Sanity Check

[kirkles]

Hi All,

I'd been doing some basic BBQing on my 57cm Weber for a few years now, but only very basic grilling, rather than anything low 'n' slow. As the experts, I thought it'd be good to get your perspective on how I'm doing things so far. I've got a few things to cook for the family on the BBQ tonight so a good time to sanity check .

I prepare my coals in a large weber chimney starter. The charcoal I use is the blue bag restaurant charcoal from Makro (following its recommendation on here). I full the entire chimney with the charcoal and wait until covered in ash before dumping out into the kettle.

99% of the time, I find that I dump the coals on half of the charcoal grate, so that I can have direct and indirect heat available. I then tend to wait 10 minutes for the cooking grate to heat up before scrubbing it with my iron brush. I do not oil the cooking grate, but the food itself (which I try to bring to room temperature before hand). Then generally I oil the meats which I bring to room temperature before cooking.

In terms of cooking, I try to ensure the top vent is over the top of the meat I'm cooking so that smoke is drawn through it - perhaps this is entirely a mental thing as I have no idea if this is actually a good thing to do? I also tend to control heat via the vent on the bottom before I look at tweaking the vent on the top.

Tonight I'm tasked with cooking:

• 2x Sirloin Steaks
• 4x Chicken and Chorizo Kebabs
• 3x Beef Burger Patties
• Sweet corn, asparagus, mushrooms

I'd love any advise you might be able to give on moving forwards in my grilling skills as I really want to pick this up as a hobby throughout the year .

Many thanks and greetings!

Kirk

[RobinC]

I don't think there'd anything much wrong with what you are doing. Personally I think the whole oil the food vs the grate is a bit of a non issue for most meats I don't oil either. I personally don't bother with bringing meat upto room temp. You certainly shouldn't do that for any ground meat dishes.

Enjoy your cooking

[kirkles]

Thanks for the feedback Robin!

[YetiDave]

Bringing meat up to room temp certainly has its place in the world of steak. Personally I warm it up to around 30C in an oven on the lowest setting before I cook it to ensure the middle is a good temp whilst the outside isn't burnt beyond recognition. I'd also happily let ground meat warm up, but only if I'd ground it myself

[RobinC]

Why does grinding it yourself make a difference?

[YetiDave]

The risk of warming up ground meat comes from the butchering process - bacteria on the surface of the meat can be caused by contamination during butchery. A nicked intestine, for example. Pre-ground you've no idea how long that potential bacteria has been working its way through the meat for, so it's more risky cooking to lower temps or warming it up. By grinding it yourself you can ensure that if there is any bacteria, the internal meat's had very little time to become contaminated

[RobinC]

But the point about ground meat is that any contamination on the surface gets mixed in. So whether you grind it or not makes no difference to that. Allowing the meat to come up to room temp allows those microbes to increase. Whilst I'm partial to medium rare burgers I wouldn't increase the potential for food sickness by allowing them to come up to temp. Cooking with a reverse sear is a great way to get an even temp in the meat and a good crust

[YetiDave]

It's bacterial growth of a week or more vs an hour or two. Just minimises the risk

[Tyrone1Wils]

What do you use to grind your meat guys? I'm interested in doing this as I love Medium Rare or Medium burgers

[YetiDave]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BRAND-NEW-Ele ... 257f9de016 I've been using one of these for ages. Cheap enough and it does the job just fine, but don't expect to be able to use it for stuffing sausages! (I've been using one of these for that job http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sausage-machi ... m1e8236b3c)