It’s late July. The sun is beating down, and the backyard beckons. All Americans with a love of barbecue in their heart should feel a surge stirring them toward their grill. But, as a nation, we’ve been sadly misinformed about how to cook outdoors. Decades of overwrought recipes in glossy magazines, the marketing efforts of grill manufacturers and a cacophony of bad recipes and worse advice on the Internet have all combined to keep us confused about how to cook meat in our own backyard. It’s really not that complicated. Here are the five basic things every American should know about how to barbecue:
1. Gas Is for Saps
I know, I know, it’s so much more convenient. So why not just send out for pizza? The plain fact of the matter is that outdoor cooking shouldn’t taste like indoor cooking. The characteristic taste of barbecue, real barbecue, comes not from propane gas but from the fragrant fumes of slowly burning hardwood. And all you need to produce it is one of the most common, cheap and simple cooking appliances ever invented: the basic black Weber grill. You’ll need to use good lump charcoal — no insta-light briquettes, unless you want your food to taste like napalm — and you’ll need to be careful about handling it. But that squat engine of meat-cookery will give you a better sear and flavor than you could ever get from gas.
