Cleaning The Grill

As a backyard chef, cleanliness is vital to the cooking efficiency and longevity of you grill. A clean grate is essential to keep you food from sticking. You wouldn’t use a dirty pan indoors, so why use a dirty grate outdoors. Here are some tips to cleaning you outdoor grill. Cleaning the grate, Make sure [...]

The Minion Method

The Minion Method is a popular way to light you charcoal for smoking. The basic idea is a small amount of lit coals provide enough heat for smoking while slowly lighting the underlying layer of coals. This allows you to keep the heat down and have enough fuel for long cooks (12+ hours). This method [...]

How To Brine Chicken

Brining has been a longtime method used by some of the worlds top chefs to inject flavor and add moisture to meat. In a brine, the salt actually opens up the cells in the meat, allowing them to hold more water. Unlike a marinade, which only imparts flavor to the outermost meat, a actually brine [...]

How to Use a Chimney Charcoal Starter

Starting charcoal has always been a pain and one of the biggest reasons people turn to gas as opposed to charcoal grills. Using lighter fluid, paraffin wax cubes, presoaked charcoal briquettes and other methods which impart their foul flavor into the charcoal is unnecessary. In my opinion the simplest and cleanest method to light them [...]

Ribs: 3-2-1 Cooking Method

A well known method for cooking ribs is the 3-2-1. Basically it involves the ribs for 3 hours at 225-250 F, allowing the ribs to firm up and take in the smoke. Then you wrap the ribs in tin foil placing them back on the smoker, allowing them to continue to cook without taking in [...]