Started volume 2 of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking
I have a really nice Weber gas BBQ which I purchased with money from my 45th birthday that will be 4 years old on Friday. The first chapter in this volume is Grilling and as you can guess there is about 10-15 pages diss-ing gas. Supposedly what cooks the food is not the heat of the air but the radiant heat and the dirtier the heat the better, so going to the dark side was a mistake 🙁
I have always been one to cook burgers and then turn them once and wait for 3 minutes until they finish off. WRONG, when grilling you must turn often. Here is the slap in the face from the book:
“No! A single flip cooks the food neither fastest nor more evenly. It just takes less thought”. OK my bad x 2 🙁
On my really expensive gas BBQ (which sucks see above) which I have a rotisserie, or what Modernistic Cuisine call classic roasting where I mainly cook whole chickens. The bar you put through the chicken is in the middle of the two gas burners. Normally I turn both burners on and close the lid to the BBQ. WRONG X 2. The key to roasting is to show the meat heat and then let it cool a bit (kind of like flipping the foods more often, see above) which cooks the food evenly. Oh and don’t shut the lid because that bakes it not roasts it. OK my bad x 3 🙁 and x 4 :-(.
I am only 40 pages into this next volume and I suck four times… oh well at least I have an Organic chicken in the fridge ready for “roasting” tomorrow on the BBQ and I will you know how the 1 burner and open lid turn out.