Steak may be the choice of champions, and no cookout would be complete without ribs. But when it comes to comfort food, nothing beats a roast chicken.

You know the bird I’m talking about. Skin bronzed and crisp, the meat tender and juicy, the aromas intense and mouthwatering. A properly roasted chicken is the very embodiment of lusciousness and well-being. Brisket may be a once-a-month luxury. A roast chicken you feast on once a week.

And the secret to achieving that great roast chicken? Fire up your grill.

So how do you grill the perfect roast chicken? Let me count the ways.

• You indirect grill it, adding wood chunks to the coals to lay on a smoke flavor.
• You spit-roast it on the rotisserie, using the gentle rotation to baste the meat with chicken juices as it cooks.
• You prop it on a beer can (open, of course) and roast it upright to make the infamous beer can chicken.
• You smoke it low and slow (at a low heat for 3 to 4 hours) to make barbecued chicken, which you top with Alabama white sauce: 2 parts mayonnaise, 1 part cider vinegar, with as much black pepper as you can bear.

  

• You can even direct grill a whole chicken by cutting out the backbone and opening the bird like a book—a process known as spatchcocking. When using this method, start the chicken bone side down and grill it over a moderate fire.

For indirect grilling or beer can chicken, set up the grill with the heat to the sides and a drip pan beneath the bird; medium heat, around 350°F, is a good starting point. For rotisserie roasting, position the coals or lit burners to either side of the spit and place a drip pan underneath. For low-and-slow smoking, maintain a temperature between 225° and 275°F and add wood chunks or wood chips for smoke. For spatchcocking, grill directly over a moderate fire, starting bone side down.

Six Essential Steps for an Even Better Roast Chicken

1. Leave the bird uncovered in the refrigerator. Refrigerate it uncovered for 24 to 48 hours before roasting. This dries out the skin, making it extra crisp when you roast it.
2. Remove the wishbone. Cut it out of the front cavity with a paring knife. This makes it easier to carve the breast meat.
3. Add flavor inside and out. Rub the outside of the bird with a cut lemon and a cut head of garlic. Then place these ingredients in the cavity to perfume the chicken from the inside-out.

   

4. To truss or not to truss. I always truss a chicken to give it a handsome ovoid shape—a holdover from my French cooking school days, when appearance was paramount. But if you roast the chicken untrussed, the smoke and fire flavor can penetrate the inside of the bird. Your choice.
5. Cook the thigh to 175° to 180°F. Insert an instant-read thermometer into the thickest part of the thigh without touching the bone. Yeah, I know that’s higher than the USDA minimum of 165°F, but the dark meat will be more tender.
6. Give it a short rest. Once cooked, rest your chicken on a wire rack over a sheet pan for 2 minutes before carving. This “relaxes” the meat, making it juicier. But don’t rest it too long or the skin will get soggy and the chicken will get cold.

However you choose to cook it, the grill gives roast chicken something the oven can’t: the flavor of smoke and fire. Get the skin crisp and the dark meat tender, and you may find that once-a-week roast chicken becoming a habit.

Whole Chicken Recipes to Try

For more ways to grill a whole chicken, try these BarbecueBible.com recipes:

• Barbecued Chicken — A classic whole chicken cooked by indirect grilling.
• Rotisserie Chicken — Spit-roasted chicken with the self-basting action of the rotisserie.
• Basic Beer-Can Chicken — The infamous upright-roasted chicken.
• Spatchcock Chicken with a Curry Mustard Crust — A flattened whole chicken with a mustard-and-breadcrumb crust.

The post Back to Basics—How to Grill the Perfect Roast Chicken appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

People often ask me what my favorite food is to grill in the summer. You might be surprised to hear it’s not steak or ribs or pork loin. No, my number one favorite grill food this time of year is fish—especially swordfish. And nowhere does it taste better—or grill better—than at my summer home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Fish on the grill. Four words that strike terror into the hearts of even experienced grillers. For as much as grilling endows fish with incredible smoky succulence, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Will it stick to the grate? Will it fall apart when you turn it? Will the high heat of the fire dry it out?

Well, grilling fish is easy, but it isn’t always simple. The secret is choosing the right grilling method for the particular fish you’re cooking.

Choose the Right Grilling Method for Your Fish

Direct Grill It

Direct grilling—cooking the fish directly over the fire—is ideal for firm, meaty fish steaks, such as swordfish, tuna, and salmon. These fish have enough structure to stand up to high heat and flipping without falling apart.

Start with a hot, clean, well-oiled grill grate. Pat the fish dry and brush it lightly with oil before it goes on the grill. Once the fish hits the grate, leave it alone long enough to develop a good sear. When properly browned, it will release more readily from the grate. Turn it with a thin-bladed spatula and, whenever possible, flip it only once.

Swordfish is particularly well suited to this technique—one reason it remains one of my favorite fish to grill.

Try it:

Indirect Grill It

Indirect grilling is ideal for whole fish, like snapper or salmon. Instead of positioning the fish directly over the fire, you cook it next to the heat with the grill covered. Think of your grill as a smoky outdoor oven.

This gentler method cooks the fish evenly from edge to center and is especially useful for larger fish that need more time over the fire. Brush the fish with oil, season it inside and out, and place it away from the direct heat. For an extra blast of wood smoke, toss a few wood chunks or chips onto the fire.

Try it:

Smoke It

Few foods take to wood smoke as enthusiastically as oily fish. Salmon, bluefish, and whitefish have enough natural fat to stay moist as they cook, while soaking up all that wonderful smoky flavor.

For the best results, brine or cure the fish first, then let the surface dry before it goes into the smoker. Alder is the classic wood for salmon, but apple, cherry, and other mild hardwoods work beautifully, too. Serve the fish hot from the smoker, or chill it and enjoy it later.

Try it:

Griddle It

For delicate fish fillets—think sole, flounder, or black bass—a griddle or plancha can be your best friend. You get the intense heat and sizzling crust of the grill without the open spaces between the bars for the fish to stick to—or fall through.

Preheat the griddle until hot, then slick it lightly with oil. Lay on the fish and let it sear undisturbed before turning it with a thin-bladed spatula. The broad, solid cooking surface makes this one of the easiest ways to grill fragile fish and still get plenty of live-fire flavor.

Try it:

Use a Grill Basket

A grill basket is cheap insurance for fish that has a tendency to stick, tear, or fall through the grate. It’s particularly useful for whole trout and small snapper, as well as delicate fillets like halibut and turbot.

Oil the basket well before adding the fish. Once it’s clamped securely inside, you turn the basket—not the fish. That means no wrestling with a spatula and far less chance of leaving half your dinner stuck to the grill grate. You still get plenty of heat, smoke, and char, but with considerably less drama.

Try it:

Use a Cedar Plank

Planking is one of the most foolproof ways to grill fish. A cedar plank is ideal for fillets like salmon and striped bass, and because the fish never touches the grill grate, sticking and falling apart cease to be problems.

Set up your grill for indirect grilling. For extra flavor, char one side of the plank over the fire before adding the fish, then place the fish on the charred side and move the plank away from the direct heat. As the cedar plank heats, it perfumes the fish with wood smoke while helping keep it moist.

Try it:

Use a Salt Slab

A salt slab turns your grill into a sizzling, mineral-rich plancha. It’s especially well-suited to delicate whole fish, such as snapper, black bass, and porgie, because the fish cooks on a solid surface instead of directly on the grate.

Heat the slab gradually to prevent cracking, then lay the fish right on top. The hot salt gives the exterior a beautiful sear while gently seasoning the fish as it cooks. And because there are no grill bars involved, there’s nothing for the delicate flesh to fall through.

Try it:

Grill It in Leaves

Wrapping fish in leaves is an age-old grilling technique found throughout Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It’s particularly useful for delicate fish: the leaves keep the flesh off the grate, trap moisture, and perfume the fish with an herbaceous smoke as they char over the fire.

Banana leaves are especially good for the job. Soften fresh leaves briefly over the grill, wrap the seasoned fish inside, and secure the package with toothpicks. The leaves take the punishment of the fire while the fish steams and smokes inside. No sticking. No falling apart. And when you open the package at the table, you get a blast of fragrant steam.

Try it:

Grill It on a Stick

Sometimes the simplest grilling equipment is a sharpened stick and a good wood fire. This primitive method is perfect for camping, where fish can be positioned beside the embers and cooked by radiant heat rather than directly over the flames.

Thread the fish securely onto a sturdy stick or stake, then angle it toward the fire. Turn or reposition it as needed to cook both sides. Moving the fish closer to or farther from the embers gives you surprisingly precise control over the heat—and there’s no grill grate for the fish to stick to.

Try it: Salmon on a Stick

Know Exactly When It’s Done

There’s a fine line between perfectly cooked fish and fish that’s dry enough to make you reach for the tartar sauce. Don’t guess. Use an instant-read thermometer.

Whole fish: Insert the probe into the thickest part of the flesh just above the bone.

Fish steaks: Insert the probe through the side to the center.

Most fish: Cook to an internal temperature of 140^° to 145^°F.

Blue tuna: 100^° to 110^°F.

Rare tuna: 120^° to 125^°F.

Medium-rare tuna: 130^° to 135^°F.

Tuna plays by different rules. However you cook it, the center should stay gloriously rosy.

Fish, Fire, and Summer

Grilling fish doesn’t have to strike fear into the heart of even the most seasoned griller. Once you learn how to match the fish to the fire, the rest gets a whole lot easier.

The payoff? Fish that’s moist, smoky, succulent, and beautifully browned—the kind of meal that reminds you why fish belongs over a live fire in the first place.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Grilling Fish—Without Sticking, Drying Out, or Falling Apart! appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

If you read this blog and newsletter on a regular basis (and if you don’t, you should!), you’ve entered a carnivoran orgy of steak, brisket, ribs, pork shoulders, and more.

Which may make you wonder, has Steven Raichlen abandoned vegetables entirely?

Absolutely not! And as we roll into August, with summer produce at its peak, my wife and I have been grilling and smoking vegetables like crazy. Grilled corn pudding. Smoked tomato gazpacho. Ember-roasted peppers and eggplants. It’s hard to imagine a vegetable we haven’t put to fire this summer.

So how do you grill a family of foods that ranges from edible thistles (that would be artichokes) to “little pumpkins” (that would be zucchini)? Vegetables vary so much in texture and taste, you’d need a book to know how to grill them all. (Hah! I wrote such a book, appropriately entitled How to Grill Vegetables.)

Well, one easy way to start is to consider which vegetables grow above ground and which grow below ground. The former tend to be soft-fleshed, with a high moisture content. (Think tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, asparagus, and corn.) These vegetables do best when direct grilled quickly over high heat, with a brushing of extra-virgin olive oil and salt and pepper.

Then there are the firm, starchy veggies that grow underground, like potatoes, beets, sunchokes, turnips, and carrots. These vegetables do best when indirect grilled at a more moderate temperature for a longer time (30 to 60 minutes) to soften their firm cellulose and cook their starches slowly. The beauty of this method is that it is easy to add wood chips or chunks to the fire to generate wood smoke.

Speaking of smoke, there are some vegetables that generate their own smoke when grilled, especially using the “caveman” method directly on the embers. This group includes eggplants, which acquire a haunting smoke flavor when you char the skins (this is the secret to great baba ganooj), and bell peppers, which become supernaturally sweet and smoky when ember-roasted.

Here’s our A-to-Z guide to grilling summer vegetables. Use it while the high summer produce season lasts!

Asparagus: Snap off the fibrous bottom ends. Pin the stalks side by side into rafts with toothpicks. Brush with sesame oil or olive oil and direct grill over high heat.

Broccolini: Brush with chili oil or olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Direct grill over medium-high heat until tender (I like to char the ends).

Corn: Strip back the husks and tie them together under the ears to make a handle. Brush the corn with melted butter and season with salt and pepper. Direct grill over high heat until darkly browned. For a Mexican twist, slather grilled corn with mayonnaise and dust with grated cotija cheese.

Delicata squash: Cut into 1/2-inch rings, discarding the seeds. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Direct grill over medium heat until browned and tender.

Eggplant: Cut large eggplants crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick steaks. Brush with olive oil and direct grill over high heat until browned and tender. Roast medium eggplants directly on the embers (caveman style). Puree with garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and tahini to make the world’s best baba ganooj.

Fennel: Cut off the leafy tops (save them for tossing on the embers when grilling fish). Cut the bulbs from top to bottom into 1/4-inch slices. Brush with olive oil and direct grill until browned and soft. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar for serving.

Green beans: Stem and string. Toss with olive oil and chopped dill or garlic. Grill in a wire mesh grill basket over high heat, or even better, directly on the embers. Top with slivered toasted almonds.

Hatch chiles: Cut in half lengthwise and stuff with sauteed onions, breadcrumbs, and grated cheese. Indirect grill at medium-high heat until soft and the filling is bubbling. Note: This mild to fiery green chile from New Mexico is in peak season in August. One great source is Melissa’s.

Iceberg lettuce: Cut into quarters. Brush with oil and sear the flat faces over a hot fire. Then let cool and top with your favorite ranch dressing.

Jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes): Scrub well and dry. Place in a foil pan with butter, salt, pepper, and unpeeled garlic cloves. Indirect grill at medium-high heat until crisp on the outside and tender inside (45 minutes). Extra points if you add wood chips to the fire to generate smoke.

Kale (especially lacinato kale): Brush each leaf on both sides with sesame oil and soy sauce. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and direct grill over medium-high heat until browned and crisp on both sides.

Leeks: Split and wash well to remove any grit. Brush with olive oil and direct grill over medium heat. Top with vinaigrette.

Mushrooms: Great for grilling. Stem and wipe clean with a damp cloth. Brush with garlic parsley butter and direct grill over a medium-hot fire, slathering with more garlic parsley butter as they cook.

Napa cabbage: Cut crosswise into 1-inch steaks, which you secure with bamboo skewers. Brush with sesame oil, soy sauce, and minced garlic. Direct grill over high heat.

Okra: One of my favorite surprise veggies to grill. Skewer into rafts (like asparagus). Brush with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Direct grill until sizzling and browned. Sprinkle with freshly grated Parmigiano.

Plantains: Let ripen until black, then peel and cut on the diagonal into 3/4-inch-thick slices. Brush with melted butter and caramelize on a hot griddle or direct grill.

Quaresima peppers (aka sweet Italian peppers): Place in a grill basket and blister over a hot fire or directly on the coals. Grill shishito peppers the same way.

Radicchio: Cut into wedges and secure with toothpicks. Brush with olive oil and season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Direct grill over a hot fire.

Sweet potatoes: Indirect grill over medium-high heat until the skins are crisp and the flesh is soft (pierce with a fork). Open and serve with maple syrup and butter.

Tomatoes: Cut in half widthwise. Smoke at low temperature in your smoker or on your grill. While you’re at it, smoke cucumbers, sweet bell peppers, sweet onions, and a garlic clove or two. Blend with olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper to make the world’s best gazpacho.

Ube (purple yam): Scrub the outside and indirect grill it. Enjoy like a sweet potato.

Vidalia onions: Peel and cut out the stem end in a cone-shaped plug. Stuff with crumbled bacon and barbecue sauce. Smoke-roast (indirect grill) at medium heat until soft and tender, 40 to 60 minutes.

Winter squash: Halve and seed acorn squash, then indirect grill it cut-side down on a preheated salt slab until tender.

Xoconostle: I bet you thought I’d be stumped here! This is the Nahuatl term for a sour prickly pear. Mexicans char it over a hot fire and grind it to make salsas.

Yellow squash: Cut in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Stuff with chorizo or Italian sausage. Indirect grill over medium-high heat.

Zucchini: Cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and dried mint. Direct grill over high heat and drizzle with Greek yogurt or tzatziki.

Related Reads

• Corn on the Grill: Three Ways to Do It Right
• For Flavor-Packed Produce, Ember-Roast Your Veggies
• From Garden to Grill: A Guide to Grilling Vegetables

The post Veggies Hit the Grill: An A-to-Z Guide to Best Ever Summer Produce appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

It wins no competitions. It joins no halls of fame. But without it, a grill session would be short of an essential element. And barbecue—whether the backyard variety or the kind served at your favorite smokehouse—would seem downright incomplete.
I speak, of course, of potato salad. If you make it from scratch, good for you. I’m going to tell you how to make it better. And if you’ve never made potato salad from scratch, it’s time to start.

Some of the world’s great grill cultures back me up on this. What would German Spiessbraten—onion-stuffed pork shoulder spit-roasted over blazing birchwood—be without Kartoffelsalat, the warm, vinegary, bacony potato salad served alongside it? Or Peruvian anticuchos—grilled beef-heart kebabs—without papas a la huancaína, potatoes dressed with a piquant Andean chile-cheese sauce?

Closer to home, there’s the potato salad at your neighborhood barbecue joint, or even at temples of smoke and fire like Franklin Barbecue in Austin and Lewis Barbecue in Charleston. The style may change, but the message does not: don’t stage a grill session without it.

What Makes a Great Potato Salad?

First, there’s the potato. Then the dressing. Then the embellishments, flavorings, and garnishes. Even temperature enters the picture, because some potato salads taste best cold, while others are at their finest warm or at room temperature. Here are the decisions that separate an ordinary potato salad from a great one.

1. Choose the Right Potato

Tradition often calls for waxy potatoes, such as fingerlings, red potatoes, and Yukon Golds. They’re lower in starch than baking potatoes, so they hold their shape when cooked and tossed with dressing. That makes them ideal for warm German-style salads and any version in which you want distinct pieces of potato rather than a softer, creamier texture.
But don’t overlook baking potatoes. They’re higher in starch and become light and fluffy when baked. Start with a fully baked potato, chill it, then dice it. One of the best potato salads I’ve ever tasted comes from Larsen’s Fish Market in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard. They start with baked potatoes and add bacon and scallions. Delectable!

2. Put Some Skin in the Game

Personally, I like potatoes with their skins on—more color, more flavor, and more fiber. Scrub them clean with a stiff-bristled brush before cooking. On the other hand, Mrs. Raichlen prefers her potatoes peeled before they become potato salad. Just saying.

3. Dress the Potatoes at the Right Temperature

When Germans make potato salad, they start with hot cooked potatoes. As the potatoes cool, they absorb the dressing, which typically includes vinegar, mustard, oil or bacon fat, and, of course, cooked bacon. Warm or room temperature is the way to serve it.

For a creamy American-style salad, let the potatoes cool fully before adding the mayonnaise dressing. For food safety reasons, mayonnaise should always be kept cold.

4. Choose Creamy or Vinegary

The traditional American version gets its richness from mayonnaise. Hellmann’s, please—unless you come from the South, in which case your mayo of choice may be Duke’s. Central Europeans favor a sharper vinegar-based dressing, with oil or bacon fat supplying the richness.

Neither style is automatically better. The important thing is balance. Potatoes are mild and starchy, so the dressing must bring enough acidity, salt, and seasoning to wake them up.

5. Flavor Assertively

As far as I’m concerned, any potato salad needs mustard and vinegar to offset the starchiness of the potatoes. German potato salad demands a touch of sweetness to counterbalance the vinegar and smoky richness of the bacon.

Many people crown their potato salads with a sprinkling of sweet paprika. You, my friend, will add a smoky dimension by sprinkling on pimentón—Spanish smoked paprika. Once you try it, I promise, you’ll never go back to the sweet stuff.

6. Add Crunch and Contrast

All cream and no crunch would make for a boring potato salad. In my house, capers, olives, and cornichon pickles are obligatory, as are chives or scallion greens chopped so finely a sudden sneeze would blow them away.

Sliced celery? It certainly adds crunch, but Mrs. Raichlen doesn’t like celery, so I omit it. I have been known to sneak in slivered celery leaves. Mrs. Raichlen, meanwhile, likes to add diced raw carrot—diced, mind you, not shredded—to maximize the crunch.

The exact embellishments are up to you. The larger point is to give the soft potatoes something crisp, briny, fresh, or sharp to play against.

7. Make It More Substantial

Just because it’s a side dish doesn’t mean potato salad can’t contain protein. Bacon may define German potato salad, while sliced hard-cooked eggs give an American version more heft. Peru’s popular papas a la huancaína pairs potatoes with a piquant sauce made with tangy white cheese and aji amarillo, the country’s fruity yellow chile.

8. Above All, Add Smoke

So what makes a Raichlen potato salad a Raichlen potato salad? You guessed it: smoke and fire. Instead of boiling the potatoes, I smoke-roast them on the grill.

Set up your grill for indirect grilling and heat it to medium-high—about 400°F. Add wood chips or chunks to the fire. Place the potato chunks in a foil pan and toss them with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Smoke-roast until tender, about 40 minutes, stirring from time to time with a wooden spoon.

The potatoes emerge bronzed at the edges and perfumed with wood smoke. From there, you can take them in an American, German, or Peruvian direction.

Four Potato Salads to Try

Drum roll, please. I now give you four of my favorite potato salads—American, German, and Peruvian, with two very different approaches to the German classic. You be the judge as to which is best.

So Which Potato Salad Is Best?

Creamy or vinegary? Warm or cold? Skins on or off? There is no single correct answer. The world’s best potato salad is the one that delivers the right balance of tender potatoes, assertive seasoning, contrasting textures, and enough acidity to keep you coming back for another forkful.

But this much I know: smoke-roast the potatoes instead of boiling them, and your potato salad will taste like the barbecue it accompanies. Once you add smoke and fire, the humble potato salad becomes a star of the show.

The post How to Make the Best Potato Salad You’ve Ever Tasted—The Secret Is the Smoke appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

Barbecue is simple but it isn’t always easy. Simple because it really requires only 2 ingredients: patience and wood smoke.

As for easy? Well, anyone who’s spent 14 hours barbecuing a brisket—maintaining a steady stream of thin blue smoke and a constant temperature of 250 degrees, powering through the stall, doing the wrap, resting the meat and attempting the carve—you’d never call a perfect brisket easy.

But there is one cut that’s both simple and easy to cook and it’s absolutely forgiving. Cook it high heat or low, fast or slow, and it almost always comes out tender and juicy. It’s also one of barbecue’s big three. Drum roll, please. I give you pork shoulder, aka Boston butt. (More on the curious name in a minute.)

Pork shoulder is definitely easy. You season it with your favorite barbecue rub (mine is my Carolina Pit Powder). Or even just salt and pepper. You put it on your grill or in your smoker. Hell, you can even cook it on the rotisserie. You can cook it low and slow or hot and fast—with charcoal, wood, propane, or even—shhhh—on an electric grill.

You can cook it in a few hours, or smoke it for half a day, at temperatures ranging from low to medium, and even high. Thanks to its ample marbling and collagen-rich meat, pork shoulder stays juicy while extended cooking turns it tender enough to shred.

Which brings us to the traditional way to serve pork shoulder in the Carolinas—“pulled,” that is shredded and doused with one of the world’s strangest barbecue sauces. In eastern North Carolina, that sauce consists of vinegar, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper (sometimes with a whisper of sugar). In western North Carolina, they redden this vinegar sauce with a shot of ketchup.

In South Carolina, pulled or sliced pork is often served with mustard sauce. In Tennessee, you may encounter tomato-based barbecue sauce, while northern Alabama is famous for its mayonnaise-based white sauce.

But American pork shoulder is just a start. In Germany’s Saarland, cooks marinate pork neck or shoulder steaks with onions and spices, then grill them over a traditional beechwood fire on a swinging grate called a schwenker. In Greece, they perfume it with oregano, paprika, and pepper. In Bali, they blast it with ginger, galangal, lemongrass, and fiery chilies. The truth is pork shoulder is so easy to prepare and forgiving to cook, you can season it with almost anything.

Just the Facts About Pork Butt

• A whole pork shoulder (14 to 18 pounds) consists of two parts—the Boston butt and the picnic shoulder (also known as the picnic ham). The former is the top part of the shoulder—5 to 8 pounds of rich, luscious meat, with only a shoulder blade to stand in the way of your carving knife. (When properly cooked, which is to say overcooked, you can pull said bone out with your fingers.)
• The picnic ham is the bottom part of the shoulder, including the top of the leg. The drawback of a picnic ham is its high proportion of skin and bone to meat, which is why I prefer Boston butt. So if Boston butt comes from the shoulder, not the posterior, how did it get its curious name? In ancient times, New England butchers packed salted pork shoulders in barrels, aka “butts.”

  

• When I started out in barbecue, pork was pretty much just pork. Today, connoisseurs choose heritage breeds like Berkshire, Duroc, and Mangalitsa. Berkshire (sometimes sold by its Japanese name, Kurobuta—literally “black pig”), for example, boasts richly flavored, well-marbled, dark-pink meat that makes commodity pork taste downright bland.
• Most of the pork shoulder you buy today comes with the skin removed. Otherwise, trim it off with a paring knife and deep-fry it to make cracklings. (Prolonged grilling or smoking makes the skin leathery.)
• Pork is safe to eat at 145^°F followed by a three-minute rest, but pork butt usually needs to reach approximately 195^°F to 205^°F before its connective tissue has softened enough for easy pulling.
• Chase the smoke ring. Smoke a pork shoulder low and slow in the presence of wood smoke, and you wind up with a pink ring just below the surface—the coveted smoke ring. No, it doesn’t mean that the meat is undercooked. The pigmentation occurs naturally—think of it as the red badge of barbecue honor.
• Finally, the traditional way to serve pork shoulder in the American South is chopped with a cleaver or shredded with meat claws or your fingers. Elsewhere on Planet Barbecue, pork shoulder—particularly boneless shoulder—is served sliced.

4 Pork Butt Recipes to Try Right Now

Frequently Asked Questions

Is pork butt the same as pork shoulder?

Pork butt is one part of the pork shoulder. A whole shoulder consists of the Boston butt at the top and the picnic shoulder below it. The Boston butt contains more intramuscular fat and less skin and bone, making it the preferred cut for pulled pork. Recipes and meat counters often use the names pork butt, Boston butt, and pork shoulder interchangeably, so check the label or ask your butcher when in doubt.

What temperature should pork butt reach for pulled pork?

Pork is safe to eat at 145°F followed by a three-minute rest, but that doesn’t mean a pork butt is ready to pull. For tender, easily shredded pork, cook it to an internal temperature of approximately 195°F to 205°F. The thermometer is only part of the test: The shoulder blade should pull out easily, and a thermometer probe should slide into the meat with little resistance.

How long does it take to barbecue a pork butt?

Cooking time depends on the size of the pork butt, the temperature of your grill or smoker, and whether you wrap the meat. A smaller shoulder cooked at 275°F to 325°F may be ready in four to six hours, while a larger one smoked low and slow can take eight hours or more. Cook to tenderness and internal temperature, not strictly by the clock, and leave extra time for resting before pulling.

The post Why You Need to Barbecue a Pork Butt Right Now appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

Heat domes. Uncontrollable forest fires. Triple-digit temperatures in Boston, Paris, Rome and New York. Yes, in many places, this has been one of the hottest summers in recent memory. It sure seems like this summer the world is burning up.

So what’s the best way to beat the heat? I’ve got a paradoxical solution. Fire up your grill.

More specifically, these cold summer recipes are served chilled, but their flavors are intensified by smoking and grilling.

• Sangria? It’s the perfect summer thirst quencher. But crust the lemons, oranges, limes, and cinnamon sticks with sugar first, then caramelize them on the grill—the resulting smoky wine punch will come as a revelation.
• Gazpacho? It’s another Spanish cooler and it requires little more in terms of cooking than switching on your blender. Until you’ve tasted my smoked gazpacho— you’ll never want to serve gazpacho any other way.
• Then there are bread salads. Italians call it panzanella; Lebanese call it fattoush. Besides being refreshing enough to double as a light summer supper, it’s also a great way to revive stale bread. This version combines grilled pita or bread with fresh vegetables and sweet-sour narsharab, or pomegranate molasses.
• When it comes to beating the heat, sultry Thailand has plenty of experience. They’ve invented the world’s best way to combine steak and salad: yum nua—an invigorating blend of lettuce, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and thin-sliced fire-charred flank steak. The seasonings—sour lime juice, salty fish sauce, sweet sugar, and fiery chilies—are as bracing as the massive doses of fragrant cilantro, Thai basil, and refreshing mint.
• But the ultimate antidote to a heat wave is ice cream—lots of it. Here in Raichlen-land, we have a barbecued twist on that too. Smoke it with hickory wood. If smoke is the “umami of barbecue” (as I call it in my book, Project Smoke), this will be the most interesting ice cream you’ve ever tasted.

Admittedly, firing up your grill when the temperature tops 100 degrees may seem daunting, but the resulting intense flavors are worth it. And because all these dishes are served cold, you can grill at night, when the temperature drops, or at least you’re not grilling in the hot sun. Alternatively, grill or smoke the ingredients for all these dishes at a single grill session, then serve them throughout the week.

Heat wave got you down? Try the Raichlen way to beat the heat: fire up your grill!

5 Chilled Dishes to Beat the Heat

The post Too Hot to Cook? 5 Cold Summer Recipes Made Better on the Grill appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

Steak! A five-letter word that spells a mountain of pleasure. For some of us, it’s the ultimate luxury; for others, a weeknight dinner. It’s so easy to grill, even a first-timer can earn bragging rights, yet you can spend a lifetime perfecting the fine points. Steak is the one dish everyone should know how to grill.

Too often, people make simple, avoidable mistakes: Undercooking. Overcooking. Flipping too seldom or too often. Leaving the beef out to warm to room temperature (especially dangerous in summertime heat). Serving it hot off the grill or resting it so long, the steak is cold by the time you cut into it.

Here’s the ultimate guide to achieving the perfect steak every time.

Steak Cooking at a Glance

• Best Steaks: Ribeye, NY Strip, Porterhouse, Filet Mignon, Skirt, Flank, Hanger
• Seasoning: Coarse salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• Doneness (Med-Rare): 130^°F to 135^°∘F
• Resting: 1 to 2 minutes on a wire rack
• Best Method: Direct grilling for steaks up to 1-1/2 inches thick; reverse searing link for 3- to 4-inch thick monsters

Step 1: Start with the Right Steak

Five factors determine the excellence of your steak: cattle breed, feed, aging, grade, and cut.

• Prime vs. Choice: The USDA grades beef on marbling (intramuscular fat). Only 2% of beef qualifies as Prime—highly flavorful, tender, and luscious. Choice is what you find at most supermarkets—less rich, but still very tasty.
• Wagyu vs. Angus: Wagyu is renowned for its hyper-generous marbling; an A-5 Japanese Wagyu looks like white lace on red cloth. Angus delivers a bold, robust, classic beefy flavor enjoyed across North America.

  

• Grain-Fed vs. Grass-Fed: Corn-fed beef produces rich, buttery, meaty steaks. Grass-fed beef is leaner with a distinctive, almost herbaceous flavor. The ideal compromise is beef raised on grass, then finished with grain.
• Dry-Aged vs. Wet: Dry-aged beef, hung unwrapped in climate-controlled rooms for 28 to 36 days, loses moisture, concentrating the beefy flavor and creating rich umami notes. Wet-aged beef matures in vacuum-sealed plastic; it is faster, cheaper, and tasty enough, but lacks the rich, concentrated flavor of dry-aged beef.

  

The Four Steak Categories

1. The Noble Steaks: Upper steer cuts (filet mignon, ribeye, strip, porterhouse) that are intrinsically tender and rich.

   

2. The Belly Steaks: Undercarriage cuts (skirt, flank, hanger). Intensely flavorful but stringy; slice thinly against the grain to ensure tenderness.
3. The Tough Steaks: Round and chuck. Slice paper-thin for cheesesteaks or chop fine for carne asada.

   

4. The Cult Steaks: Unique cuts like tri-tip, picanha (featuring a luscious fat cap), and flatiron.

Step 2: Keep Seasoning Simple and Strategic

For premium beef, skip heavy, muddying marinades. Stick to coarse sea salt or kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Season your steak early—about 45 to 60 minutes before grilling. This allows the salt to draw out moisture, dissolve, and reabsorb back into the fibers, seasoning the meat deeply. If you’re short on time, season immediately before the steak hits the grates.

Do not let steaks warm to room temperature beforehand. The difference in cooking time is negligible, and it is simply not worth the food safety risk. Keep them cold until they go on the grill.

Step 3: Set Up Your Grill for Two-Zone Cooking (Wood Smoke Optional, But Desired)

Arrange your coals or burners so you have a screaming-hot direct zone for searing and a cooler, zone for cooking. Control the cooking by moving the steak back and forth between the hot and less hot zone. Add wood chunks or chips (like oak, hickory, or pecan) directly to your coals or place in your gas grill’s smoker box. A quick blast of wood smoke during grilling makes a good steak great and a great steak unforgettable.

Step 4: Sear Hot and Flip Frequently

Forget the old myth of flipping your steak only once to get crosshatch grill marks. (Mea culpa—I used to recommend this in my earlier books.) I’ve come to see that flipping your steak often—every 20 to 30 seconds—cooks the meat more evenly and helps build a darker, richer crust. Focus on the crust and flip often.

Step 5: Master the Reverse Sear

1. Place your seasoned steak on the cooler, indirect side of your grill (225^°F to 250^°F).
2. Indirect grill (with grill lid down) to heat the meat to an internal temperature about 20^°F below your target doneness (for example, to 110^°F for a medium-rare steak)
3. Move the steak directly over the high-heat, searing for 1 to 2 minutes per side to build a sizzling dark crust and internal temperature of 130^°F.

Note: Measure internal temperature using an instant-read thermometer inserted horizontally through the side of the steak. For the poke test, press the top of the steak with your forefinger. The amount of resistance will tell you the doneness. Use a thermometer for thicker steaks; the poke test for thin steaks like skirt.

Step 6: Give It a Rest

A steak served “hot off the grill” sounds romantic, but resting your steak on a wire rack over a sheet pan for a minute or two will give you a tenderer, juicier steak. (Resting relaxes the meat, allowing the juices to redistribute. The wire rack keep the bottom from getting soggy.) But over-resting results in a lukewarm or even cold steak, which does the meat an injustice.

Step 7: Carve It Right

It has become fashionable, if not de rigueur, for steakhouses to pre-slice your steak before serving. Don’t. This may look dramatic, but a pre-sliced steak gets cold and dry very quickly. Serve your steak whole and let the diner slice it him- or herself.

Note: the one exception here are belly steaks, like skirt and flank, which should be thinly sliced across the grain to shorten the tough meat fibers.

Finally, don’t forget to anoint

A great steak needs little more than salt and pepper by way of a seasoning, but a pat of compound butter link or drizzle of melted butter or extra virgin olive oil makes a great steak even better

Great Steak Recipes to Try Next

• Smoked-Grilled Rib-Eye Steaks with Jalapeño-Horseradish Butter: Ribeyes get a blast of wood smoke and a rich, spicy compound butter.
• Classic Tuscan Bistecca alla Fiorentina: A thick Porterhouse finished with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt.
• Reverse-Seared Tomahawk Steaks with Blue Cheese Butter: Thick tomahawk steaks are reverse-seared, then finished with a bold blue cheese butter.
• Churrasco-Style Skirt Steak: Searing hot skirt steak served with bright chimichurri.

More Steak Recipes »

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best way to cook steak on the grill?

For thick cuts, use the reverse sear method. For thinner cuts, cook directly over high heat, flipping frequently.

How long should you grill steak?

Figure on 2 to 2-1/2 minutes per side for thin steaks, about 1/2 inch thick; 3 to 4 minutes per side for 1-inch steaks; and about 5 minutes per side for 1-1/2-inch steaks. When using the reverse sear method for a really thick steak, figure on 40 to 60 minutes for the low-heat indirect grilling, followed by 2 to 3 minutes per side for the high-heat sear.

What temperature should steak be cooked to?

Medium-rare, 130^°F to 135^°F, is ideal for many steaks. Use an instant-read thermometer inserted into the side of the steak to verify doneness. For thinner steaks, like skirt and flank, use the poke test: press the meat with your forefinger to feel the resistance. Pull the steak a few degrees early, as carryover cooking will raise the temperature during resting.

How do you make steak tender on the grill?

Select well-marbled cuts, season like you mean it, do not overcook, and rest the meat for a minute or two before serving.

Should you grill steak with the lid open or closed?

Keep the lid open when searing thin steaks over high heat. Keep the lid closed during indirect cooking or when finishing thick steaks.

The post How to Grill the Perfect Steak: 7 Steps to Tender, Juicy, Smoky Beefy Nirvana appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

Two hundred and fifty years already?

It seems like just yesterday that a band of colonists dressed in waistcoats and knee breeches assembled in Philadelphia to sign a document that would set the 13 colonies free from England.

Of course, it would take another 7 years—and 30,000 Colonial deaths—for the Continental Army to vanquish the British at Yorktown, ushering in the country we now hail as the United States of America.

And with that victory at Yorktown, we Americans celebrated the way we still do today: by smoking and grilling meat over fire. In other words: an Independence barbecue!

Barbecue: An American Tradition

Barbecue. It’s a uniquely American institution and a culinary tradition we can truly call our own. It began long before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It began in the Caribbean centuries earlier, when the Taino Indians on the island of Hispaniola erected a sort of wooden gridiron high above a smoky wood fire, using it to cook fish, game, and even iguana.

To the ear of the early Spanish explorers, the name for this singular cooking device sounded like barbacoa. Thus was born the institution we know and love today: barbecue.

One of the first laws enacted in the Colony of Virginia forbade the discharge of firearms at a barbecue. (Even back then we Americans were obsessed with smoked meat and guns.)

A pre-presidential George Washington—then a surveyor and plantation owner—loved barbecue so much, he wrote about it in his journals. (One such barbecue in Alexandria, Virginia, went on for three days!)

When stone masons laid the cornerstone for the Capitol building in a fledgling city on the Potomac—Washington—we celebrated with a barbecue.

When Abraham Lincoln’s parents were married, the wedding feast was—you guessed it—a barbecue. And a century later, another American president, Lyndon B. Johnson, conducted global diplomacy from the “Texas White House,” his ranch in Stonewall, Texas.

Which is to say, barbecue has been a foundational part of the American experience for as long as America has existed.

The Regional Roots of American Barbecue

But which barbecue is truly American? Because in our homogenized society—where you find Starbucks and McDonald’s in virtually every city and neighborhood—barbecue remains some of the last truly regional food in our country.

When I started writing about barbecue, the big four—the Carolinas, Kansas City, Memphis, and Texas—served distinct styles of barbecue that could only be found in those regions. In the Carolinas, that meant pork—smoked and shredded, doused with vinegar sauce (in North Carolina) or mustard sauce (in South Carolina and Georgia)—both served with pickles on a bun.

In Memphis, Tennessee, barbecue meant baby back ribs served “dry” (dusted with spice rub, but without sauce)—the invention of a Greek immigrant named Charlie Vergos, whose restaurant—the Rendezvous—still serves thousands of customers each week. They also had barbecued game hens, barbecued pizza, and even barbecued spaghetti.

In Texas—especially the Hill Country—barbecue meant brisket, slow-smoked over smoldering oak—pioneered by German butchers like Charles Kreuz, who in 1900 founded the Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas.

As for Kansas City, once America’s meatpacking capital, it became famous for an ecumenical menu of ribs, chicken, pork shoulder, and beef—all heavily smoked and slathered with a sweet, smoky barbecue sauce epitomized by the creation of another Kansas citizen: Dr. Rich Davis, creator of KC Masterpiece.

Why Regional Barbecue Still Matters

Of course, today, excellent versions of these once truly regional specialties turn up across America, in cities as far-flung as Boston, Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and my hometown, Miami. There’s even a passionate barbecue culture in our overseas territory, Guam.

But some regional barbecue remains truly regional—make that micro-regional. To sample barbecue mutton (not lamb, but mutton) served with black dip (a savory condiment made with Worcestershire sauce, melted butter, and lemon juice), you must travel to Owensboro, Kentucky.

To savor pork chops grilled over hickory embers and dipped in a fiery amalgam of hot sauce, cayenne, and melted lard, you must go to another Kentucky barbecue hotspot: Monroe County.

Far from deploring the obscurity of these micro-regions of barbecue, I celebrate them, because barbecue should be regional. And while some micro-regional barbecue will go national or even international (consider the smoked chicken with a unique mayonnaise- and vinegar-based white barbecue sauce born at Big Bob Gibson’s in Decatur, Alabama), other barbecue remains stubbornly regional.

You must travel there to try it—a fact that I love.

Barbecue Brings Us Together

It’s no news that we live in an age of fierce partisanship and polarization—perhaps the most polarized in our nation’s history. But polarization isn’t new either. In the 1850s, our nation—not even 100 years old—was so polarized over the issue of slavery that we descended into Civil War. It took four years of brutal fighting and more than 600,000 deaths to bring our country back together again. Prohibition, the Civil Rights movement, and the Vietnam War all brought more strife and internal fighting.

The sad truth is we Americans have always fought with one another over what we believe. Debate—sometimes peaceful, sometimes not—seems to be part of our DNA.

But as July 4th approaches, let’s celebrate what brings us together, not the differences that drive us apart. Let’s celebrate not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. I’m sure it’s what the Founding Fathers would have wanted.

I recently saw a t-shirt at a barbecue festival that read: “Blood makes you relatives; barbecue makes you family.”

From our barbecue family to yours: Happy birthday, America! Here’s to another 250 years!!

Recipes

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