Cooking With Direct heat. What Does That Mean?

This is a question which a lot of beginners are asking: Cooking with direct heat. What does that mean  If you have been following our posts you might remember me talking about when I first started to use my BBQ. My chicken would be black, black, black on the outside and totally frozen on the inside. How could that be? I cooked it over the flames.

One of the reasons for this happening is not using the correct cooking techniques. The technique which we will deal with here today is cooking/grilling over direct heat.  To achieve this one must simply set up their grill and fire for a direct heat    method of cooking.

Cooking with direct heat just simply means that the food is grilled directly (or, direct heat) over the heat source. Now this could either be with the charcoal, like as on the Weber, or you can use this method of direct heat with a gas grill. You just place what you want to BBQ directly over the flames and kinda "let 'er rip." I said 'kinda' because you still have to watch it.

With this method, it is usually pretty fast, say, less than thirty minutes and you are done. And, of course, halfway through you are going to roate your food so that you have those nice grill marks, right?  Here are a few items you can use with this method of grilling:

* steaks
* meat kabobs
* vegetable kabobs
* combination of the two
* sausages
* grilled vegtables

I have a brother down in Southern Calif. and everytime that we are down there visiting all we ever do is BBQ. Now that is the kind of brother to have. And whenever we cook outdoors a lot of the time we also BBQ up some sausages over direct heat and we throw them out first for appetizers before the   "real food"   hits the plates.

This method of cooking with direct heat is also important for the searing of the meats which we use. The process of searing makes the magic of carmelization happen. Not only do we get that carmelization of the outside which adds so much to the taste, texture, and flavor of the food, but we can also put in those great looking grill marks at this time. And for this we need that direct heat really high. In our free newsletter which you can sign up for we give out tips on how to get our grills up to that desired temperature quickly and clean it at the same time.

In order to sear the meat and get those grill marks we need to cook/grill our meats directly over the heat for about two to five minutes per side. After you sear the meat and add those marks then you can finish off slowly over an indirect heat source. Just remember that sometimes when you are searing the fattier cuts, say like chicken with the skin on, the flames will start to shoot up as the grease drips down and hits the flame. This is why you should always have a water bottle (squirt type) around to shoot down those flames.

And do not go out and borrow your wife's squirt bottle which had cleaning solution or bleach in it. Be a man and go out and buy your own. Get one that will distinguish it from all others or mark on it BBQ King….it does not matter, but just use it for your BBQ and only water. No cleaning supplies of any kind should go in there to contaminate it.

So what do we have here? Cooking with direct heat. What does that mean? To put it simply, we are grilling our food directly over the heat source. And if it is a little larger than can be done all the way through with this method, then we will place our meat over an indirect source to finish.

If the food is smaller in nature then we can actually start including those grill marks and the searing of the outside to finishing right over the heat source. And remember to always have that spray bottle handy to just briefly knock down those flames. or, if you have some extra room on your grill where the heat is not so intense and high, then just briefly move your food over to there for a while in order for the flames to go back down.

Cooking with direct heat. Not that hard. Have a great time experimenting in your backyard this weekend.

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