infrared heating elements. Grilling provides a distinctive smoke flavor either from the burning of wood or charcoal or the smoke created as the juices and fats render and drip onto the heating elements underneath. Direct contact with the grill grates also sear the food and mark the food creating a charred effect. Broiling is similar to grilling but cooks food with radiant heat from above rather than below. Broiling lacks grilling’s characteristic smoke flavor.
Preparing foods to grill: Cut and trim food to even thicknesses. For proteins, bring them to room temperature and blot away any moisture. For lean proteins that might stick to the grates, lightly coat them with oil. Season the foods just prior to cooking.
Preparing the grill: Scrape grill grates with a wire brush before (and after) cooking. Preheat the grill and create a zone of higher heat, one zone of moderate heat and one of lower heat. The different zones are used to cook different thicknesses of food or to hold food hot while other items finish cooking.
Grilling: Place the item presentation side down on the grill. For reference, place the item at “10:00 o’clock”. Let the food cook undisturbed. In a well seasoned grill, the food will easily release from the grill when ready to turn. After the initial marking, turn the item 90 degrees, to the “2:00 o’clock” position to complete the cross-hatch mark. Turn the item over and cook to desired level of doneness. Grilled items will be mostly done cooking on their first side, and will ned only a short time when turned. Timing is the least reliable means of determining doneness while grilling. Sight, touch, and internal temperatures are the best methods to determine doneness in grilled or broiled items.
For event cooking like banquets, items are “marked” on the grill, held closer to service and finished in the oven.
Pan grilling uses a fry pan with ridges that marks the items similar to grilling. Items in a pan grill to render of some fat that can smoke, but the smoke flavor can’t compare to a traditional grill.
Barbecue is classically roasting in wood-burning ovens or pits. It is a slow and low-heat method of cooking tender and tougher meats such as beef brisket, pork shoulder and ribs over a period of several hours and flavored by hardwood smoke..
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