16.3 Temperature and timing in grilling

Grill Temperatures

• Very hot: You can hold your hand at grill level only 1 to 2 seconds.
• Hot: You can hold your hand at grill level only 2 to 3 seconds.
• Medium-hot: You can hold your hand at grill level only 3 to 4 seconds.
• Medium: You can hold your hand at grill level only 4 to 5 seconds.
• Medium-low: You can hold your hand at grill level only 5 to 6 seconds.
• Low: You can hold your hand at grill level only 6 to 7 seconds.

Pre-heating your grill is critical for having success. Without this key step, you are quite literally putting all of your food in jeopardy. This is true for two reasons. First, since your grill will not reach the optimal cooking temperature, your food will end up staying on the grill too long. This can easily lead to overcooked and dried out results.

To cook delicious food, you need to control your cooking temperature because the compounds in foods react differently to different levels of heat. For example, meats are composed of protein, water, fat, collagen, and some sugars, and each component changes drastically at different temperatures. Fats render at one temp, water evaporates at another, collagens melt at another, sugar caramelizes at another, the Maillard reaction (a.k.a. browning of proteins) occurs at another, and carbonization (a.k.a. charring or burning) occurs at yet another temp.

To gain control of temp, a 2-zone setup is ideal because it gives you much better control over temperature and method of applying heat. In a 2-zone setup, you have one side of the grill that is hot and producing radiant direct heat, and the other side is producing no heat and food on that side cooks by indirect convection heat.