Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [4]
On a charcoal grill, the principle is the same: set up the grill to create an unheated area for cooking and a heated area for the coals. For the most even cooking, rake the coals to opposite sides of the grill and leave the center unheated. However, if your grill is small, you’ll get a larger cooking area by raking the coals to one side of the grill. Either way, to indirect grill, you put your food over the unheated area then close the lid to trap and circulate heat gently around the food. For indirect grilling you need to have the lid down or the food won’t cook because most of the heat will escape. It would be like trying to bake cookies with the oven door open. You’ll also let out all that wonderful smoke from the coals. See the chart for details on setting up your grill for indirect grilling. As in the charts for direct and bilevel grilling, we give a range of temperatures for each heat level, but the recipes in the book specify a temperature within that range.
Setting up a Drip Pan
For fatty meats like pork shoulder, beef brisket, and skin-on duck, you’ll need to put a disposable aluminum drip pan beneath the food. A drip pan not only prevents flare-ups but also acts like a roasting pan, catching flavorful juices that can be turned into a sauce when the food is done cooking. On a charcoal grill, set the pan under the grill grate in the bottom of the grill near the coals. On a gas grill, set the pan under the grill grate over the unlit burner(s). Or, use a roasting rack just as you would for roasting in an oven. Put the food on a roasting rack over the unheated area of the grill and set the drip pan directly beneath the roasting rack on the grill grate. With this method, you don’t need to lift the hot grill grate and there’s little chance of stray charcoal ashes falling into your flavorful juices in the pan. When you want steam for low-moisture foods like pork or to help soften connective tissue in tough cuts like beef brisket or veal breast, fill the drip pan with just enough hot liquid to provide steam, but not so much as to severely dilute the flavorful juices. About a ¼ to ½ inch of liquid in the pan should do it. Start with hot liquid. Cold liquid will increase your cooking time because some of the grill heat will be spent warming up the water. Choose whatever liquid you like. Water is fine for steam alone, but flavorful liquids like beer, wine, stock, fruit juice, or vegetable juice will provide a handy base for a sauce.
Adding Coals
When indirectly grilling on a charcoal grill, you’ll need to replenish the coals about once an hour. Adding hot coals works best, so keep some coals at the ready in a chimney starter. If you don’t have a chimney starter, put unlit charcoal over the old ones as they begin to die down, and leave off the lid for a few minutes to stoke the fire and help light the new coals. Then replace the lid and adjust the temperature as necessary.
Increasing Your Options
Indirect grilling requires a bit more setup than direct grilling, but it greatly expands the kinds of ingredients you can bring to the grill. We indirectly grill everything from whole chicken, turkey, and duck to pork ribs and pork belly, beef rump roast, veal shanks, marrow bones, rack of goat, ham of boar, whole rabbit, whole red snapper, whole eggplant, whole eggs (yes, eggs), flan, pretzels, shortcake, and corn sticks. And you’ve still got the hot part of the grill grate available in case you want to directly grill some tender vegetables alongside whatever you’re indirectly grilling. You can also sear meat directly over the heat, then move it away from the heat and close the lid to mimic the process of slow-roasting. Avoid lifting the lid. Every time you do, heat escapes, lengthening your total cooking time. Remember, if you’re looking, you’re not cooking.
RESTING
Grilled food tastes juicier after a brief period of rest. If you cut into a steaming hot steak or roast, the juices readily escape. But as meat cools, the proteins become firmer and better able to retain the juices. Ideally,