Leisure and Hobbies

Barbecuing brings to mind sunny days, delicious odors and fine food eaten in good company. You’ve chosen a day to relax and impress your friends and family with fine cooking skills. You can enjoy an experience that at least in many parts of the country is only available for a few months. Make the most of it.

When you’ve prepared your meat and vegetables, it’s time to start cooking. Three simple to carry out steps can give you a great barbeque.

Barbeque grills come in three main categories - charcoal, gas and electric - and each type will appeal to a slightly different customer.

Preparation is nine-tenths of victory it’s often said. Readying your food, tools and the barbeque itself will bring you close to the goal line.

Good preparation techniques will set you on the road to a great barbeque. Meat, fish, vegetables and other aspects of the meal all require special handling.

Barbeque sauce had its origin in a very practical goal: to preserve meat. Prior to refrigeration, it was helpful to coat a sliced animal part with vinegar (a natural bactericide) or salt (a natural preservative). But after the turn of the 20th century when refrigeration became more widespread, and particularly after WWII when the US became obsessed with barbecuing, sauces became an integral part of the final flavor.

Whether it’s because of fat dripped on charcoal briquettes or simply having the flame turned up to maximum, many backyard chefs allow the meat to cook too fast. A barbeque is supposed to be a little slower. Taking more time creates a better tasting meal and a more pleasurable experience overall.

Brisket is a cut from the breast, usually the lower part. It commonly refers to beef, but can mean chicken, pork or other animal meats. Though a badly made brisket can certainly be tough and unappetizing, if well done they can be highly tasty.

Basic grill types range from charcoal to propane to natural gas, and sometimes even electric. The add-on features available with one model may help tip you toward one over the other.

It should go without saying that barbecuing can be dangerous. It should, but there always seem to be some who haven’t grasped that grills are hot and tools are sharp.

There are pros and cons to buying one type of grill over another. Those often revolve around convenience in use and clean up, cost and other factors. But the more passionate debates circle around the question of which one cooks the best. To that question there may be no correct answer.

Purists will argue that it’s only a barbeque if the food is cooked slowly, from indirect heat. Fast cooking, they argue, is ‘just grilling’. While the difference is partly a matter of semantics, there are two different styles and each has its purpose and strengths.

When you fire up the barbeque your goal is often to cook a fine piece of meat. You’ll prepare a fine sauce and monitor the procedure carefully to ensure the best outcome. But that result is only possible if you start with a great chunk of beef. Here are some tips on how to recognize the difference between brisket and the best off the bone.

We all know Amazon, and many of us order books, CD and DVD online, but have you ever purchased travel gear on the Internet? It’s as convenient as your local stores. And they often offer lower prices.

Which tools you find essential and which merely ‘nice to have’ depends on the type of barbecuing you plan to do. But there’s a list of tools that most backyard chefs will find come in handy much of the time.

An old English expression, “What’s the rub?” meant ‘what is the trouble’. But in barbeque-speak a rub is the mixture of spices that is slathered over the meat before cooking. And for many backyard chef that’s where the trouble starts. Nothing defines a barbeque aficionado so much as his own unique rub.

A great variation on the barbeque grill is a smoker. Smokers cook meat by enclosing it in a container that produces medium temperature smoke, hence the name. That heat from the smoke cooks the meal while various components of the vapor add flavor.

Every backyard chef has had to contend with insects interfering with the pleasure of a barbeque. If they don’t actually get in the food, they can still often annoy the cook. Here are a few effective, food-safe tips for how to deal with creatures who have rightly earned the name ‘pest’.

Using a thermometer to measure the temperature of the oven and the food is a practice with a long history now. For over 50 years instruments have been sold that allow cooks to add a little science to their art. Today, the variety of meat thermometers is greater than ever.

Many would argue that a barbeque doesn’t deserve the name unless the meat is slow-cooked in a smoky enclosure. Anything else is ‘just grilling’. But whether purist or pragmatist, everyone can agree that adding wood to a barbeque enhances the flavor wonderfully.

Cleaning a grill or smoker is no fun. Ok, now that we agree and have gotten that out of the way, let’s see why it’s important to do it anyway. Then we can examine how to do it as painlessly as possible.