Summer is the most popular season for beach as well as barbecues. Everyone loves them. From its irresistible aroma to its yummy grill sauce, you surely could not resist it. It is cooked on special occasions and even on simple family gatherings.
While pork was the primary dish for barbecued dinners, it has also further expanded to include beef, poultry and fish. It encompasses four distinct types of cooking techniques. It can be through smoking, baking, braising, grilling (by wood or charcoal), solar power, or by natural gas, propane, and electricity. The original technique is cooking using smoke at lower temperatures. Baking requires a baking or a masonry oven which uses convection to cook meats and starches with moderate temperatures. Braising, on the other hand, combines direct dry heat broiling on a ribbed surface with a broth-filled pot for moist heat and is cooked at different speed and duration. Grilling, the one we usually see in some grilled restaurant is done over direct dry heat and is usually over a hot fire. If you use pork, a few racks of baby back or spare ribs will be already enough for a family barbecue dinner. For beef, Rib-eye and T-Bone steaks are common tasty choices for grilling. Chickens, on the other hand, are being cooked whole. Some of the most common poultry products being used are turkey, duck, and hen. Sea foods such as salmon, shrimp, catfish, trout, swordfish, monkfish, lobster, and halibut are popular dishes used for grilling.
In cooking BBQ especially on outdoor activities, use grilling by the use of charcoal. The drippings from the food that falls onto hot coals create an appetizing aroma which is great for backyard summer escapade. However, some people find grilling exhausting and tiring because they find it hard to light the coals. Avoid using liquid fire starter because this would cause your dish to have a chemical taste. Use a natural wood charcoal instead of the traditional charcoal briquettes because they contains unhealthy chemical. If you want to prolong the life of your charcoal grills, add a layer of sand underneath the coals since this will absorb some of the heat.