8 tips for grilling meat

If you want to impress your friends and family with your grilling skills, the heat of the BBQ is one of the most important things to get right. Grilling should be done at a high temperature, at least around 350°C. That gives you a beautiful crust, those classic “grill marks” and plenty of flavour. There is nothing more disappointing than a grey burger simply because your grill was not hot enough. So take your time. It is better to wait a little longer until the grill is properly heated than to end up with grey, flavourless meat. If you are cooking on gas, let the grill heat up properly for at least 10 minutes. When using charcoal, wait until a thin white layer of ash has formed on the coals. Only then are they really hot.

It honestly makes me a little sad when someone sticks a big carving fork into the meat just to turn it over. Why would you do that? Piercing the meat creates holes that allow those delicious juices to escape. Use tongs or tweezers instead. This really is one of the most basic rules!

Great, you are throwing a BBQ party! You have bought all the meat and spent hours in the kitchen making rubs and marinades. Then you walk over to the BBQ, surrounded by your hungry friends, and... oh, I’m out of charcoal... It sounds silly, but it happens more often than you might think. Always make sure well in advance that you have everything you need and that you are not going to run out. But if you really want to take your BBQ skills to the next level, make sure all your ingredients are neatly prepared and within reach as well. You are working with high heat and fire, and there is nothing more annoying than not knowing where the chimichurri has gone or discovering that your cheddar has melted in the sun. As an old chef’s saying goes: “A tidy workbench means a tidy mind.”

You know the feeling? You are invited to a friend’s BBQ and there is still dust and food residue from last summer stuck to the grill. Not exactly appetising. The best approach is to heat the BBQ thoroughly first and then scrape off the residue with a metal grill brush. Clean the BBQ straight after cooking as well, so the next time you start with a clean grill.

A mistake I often see is people brushing a glaze or sauce onto the meat far too early, while it is still nowhere near done. Most sauces contain quite a lot of sugar, which will quickly turn black if it stays over the heat for too long. The ideal time to add a glaze is when the meat is about 90% cooked. That way you get a real flavour explosion without burning anything!

Thin cuts of meat can of course be cooked quickly and easily over an open flame. But some cuts are larger and need more time and more even heat. Chicken legs, pork ribs and similar cuts would be burnt on the outside long before they are properly cooked or hot in the centre. So if your BBQ has a lid, keep it closed as much as possible. That way, the meat is heated from below while also cooking through the circulating heat inside the BBQ.

Okay, this may be a little dramatic, and it really comes back to being well prepared. But you are quite literally playing with fire, and a brief moment of inattention can quickly turn into a disaster! Stay focused, and you will get much better results.

The problem with a typical Dutch BBQ is that just about everything gets thrown onto the grill: ribs, pork belly slices, chicken, slavinken, steak and so on. All of these products need to be cooked differently. Sous vide is a technique in which food is vacuum sealed and slowly cooked in a water bath until it reaches the correct temperature. If you use this method for something like chicken legs, the chicken is already fully cooked. All you then need to do is give it a quick finish on the grill and brush it with a nice glaze. This way, everything is ready at roughly the same time and you are not sending smoke signals to your neighbours because your pork belly slices have caught fire!