Mastering the Grill_ The Owner's Manual for Outdoor Cooking - Andrew Schloss [27]
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Finding the right temperature for the food you’re grilling is easy on a gas grill because the fuel-to-oxygen ratio is largely predetermined by the gas flow. Your variables here are the knobs and the lid (and the weather, but there isn’t much you can do about that). For the highest heat on a gas grill, crank the knobs on full blast and put the lid down to trap the heat. For the lowest heat, set the knobs to low and close the lid. For varying heat levels, set one burner to high, set the second to low, and if you have three burners or more, set the others to medium. You can also use the upper warming rack for low heat.
With a charcoal or wood fire, you still manage the fuel-to-oxygen ratio, but you have a few added variables: The type of fuel (denser woods burn hotter than less dense woods), the thickness of the coal bed, the amount of potential energy remaining in the burning coals (which is roughly determined by their appearance), and the vents on the firebox and lid of the grill. Adjusting the temperature is a matter of making a thicker or thinner coal bed and managing the airflow with the grill lid and vents. If you spread a fresh layer of hot coals to about a 4-inch thickness, you’ll have a blazing hot fire at roughly 650°F. As the coals burn and turn to ash in a wood fire, their color will change from bright orange to dull red, with increasing amounts of gray ash. Regulate the temperature by raking the coals into a thick or thin bed (for high or low heat), adding fresh coals, and opening, partially opening, or closing the grill vents and lid. Opening the vents and lid raises the temperature by increasing oxygen flow. Closing them lowers the temperature by cutting off the oxygen supply. The charts that follow explain how to create varying levels of heat for both direct and indirect grilling with charcoal or wood.
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DIRECT-GRILLING GUIDE
INDIRECT-GRILLING GUIDE
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* At this temperature, you should be able to hold your hand (palm down) about 4 inches above the grill grate and count, saying “one thousand” after each number (“1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, …”), the number of times listed in the chart without having to withdraw your hand.
01. Judging Meat Doneness
The two parts of a muscle—muscle fiber and connective tissue (see page 46)—cook differently. As meat heats, the protein in the muscle fibers becomes firmer and more opaque, and the collagen in the connective tissue melts. We can use either of these changes to determine the doneness of a piece of meat, and the one you use depends on the meat you’re cooking.
Tender meat tends to have very little connective tissue. Most steaks are soft enough to bite into when raw, which allows us to judge their degree of doneness solely on the changes that happen to the protein in the muscle fibers as they heat. Raw meat protein is wet, translucent, brightly colored, and soft. As it gets warmer it becomes drier, more opaque, browner, and firmer. The hotter the meat gets, the more these physical changes manifest themselves, which allows us to equate the look and feel of a piece of cooked meat with specific temperatures. For instance, at 120° to 125°F, the center of a porterhouse steak is juicy, bright red, glistening, and tender; we call that rare. At 135° to 140°F, the center is moist, pink, matte, and resilient; we call that medium-done. Raise the interior temperature to over 165°F and the meat becomes dry, tan, dull, and firm—in other words, well-done.
When judging the doneness of tough meat that has a lot of connective tissue, we do not have the luxury of using the changes in muscle fibers as our guide. Tough meat is done cooking when it is tender (period!); there is no such thing as a rare, medium-rare, or medium-done brisket.