Getting The Most Out of Grilling Tools
How to Cook & Make Good Use of Barbecue Grilling Accessories

Grilling Utensils

BBQ Wok

Using a Wok on a BBQ is no different from using a wok anywhere else; however a BBQ-wok grilling tool is a special kind of grill accessories that mimics the shape of a traditional wok but is flat on the bottom for placement on top of the cooking grilling grates.

A BBQ-wok has small holes throughout the structure for allowing heat and flavor to access the chopped meats and vegetables in the BBQ-wok. Handles on each side allow the wok to be tossed and food to be flipped like a traditional wok. The BBQ-Wok allows stir-fry techniques outside on the barbecue with holes small enough to contain food while allowing additional charcoal or wood flavor into the food and greasy excess to drip through.

Skewers

Skewers for a favorite shish-ka-bob recipe come in several materials. There are metal skewers available for re-use, bamboo skewers for throw-aways, skewers with stay-cool handles and flavored wood skewers. When you barbecue with accessories it is important to know their purpose and how to use them as a good pair of skewer is the best cookware for an Italian cuisine you can find.

Bamboo or wooden skewers grilling tools can be soaked with a flavored marinade or broth and in addition to flavor the soaking both reduces charring and reduces sticking to food. Combine foods that will cook together matched not only for flavor but also matched considering cooking times. Watch the size of meats, fruit and vegetables; nothing is more frustrating than trying to turn your food and it flops around on the skewer. Consider doubling-up. Bamboo skewers are very inexpensive and food can be double skewered which stops movement on the shish-ka-bob like a wheel on an axle.

Common Grilling Accessories

Warming Racks

The most common of BBQ accessories is the warming rack. Some foods do not need to go directly over heat to cook. When barbecuing there is more of an opportunity to cook with indirect heat and if your grilling accessories are large enough, you can place food on the rack or the side away from the fire to keep warm until serving time. A warming rack is often used just to keep cooked food warm but can also be used for lesser levels of heat. With a typical barbeque that cooks with the hood closed, corn rubbed and wrapped in its husk cooks perfectly on a warming rack during the same time that chicken or burgers are cooking at the grilling surface. With a more powerful infrared grill that heats to over a thousand degrees at the grilling surface the warming rack is useful for hot dogs and chicken that need to cook at lower heat while the grilling surface holds steaks or burgers.

Grill Baskets

Once a set of skewers has been used incorrectly there is another grilling tool that comes in handy. Gas grilling baskets are generally two wire-grid screens that clamp together at varying thicknesses depending on the food placed in the "basket". A long thin basket with a low-heat wooden handle will hold anything that skewers could hold but the basket design means the food will not flop around or fall off a shish-ka-bob. Lay the chopped meats, vegetables and fruits in a long thin row within the basket, clamp it down and barbeque like a shish-ka-bob without an skewer.

Wider baskets are very useful for cooking tilapia, flounder, cod and other foods whose consistency will allow it to fall apart if it is moved around with tongs or a spatula. White fish are commonly avoided on a grill because they fall apart but a marinated flounder or tilapia can be clamped into a basket and hold its form for barbecuing. Instead of flipping the fish steak and watching it fall apart, the entire basket is turned and form is held for eating. With a solid grilling basket it is also possible to combine flavors clamping down with onions, peppers and other enhancers.

Grilling Rotisserie Baskets

Baskets come long and thin, wide and thin and thick enough to hold big juicy steaks. Grilling basket is also available to mount to a spit rod and use with a rotisserie burner. Long flat rotisserie baskets that clamp tightly around pieces of chicken, fish fillet or fish fingers will rotate with the spit-rod for even heat. Round grill rotisserie tumble baskets that mount to a spit rod are often used to tumble fish sticks or chicken legs in the basket cooked evenly by the rotisserie back burner.

Griddle

Because a typical barbecue uses air trapped in the hood to conduct heat, most barbecues do not get hotter than 500 degrees. A barbeque is not meant to grill at the cooking surface but works more like an oven. An outdoor grill griddle appears to be the grilling accessory we would use to make scrambled eggs or pancakes in the backyard - and certainly any griddle is useful for cooking at the surface like a range-top.

However a griddle can also be thick, heavy cast iron or stainless steel and conduct more heat than air trapped in the hood of a barbeque. A heavy griddle grilling tool conducting eight-hundred plus degrees works perfectly for a pan-seared tuna, Pittsburg seared steak or anything else that can be seared hot on the grill surface to lock-in moisture and flavor. Allow it to heat up long enough and a typical cast iron skillet will hold more heat than a restaurant-quality oven.

Useful Grilling Equipment & Supplies

Smoked Flavor with Wooden Planks

Cedar wood planks are perfect for adding a smoky flavor when a smoker is not available. Many higher end grills today have grilling accessories that allow smoking to become a normal part of using the BBQ but if a standard barbeque is the only thing available, cedar planks can work with any cooker. Soak a plank of wood for about two hours. Pick the wood based on the smell and flavor and weight it down so it stays submerged.

Barbecuing with a wooden plank is similar to convection cooking, that is cooking with air. A traditional barbeque heats by building up heat transferred through the air trapped in the closed hood. When fish or red meat or chicken are placed on the soaked plank in the barbeque right on top of the cooking the surrounding heat pulls moisture out of the food and the meat will pull moisture out of the cedar grilling plank thus replenishing moisture while picking-up some of the smoky flavor of the wood. Without a smoky backyard and with any basic barbeque a great smoky flavor can be achieved with wood grill planks.

Infrared Burners

In the world of grilling technology infrared grill burners are the top of the food-chain. There is no cooking technology more sophisticated or useful than the infrared grill tool. The infrared burner pressurizes gas in the housing and produces tens of thousands of small, pressurized flames where a barbeque pipe burner would product twenty or thirty blue flames. Because of the intensity of the heat produced an infrared grill can sear a steak or fish without the use of a thick, heavy griddle and without closing the BBQ hood to conduct heat through air.

Steamer and Fryer Grilling Tools

The direct heat also allows for a few grilling accessories specific to infrared burners. The steamer/fryer basked is used as a steamer or as a fryer. The design of the accessory is simple: A square bowl to hold water or oil has a shield in the bottom to keep the screen basket out of the water. The shield is removed to allow the basket to lower into hot oil. Above the screen basket is a lid used to keep steam located in the basket where the crawfish, crab legs or vegetables are cooking.

A steamer/fryer can only be used effectively on an infrared grill because sitting on top of the burner the direct heat steams water or heats oil quickly. The same accessory that had to be slowly brought to temperature in a traditional barbeque would never get hot enough to boil water with the basket in place.

Infrared Grilling Accessories

When Bill Best invented the infrared burner at TEC not just grilling but the entire world of cooking was changed. Restaurants became the biggest customers of the original TEC grills. As a result, TEC came out with grilling tools that were useful with the technology of the indirect heat from infrared burner. In addition to the steamer/fryer first used by TEC they also made available a wok ring, BBQ tray, smoker box and a griddle. The griddle is useless because the intense heat from the infrared burner is much hotter than conducted heat through stainless steel. The wok ring was new because the direct heat of the infrared burner allowed the intense heat for oil stir-fry usually available only through commercial quality machines.

Barbecuing accessories make new flavors and different styles of grilling possible. With the right barbeque grilling tools flaky white fish that fall apart become easy to barbeque and smaller vegetables that would otherwise fall through a cooking surface become safe in a grilling wok. Barbecuing is not about providing dinner and cooking in the backyard elicits a different attitude than cooking indoors in the kitchen. Barbecuing is about having fun, enjoying the backyard, family friends and creativity. Right grilling tools add to the fun of experimentation and they help the seasoned chef diversify the range of outdoor berbcue cooking.

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