d_q has it right. You need a good, comprehensive grilling/barbequing book to teach you the basics - and while they are simple, they are NOT easy - and then lead you to more and more complex cooking and techniques. It’s not a one-step thing, good for hot dogs to turkeys on any grill at any time.
I refused to buy a grill for years because I despise the whole idiotic “women cook, men grill” trope; when I see people build a complete duplicate of their kitchen outdoors so Daddums can grill a few burgers I want to scream and beat them with their absurdly oversized spatulas. It’s just fuckin’ cooking, and you can do most of it on the perfectly good range you already have; the grill is for another type of specialty cooking that can be combined with boiling some goddamned corn on the cob indoors.
Short form: use the grill for what it’s good at, and get good at that. Don’t follow the idiot books that are like 1972 microwave cookbooks, trying to cram every food item and recipe into that “tool” whether it fits or not. Oh… and search out a well-made BBQ tool set for those dainty womenfolk. I gave away three sets of Fred Flintstone shit I could barely lift (I am a BIG guy) for a set of Jenn-Air tools more than adequate for grill use and still half-again bigger than my restaurant-grade kitchen stuff.
(ETA: The secret to grilled chicken that people fight over is to cook it in the oven first and finish it on the grill. Life is too short to try mastering perfect chicken on a grill, and if I never eat another burnt+bloody drumstick in my life it will be too soon. But it’s only for gormless weenie “grillers” who may as well just stay in the kitchen, y’know.)
If you’re doing charcoal, go buy a chimney starter. You’ll wonder why you ever tried to ignite charcoal any other way.
Learn to estimate temperature via the “Mississippi” method–hold your hand right over the grate and count “one Mississippi, two Mississippi”, etc., until you have to pull your hand away. Obviously this varies by person, but for most people 1-2 Mississippis is ripping hot and 5-6 is fairly slow. Don’t put a piece of meat on the grill if you don’t know how many Mississippis there are on that spot. (And it can vary a lot just a few inches apart.)
After your grill is hot but before you put the meat on, you need to clean and lube the grate. First, brush it with a grill brush. If there’s a whole lot of stuff stuck on, take an aluminum pan and put it upside down over your main cooking surface with the grill going really hot and leave it for about 10 minutes, then hit it with the grill brush. (It’s the same principle as your self-cleaning oven.)
To lube it, take a rolled up rag or a wad of paper towels in some tongs, dip it in vegetable/canola/peanut oil, and rub the whole grate with it. Repeat about 10 times.
If you really want perfect steaks, a $15 probe thermometer is the only way to go. The finger-poking method can probably tell you raw vs. medium vs. leather, and it might be possible to learn more precision than that, but you’re going to over or undercook way more than $15 worth of steak before you figure it out. If you or the people you cook for aren’t that particular, though, you don’t have to bother.
Steven Raichlen’s How to Grill is a great resource.
I pretty much agree with this, although if you have a lot of cooking experience outside the grill, a lot of those lessons transfer over to the fire (and even moreso if you’re using propane or natural gas, where it’s a much more controlled environment and closer to indoors cooking.)
A good book or video tutorial and lots of practice are your best bets. You will make a lot of mistakes, but most of those mistakes should still be edible, and any mistakes you can eat are good mistakes in my book.
For the most general overview, the basics of grilling are managing the fire (or the heat) and knowing how to apply that to the food you are cooking. You have to know your cuts. There are cuts that respond best to relatively quick grilling (like steaks, chicken breast, and loin chops) and cuts that respond best to longer, slower cooking (like chuck roast, pork shoulder, chicken thighs, etc.) And some cuts can go either way.
The biggest problem most people have, in my experience, is cooking over too hot a fire, either completely charring the meat or cooking the outside just right and leaving the center raw. This is why I recommend a two-stage fire. Even in a propane grill, I’ll often leave one side relatively hot, and turn off the burners on the other side, so one side is used to sear, and the other side is used to cook through. This is not absolutely necessary–you can grill fine with a one-stage fire (all coals), but it’s a lot easier for a beginner, in my opinion, to manage the fire in two stages. With a good propane/gas grill, it’s easier, but usually when I’m working on propane, it’s a friend’s cheap grill that essentially has two settings: blazing hot and off, which is why I do two-stage even in some propane grills.
So, anyhow, in terms of two stage cooking, you use the hot side to develop flavor through the Maillard reaction (“browning” the meat.) You want a nice hot fire for this, the exact temp doesn’t matter, but usually over 450 or higher. Depending on how hot the heat is, it will usually take 2-4 minutes per side to get a nice sear. If you want pretty cross-hatches in your meat, move them about 60-90 degrees or so halfway through cooking each side.
You can finish cooking through on the other side, without the coals, where the ambient heat is much lower and the interior can come up to temperature without cooking through. It’s really going to depend on how how that side is, but, for a steak, I start checking at about 10 minutes or so by feeling the meat and even cutting into one sacrificial steak.
Or you can do that in reverse (which is how I usually do it). I cook on the cool side first to bring it up to temp, then finish over the hot side of the grill. This is slightly trickier, as you have to pull the meat when it’s a good bit underdone before finishing with the sear, as the sear will bring up the meat another good 20-30 degrees (depending on the thickness of the meat).
But that’s my basic strategy: divide the grill into two, think of one side as being the sear side, and the other as the cook-through side. Also, you have to keep in mind that even on the side without the coals, there’s going to be temperature variations from the center of the grill (closest to the coals) to the outside, so it helps to rotate the meat from the outside inward so it cooks evenly. There’s a bit of an art to it.
But that’s just one way. I think it’s easier to separate the hot heat and low heat into two separate steps, but plenty of meats are relatively easy to do with a one-stage fire (like hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, etc.)
I consider myself a pretty competent barbequer, and I’d say pulykamell and Amateur Barbarian have the best advice.
My own $.02–
I consider cooking over charcoal or wood the only real way to grill/BBQ. Propane is ok for the sake of convenience, as mentioned, but IMHO is not much different than cooking over a stovetop outdoors.
Also as mentioned, grilling = cooking over direct, high heat, babequing = cooking with indirect heat at lower temps.
The ‘coals on one side only’ method is the one I always use. That means enough coals to cover one side in one layer of coals only. No need to have a pile of charcoal. I went to a BBQ one time where the guy thought he needed to have a huge pile of charcoal in the grill. He frantically alternated between flipping the chicken and then quickly covering the grill to stop the inevitable flare up with the cover off. The result was chicken that was burned black on the outside and raw on the inside. And he was an engineer! So don’t feel bad, it just takes a little practice and knowledge of the basics.
This is how I cook a steak perfectly: season with a little fresh ground pepper and kosher salt (or coarse sea salt). Light charcoal in a starter chimney (much better than lighter fluid). When the coals are covered in light gray ash, put steaks on the side directly over the coals. Turn no more than 3 times (if you want the crossing grate marks on each side). This whole process should only be a few minutes. The point of cooking over the high heat is to get a nice browned sear (NOT a black char) on the outside. The sear is NOT to hold juices in but for flavor (look up “Maillard reaction” if you want to know more). When you have a good quick sear on both sides, move the steaks to the no-coals side of the grill to finish cooking the inside. This way is sort of a combo of grilling and barbequeing. If the cut is less than 1 inch thick, I use the touch method for testing doneness. Thicker than 1 inch, a meat thermometer is the very best grilling/BBQ tool you can have. 125 for medium rare, 145ish for medium. Let steaks rest for 5-10 minutes after removing from the grill so juices reabsorb into the muscle fiber.
For extra smoky flavor, add some hardwood chips, like apple or hickory. Either throw them on the coals dry and let them burn up, or soak the chips for a few minutes, drain Nd throw them on the coals so they smoke (some think soaked woodchips give off smoke that is too sooty, but I like the results as long as I only use a handful of chips and don’t soak them for too long).
You can even cook over a complete hardwood fire- I’ve done this many times, and the results are great. The thing is you need the wood to burn down to coals completely- don’t try to cook over open flame. The wood coals won’t last as long as charcoal, so you either need to be quickly grilling a thin cut of meat or have a separate fire you can use as a source to keep addin coals to the grill.
Grilling is hot and fast as opposed to BBQ which is slow and low.
If you can get the right amount of doneness on the grill that’s fine but some things like chicken, beef ribs, etc. are better on the grill to start then in an over to finish. You still have the grill flavor and it is not char on the inside, raw on the inside.
Propane is fine for grilling at high altitude like me (remember this ain’t BBQ). Maybe I’m doing something wrong but I can’t get long-lasting heat at 1 mile elevation out of charcoal. If you need that smoky wood flavor, get a small iron box (I use an old steel loaf pan, aluminum will get slaged) and throw your wood chips in that and close the lid. If you are BBQing however, it has to be charcoal and/or wood chunks.
Y’know, there’s a massive fan base for brining and I don’t understand why, unless it’s a matter of widely varying expectations. I’ve tried it episodically and uniformly disliked the results. I’ve had it from other grill cooks and never found the result particularly noteworthy. (Specifically, I brined one Thanksgiving bird and it was hands-down the worst one I ever made - no one liked the texture or taste.)
I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s a crutch technique for people who don’t know much about cooking; it’s Dad’s way to make an acceptable turkey with unskilled technique put to use a few times a year. It may be a prop for the exceptionally lean and tasteless meat of these days as well, substituting salt and extra moisture for fat in the bliss mix.
Brine if you must, but master grill and oven cooking without it first. ‘Sall I’m sayin’.
I’m not huge on brining, as it does change the texture of the meat, but a lot of people do like that texture, the juiciness and flavor it adds, and, for a beginner especially, I think it’ll lead to much better results for any guests. It’s pretty easy to screw up chicken breast, so I recommend brining or buttermilk marinating chicken breasts for the extra leeway. Is it a crutch? Somewhat. But some folks actually prefer brined chicken to correctly cooked chicken that has not been brined. I say learn the easier way first, so you don’t get discouraged, then try it without the brine.
Also take into account that a lot of meat you buy need not be brined, as it already is. Any chicken or pork that’s been “enhanced” with up to X% solution of broth or whatnot has already, essentially, been brined. A lot of turkeys are already sold enhanced like this, so brining is unnecessary. Also, the Hormel “Always Tender” pork products (or whatever they are called) and a good bit of fresh chicken breast is the same way.
I didn’t know how to grill either, so I bought a propane and started doing it. Some hits and misses the first few times, but I’ve got it down to a T now and keep charts of various spice and rub combinations.
I might get a small charcoal Weber grill this summer so I can learn on that. Will probably never get a smoker as the house/backyard* really wouldn’t support such a thing.
I use a meat thermometer and don’t have a problem with loss of moisture. As mentioned above, I use one sacrificial piece… but I give it to my daughter instead of eating it myself. I mean… that’s what kids are for, right? If she wants the best steak on the grill, she can buy her own damned house+food and cook it herself!
even primitive people with no high culture could grill.
you need to start simple and small. get a hibachi grill.
charcoal grills are cheap. get a used one at a yard sale. start medium or small.
start with burgers and hot dogs. vegetables cut into small shucks wrapped in foil can be steamed so you could do a full meal on a grill.
in the USA if you get broadcast tv then PBS has lots of food porn on the Create channel. Barbecue America, Barbecue University, Grilling Maestros are all grilling, America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country will have some grilling.
My newbie error was not letting the lighter fluid soak into the charcoal. I was lighting it right after squirting the fluid. The charcoal would go out within ten minutes.
Soak the charcoal good and wait a few minutes. Then light it. You should have nice white coals in about 20 minutes. Spread them out. put the burgers on the grill and get ready to eat.
This is good advice but, for six or seven bucks, buy a chimney. It’s just a metal thing that you put paper into the bottom and coals on top. Light the paper and in 10 or 15 minutes, coals are ready. No ligher fluid needed.
