Barbecue Tips For Better Taste

By Daniel Roshard

We all know that for some reason there are a lot of people that volunteer to be responsible for the grilling and barbecue at every event that has this option, and many times the barbecue is destroyed for a wide variety of reasons, the fire was too strong, the wind increased the fire, the meat was not right etc.

To know how to grill successfully is not about being an expert at all kind of meat grilling and fire building, it is simply keeping some very basic rules to the way you use the grill and some advice regarding the fire. Control of the fire is a basic rule you must keep if you want a better chance of eating a nicely grilled meat, and if fact it is the most difficult to keep, you need to be slow and conscience of what you are doing.

Most people discover that grilling takes much longer than they thought it would, this brings a lot of problems to the barbecue table, the person in charge of the barbecue gets hungry, people come to visit the grill and offer a lot of advice and tips and some people just visit to see how it is doing, because they start getting hungry. The best thing to do is know your plan, find out the time that the meat is expected to be ready, and start the fire 20 minutes ahead of time since increasing the fire is not a problem, but decreasing it might be a very big problem.

Have a little something to eat before you start, or throughout the cooking to keep you focused on the quality and not the time it take to cook, take the meat out from anything that keeps it cool about 30 minutes before you will load it on the grill, this will help the meat to cook ideally.

In most cases you would want the barbecue not to have any fire but only heat and at that point you need to decide if its warm enough, or needs more heat. To increase the heat you can simply blow into the fire or use something you can wave to make it grow, if you want to decrease the fire you can use a small amount of water to kill some extra warm places and reduce the heat, do not use a lot of water because if you do you run a very good chance of killing the fire altogether. If you are unsure about the heat you can place a small piece of meat and wait 10 minutes to see the effect.

Take the fat off the meat before you cook it, the fat can increase the fire when it starts to drip into the barbecue, and in some cases, if the fire is too strong it can result in the meat actually catching fire which is a catastrophe for the person who is about to eat that piece of meat. In any case, when cooking some kind of meat you never had cooked before you should always test the fire before you introduce all the meat to the grill, so start the grill ahead of time, test the meat for about 15 minutes and see if it’s the right heat for it.

Daniel Roshard is an interior designer fascinated by outdoor architecture, he is currently studying public parks and outdoor design. Daniel is writing articles about home improvement and landscaping issues. You can read his latest work on Barbecue here.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Roshard

Where's the BEEF? A Consumer's Guide

The beef trade laments falling sales. It blames B.S.E.; it points a finger at the zealots from C.A.R.M. (The Campaign Against Red Meat), rising production costs and pomegranate diets.

In fact the industry identifies everything but the central reason for the public's disillusionment with this fine meat.

The truth of the matter is that too much of the stuff is plain rubbish. It's just about fit to feed to your dog (so long as you're not too fond of your dog).

There was a time, forty or fifty years ago, when the beef on the butcher's slab was a very different item than it is today. It was almost always from a meat bullock, not a dairy cow.

Domestic cattle are bred either for meat or dairy. They are not properly interchangeable.

Altogether too much second-rate dairy meat gets into the stores now. It is insipid, prone to toughness and is insufficient in the right kind of fat.

In those halcyon days of beautiful beef, it wasn't bright red and, of course, had no business being bright red. Such a color describes meat that has not been hung for at least two or three weeks in a dry, cold atmosphere.

One major reason for not hanging meat is that, as the liquid content evaporates over the period, there is less weight to sell and profit margins are thus eroded. The butcher could increase the price but at the risk of customer complaints.

Bright red meat is likely to be lacking in any depth of flavor. The color of properly hung meat is very dark red, almost brown in fact.

The fat surrounding the meat, then, was yellow. The animals grazed on grass, the only proper food for cattle. The chemical action of the chlorophyll in the grass causes the yellowness.

The animals were never fed on barley or grain in feedlots. It is those feedstuffs that cause the fat to be hard and white.

It's a sad fact that producers have managed to persuade consumers that they actually prefer 'creamy white' fat. The simple truth is that it's just a darned sight cheaper to produce. The consumer has been led by the nose, all the way to tasteless, bland, mass-produced rubbish.

After roasting, the underlying fat disappeared and rendered down into dripping (tallow), leaving a thin delicious brown crust. They were certainly never given hormone supplements to dramatically increase their weight. Happily this potentially dangerous practice has now been banned within the E.U.

So, having said all of the above, is beef a totally lost cause? Is there anything that can be done to put quality meat on your table again?

Yes there is, and the first skirmish in the battle is for you to be pretty aggressive with your butcher.

Ask why the fat is white. Why is the meat the color of 1920s lipstick? Will it be tender? If the answer is "Yes" then ask how that can be when the meat has clearly not been hung. Was the animal fed hormones? Was it fed cattle cake during the winter? Cattle cake often contains heavy metals, substances that you really do not need in your diet.

Persuade your carnivorous friends that the situation is not good enough. Start a campaign to force your butcher to stock what you want, not necessarily what he wants to sell to you.

An excellent read on the subject is the old favorite 'Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal' by Eric Schlosser. There is a lot of good information there, about the beef that reaches the consumer in the United States.

One sure-fire route out of the sad beef loop is to buy organic. Whether it is healthier or not is a subject for the scientists. What is absolutely certain, though, is that it tastes so much better.

If the price of organic beef is too steep, then there are plenty of small farmers producing grass-fed beef.

To buy the very best of beef, you have to be prepared to pay quite a lot more. Maybe the answer is to eat it less often but for it to be a great experience when you do invest.

Unfortunately, if you're a 32oz steak person, you are going to need a pretty fat wallet!