Andrew Schloss - Mastering the Grill: The Owners Manual for Outdoor Cooking

Mastering the Grill

The Owners Manual for Outdoor Cooking

BY ANDREW SCHLOSS AND DAVID JOACHIM / PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALISON MIKSCH

Text copyright 2007 by Andrew Schloss and David Joachim.

Photographs copyright 2007 by Alison Miksch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

eISBN-13: 978-0-8118-7835-7

The photographer wishes to thank her parents for their ardent support and generous spirit, which infuse her life and work.

9050 Shaughnessy Street
Vancouver, British Columbia V6P 6E5

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
http://www.chroniclebooks.com

FOR RON JOACHIM (1945-2003),
A MASTER OF FIRE

Three years ago, we started researching and writing about the science of grilling. Since then, so many people have fanned the flames, its difficult to know where to begin thanking everyone. Initial sparks came from our agent Lisa Ekus and editor Bill LeBlond, who encouraged the notion of us writing a book together. Thank you both for your support and insight every step of the way. To Amy Treadwell, huge thanks for lending your intelligent and creative mind to our sprawling manuscript. Barretto-Co., we cant thank you enough for making a mountain of information so easily accessible with your simple, bold design. Thanks also to Arthur Mount for your detailed illustrations and to Rebecca Pepper for razor-sharp copyediting.

We spent 18 months testing recipes and would like to thank everyone who test-drove, sampled, and critiqued the recipes in this book, especially Tara Mataraza Desmond and Meera Malik for offering plenty of down-to-earth suggestions during long days at the grill, as well as Christine Bucher; August and Maddox Joachim; Bonnie Joachim; Jon, Michelle, Jonathan, and Michael Joachim; Bill, Mary, Leah, and Brian Joachim; Chris and Lisa Neyen; Tom Villa; Kurt Larson; Paul Dellapa; Dave Pryor; Selene Yeager; Tom Aczel; Michelle Raes; Andrew and Kim Brubaker; Doug Ashby; Danielle Lubene; Bill, Beth, and Natalie Strickland; Mark Bowman; Mark Taylor; Rbi Eugster; Dale and Cindy Mack; Bill and Bridget Doherty; Cathy, Ken, Tomias, Nick, and Tessa Peoples; Kathy, Dan, Elizabeth, and Natalie Shollenberger; Karen, Dana, Ben, and Isaac Schloss; Ned and Debby Carroll; Topher Desmond; Mary and Allen Frankel; Diane Zilka; Karen Mauch; Joan and Burton Horn; Deborah Shain; and Murray Silberman.

Throughout the recipe testing and photography, we cooked with food from a huge array of food merchants and purveyors. Thanks in particular to John and Sukey Jamison of Jamison Farm for outstanding lamb; Bills Poultry at the Allentown Farmers Market for quail and other birds; and the many farmers at the Emmaus Farmers Market, especially Rod Wieder of Backyard Bison and George and Melanie DeVault of Pheasant Hill Farm.

We took on this books photography ourselves and are indebted to the talented photography team that created such stunning photographs over months and months of shooting, including photographer extraordinaire Alison Miksch, food stylist and papaya connoisseur Michael Pedersen, assistant food wizard Donna Land, photography assistant and scarf aficionado Jada Vogt, and tireless prop stylist Erika Ellis. We also thank Asa and Olivia Fritz and Donna and Ed Land for graciously allowing us to set up camp in your fields and fireplaces for various photo shoots. Big thanks to Phillip Shulman; Carol Moore; Christine Bucher; August and Maddox Joachim; Bill, Beth, and Natalie Strickland; Sharon, Walter, and Tess Sanders; and Sean and Morgan ORourke for modeling during these photo shoots. To Susan Pollack, a special thank-you for taking some very cool shots of us hamming it up at the grill.

For trumpeting our book title and roadside assistance during book promotion, thanks to Jennifer Tomaro and Peter Perez at Chronicle Books. Thanks also to the behind-the-scenes staff at Chronicle for helping us bring this book to life, including Tera Killip, Doug Ogan, and Evan Hulka.

Lastly, big hugs to our wives Christine and Karen for gracefully enduring yet another book and making room in our homes for more grills, smokers, and knives.

If you have ever sacrificed a rack of ribs to the incendiary powers of a backyard grill, or tried to convince yourself that black and crusty is exactly how you like your chicken, then you know firsthand the ambiguous art of cooking over an open flame. The problem is not always a lack of skill; it may be a lack of understanding. Many of us operate under the delusion that grilling is little more than throwing the desired number of edible items over a blaze and sitting back until they heat through. However, cooking outdoors, without the high-tech benefits of things like thermostats and heavy-gauge saucepans, requires greater vigilance and knowledge than anything demanded from indoor cooking.

The first step in mastering live fire is figuring out what its all about. Many grill books and many food science texts are available, but very few cookbooks venture into the science behind grilling. Thats the focus of our book. We aim to explain how grilling works, how to make grills work better, and how to use simple flavoring and cooking techniques to cook delicious grilled foods. We dont go overboard with trendy food science wizardry. We use no test tubes, vials, centrifuges, or sous-vide (French for under pressure). Our tools are the ones most grill lovers are comfortable and familiar with: tongs, spatulas, and knives. But well occasionally employ something offbeat if it is useful, such as a marinade injector or a grill skillet.

Likewise, our main ingredients are the usual four-legged animal meats like beef, pork, and lamb, as well as fish and fowl of every sort, plus some game meats here and there. We also devote an entire chapter to vegetables and another to fruits, doughs, and cheese. We grill everything from whole animals to primal cuts to retail cuts to parts and pieces. Our grilling techniques range from the expected to the adventurous. For instance, we prefer to cook some food directly in the hot coals rather than on a grill grate, such as Sweet Potatoes in the Coals with Lime-Cilantro Butter (page 287). We also cook some foods in roasting pans on the grill grate when it makes sense (see Clambake on the Grill, page 237). We also use brines, marinades, sauces, glazes, mops, dips, pastes, and spice rubs to enhance flavors. And our recipes can be grilled with gas, charcoal, or wood as the fuel.

All of this should be fairly familiar to most grill lovers. So whats new here? In this book, we approach the grill from the perspective of science and mechanics. Our goal is to impart an understanding of what happens during grilling, so that you can make better-tasting grilled food. Great grilling and barbecuing involve more than following accepted techniques and endless ingredient jockeying. Grilling is more than an art. Its simply not enough to say that grilling is an inexact science, as many grill books do. After all, baking was an inexact science before we understood the structure of flour, the browning properties of sugar, the alchemy of leaveners, and the tenderizing effects of fat. Just like bakers, tinkering grill cooks want to know more about the medium and the method. They want to know whats going on when raw food meets live fire. They want to know when to use a dry rub and when to marinate, what meats should be brined and which foods take best to mops, sops, and sauces. They want to know why a strip steak sometimes browns nicely, while at other times it burns inedibly. And they want the holy grail of grillingto know how to make a simple, tender grilled hamburger rather than a charred hockey puck. We believe that just as baking science has allowed bakers to hone their craft, knowing the science of live-fire cooking will allow backyard grill lovers to vastly improve their flair with the flames.