Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [6]
On a gas grill, add the soaked chips or chunks to your grill’s smoker box or tray. If your gas grill doesn’t have a smoking tray, you can make one. Put a single layer of soaked wood in a disposable aluminum pan or wrap it in foil and poke holes in the foil with a fork. Put your foil smoking tray directly over one of the hot burners beneath the grill grate and preheat the grill. When you see smoke, add the food, and close the lid to trap the smoke. Whenever the smoke subsides, add more soaked chips or chunks (usually about once every 45 minutes). The more smoke you see, the more smoke flavor you’ll get in the food.
Choose your smoking wood based on the food you’re grilling. Mesquite and hickory emit thick, heavy smoke, which works best with robust meats such as beef and game. Oak, alder, and maple produce a medium-bodied smoke, which works well with a wider range of foods like pork, poultry, game, fish, and dense vegetables. Fruit and nut woods like apple, cherry, and pecan give off milder, sweeter smoke, which complements delicate foods like lean fish, shellfish, vegetables, and fruit.
You can also soak leaves, branches, vines, nutshells, herbs, and other plant material in water for smoking. For the most smoke, use green wood or branches rather than dry, seasoned wood. Green wood is moist enough to smolder over a long period, giving off wonderfully fresh-smelling smoke. Green tea leaves lend delicious herbal flavors to Wasabi-Drizzled Mussels with Green Tea Fumes, and grapevines add sweet and tannic aromas to Vine-Smoked Dungeness Crabs with Preserved Lemon Relish.
If you have no other source of smoke but really want smoke flavor, cheat by adding liquid smoke to your marinade, baste, or sauce.
Rotisserie Grilling
Indirect grilling usually requires frequent basting to keep the meat from drying out. A rotisserie does the basting for you. As fat melts from the meat, the rotisserie keeps the melted fat constantly rolling around the meat’s surface. Most grills can accommodate a rotisserie assembly, but each one works a little differently. Usually, you slide the spit rod through the center of your bird or roast, secure the meat with thumb-screw skewers or several lashings of kitchen string, then set the meat into the assembly. Before you complete the process make sure there is (1) ample space for rotation, (2) even weight distribution, and (3) a secure and appropriate weight load for your motor. If the food is too heavy or cannot rotate easily, it may burn out your rotisserie motor. On some grills, you’ll need to remove the grill grates so that the food can rotate unobstructed. If you can adjust the food’s distance from the heat, 4 to 10 inches works best in most cases.
Rotisserie grilling a whole animal is usually referred to as spit-roasting, but the process is the same. It’s just done on a large scale. For large whole animals like kid goat, spring lamb, and suckling pig, suspend the meat 1 to 2 feet away from the heat. For heavy animals, you may want to use pliable metal wire (18 to 20 gauge) and secure the backbone to the spit rod to be sure the animal does not spin loose on the rotisserie. To cook large animals evenly with a charcoal rotisserie setup, it helps to make a thicker coal bed beneath the animal’s toughest cuts (shoulders and hips) and a thinner coal bed near the tender cuts (along the back). It’s also nice to throw some soaked or green-wood chunks in the grill for smoke flavor. Rotisserie grilling may seem like a bother, but once the fire and food are set, it produces self-basting, superior-tasting meat and handily feeds a crowd. For some examples, try the Rotisserie Chicken for Everyone and Spit-Roasted Whole Kid Spanish-Style.
LID UP OR DOWN?
Putting a grill lid down over your food traps heat, moisture, and smoke. By trapping heat, the lid delivers some convection heat currents to the top of your food, which speeds the cooking and offers other advantages such as melting cheese on pizza. By trapping moisture, a lid can help dissolve connective tissue