Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [9]
CHARCOAL BRIQUETTES: Charcoal comes in two readymade forms, briquettes and lump charcoal. Both are essentially wood that has been preburned to make it easier to light the fire and get grilling. Briquettes are made from finely ground wood (sawdust) and various ingredients to bind the sawdust into briquettes, help the briquettes light, and make them last a long time. The primary advantages of briquettes are steady burning, fairly high and dry heat (see the discussion at left regarding gas), and a bit of smoky aroma to flavor your food. The chief disadvantage is the mess of handling and cleaning up charcoal. If you love grilling with briquettes, shop around for a good brand. We’ve found that national and boutique brands perform more consistently than less expensive store brands.
LUMP CHARCOAL: This type of charcoal is closer to real wood in its natural state and we prefer it for most grilling. It looks like rough pieces of burned wood, and that’s exactly what it is. The pros and cons are similar to charcoal briquettes with one additional consideration: lump charcoal tends to burn hotter than briquettes. A briquette fire won’t burn as hot as one made from mesquite lump charcoal, which burns at around 800°F, and can’t come close to the heat of bincho-tan, a dense Japanese oak charcoal that burns at around 1100°F. With lump charcoal, you can count on a great crust and browning on your steak. But the fuel burns out faster, requiring frequent replenishment for long-cooking foods. To get the best of both worlds, we sometimes combine fast-burning, high-heat lump charcoal with steady-burning, medium-heat briquettes.
WOOD: While charcoal has already lost half its potential energy during the preburning process, wood contains all of its potential energy and burns much hotter—a distinct advantage for browning and flavor. Wood also emits billows of smoke, which, given time, thoroughly infuse the food you are cooking. The downside is that wood takes longer to light than charcoal and is less consistent. It scores low on the convenience scale but high on the flavor scale. You make your choice. If it’s high heat you’re after, choose seasoned (aged) wood, which burns dry and hot. For more smoke, use green or unseasoned wood, which burns wet and slow. Barbecue pit masters often use a combination of the two.
Judging Doneness
Even the most sophisticated grilling technique will be of little consequence if the food is over- or underdone. Burning and overcooking food is the most common grilling mistake. Setting up the grill for bilevel grilling will help. We also give grilling temperatures for the fire and the cooked food in every recipe. But it is helpful to know what food is supposed to look like when it’s done. Here’s an overview of what happens to food as it cooks and what it should look like at various stages along the way.
The intense heat of a grill causes the molecules in food to move, react with each other, and form new textures and flavors. Water evaporates, causing shrinkage; proteins coagulate and shrink; starches soften and gelatinize; fats melt; and sugars caramelize and brown. All of these changes release volatile aromatic compounds, which make grilled food smell delicious. These changes also show you how far along your food is in the cooking process.
In our recipes, we often give doneness cues like “Cook until nicely grill-marked.” What