A quick look at definitions: “barbecue” is considered to be a method of slowly smoking meat over an open flame but informally it is used to include “grilling” as well. “Grilling” is a faster method of open-flame cooking. The article contains the colloquial usage.
Barbecue is the gender-neutral subdivision of cookery. While many men consider cooking to be a feminine endeavor, barbecue is, and always has been exempt from that rule. Yes, the rule is becoming less relevant, but it still matters to some people. Barbecue is also often a social activity, and being good at social activities can often have benefits in across several areas in life. In addition to those things, food cooked over an open flame, or smoked, is considered delicious by most people. However you look at it, being able to barbecue well is a good skill to master.
Generally, the skills needed by a good barbecue chef are as follows:
1. Fuel
Some people believe that charcoal provides a better cooking medium; some people say the same thing about propane gas. The key thing for a learner to take into account is initial cost. A new chef might be reluctant to spend a lot of money on a skill he or she has not yet mastered.
2. Food choice
There are certain foods that can be cooked easily on the grill and other foods that require a certain amount of practice. A new chef should start with something like hotdogs, where under-cooking provides a low risk to eaters, and cost is low if they wind up being inedible.
3. Heat management
Barbecue is similar to a juggling act. The chef needs to balance the tendency of fire to burn things, with the need for food to be thoroughly cooked. It's about control. The chef controls heat and time. Neither of those two things can be ignored with failure. Of course, a charcoal grill has no heat management the way a stove or gas-grill does, so the good cook needs to find other ways of controlling the heat. Closing the lid or squirting the flames with water are common ways of controlling grill-heat.
4. Seasoning
Possibly the most difficult skill of them all. There are so many possibilities that it takes years of tasting and experience to learn how to season food properly for any cooking method. An easy choice for the beginner would be to use pre -mixed seasonings.
5. Food safety
When the new barbecue chef graduates from hot-dogs to meats like chicken, then things like food-contamination become far more of an issue.
Proper handling so as to avoid contaminating other foods with bacteria from the chicken is essential. Being able to judge whether a piece of meat has been thoroughly cooked is also essential.
