Direct cooking and indirect cooking

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Direct cooking, tips and tricks

There are 2 types of barbecue cooking: direct cooking and indirect cooking. You don't choose one method or the other based on the barbecue or the foods you want to cook, but rather based on the quantity and thickness of the foods you want to cook. Knowing which method to use depending on the foods you're going to cook is the basis for becoming a barbecue master.

Direct cooking is the simplest and most common. Foods are simply cooked or grilled above the coals. The only possible variation with this type of cooking is when you have a lid on your barbecue - you can leave it down or raise it. Direct cooking is the oldest cooking method. You only need a piece of meat, a grill and a fire. It's called direct cooking because it's the direct contact of heat under the food that will cook the meat. If you lower the lid, the heat will spread throughout the barbecue and the foods will be cooked on both sides, that's the difference between grilled (one side after the other) and cooked (both sides at the same time).

When the lid is down, cooking also takes place in the heart of the meat and not just on the outer surfaces of the foods. The cooking is longer and you'll of course need to turn the meat, because the part that's not in direct contact with the coals cooks more slowly. Direct cooking with the lid down allows you to cook meat faster.

Foods to grill

As I mentioned above, you need to know which food to choose for direct cooking. Here are some examples:

• beef steaks
• ground beef patty
• fish fillet
• pork chop
• seafood, prawns, shrimp etc.
• skewers (chicken, beef, veal, lamb etc.)
• sausages (merguez, white sausage, chipolata)
• bacon
• cutlet

You should choose direct cooking for thin foods that have a short cooking time (a few minutes). You'll cook most of the time with the lid down - the only reason to leave the lid open is if you need to baste the meat regularly, in which case it's better not to use the lid.

For any food measuring more than 5 cm thick, use indirect cooking.

Indirect cooking

Indirect cooking is more like "cooking" than grilling. Let me explain: we just saw that in direct cooking the coals are under the food and they grill this way. During indirect cooking, you have to imagine a barbecue that only heats on one side, and you place your food on the side opposite to the coals with the barbecue lid lowered. This way the temperature in the barbecue will increase and will cook the meat without burning it. The food is never in direct contact with the coals, which is why this cooking mode is called indirect. The advantage of this type of cooking is that you can cook large pieces of meat without burning them and the cooking is very even. The disadvantage is that you'll need much more time to cook the food. And you need a barbecue with a lid.

Indirect cooking on gas barbecue

When you have a gas barbecue and want to cook large pieces of meat, it's possible with indirect cooking. The solution is to light only one of the 2 burners and place the piece of meat on the other side, you lower the lid and you're done. You'll tell me but I only have one burner...
If you only have one gas burner on your barbecue, you'll need a drip pan. This is a hollow metal plate that you'll place under the grill and especially not above. This way the heat will be deflected and go to the sides to heat the entire barbecue and not just the grill. This method has some positive sides, it especially allows you to keep a very clean barbecue because the fat from the food will fall into the drip pan and not into the barbecue. The main problem is that this method is still a bit less efficient than when you have 2 burners.

indirect cooking on wood barbecue

Nothing could be simpler than cooking a very large piece of beef on a wood barbecue. Instructions: first refer to the "making a fire for barbecue" page to make a good fire. Once it's perfectly done, you place all the coals on one side of the barbecue and you place your meat on the other side. But you can also place coals on each side and put the meat in the middle, etc... To keep it simple, you make a fire as usual, and once you have good coals, you place all the coals on one side or the other.

Foods to cook with indirect cooking

These are all pieces of meat more than 5 cm thick.

• Leg of lamb
• Turkey
• Piece of beef
• Rotisserie in general
• Duck breast

We'll use this cooking method to use our barbecue in rotisserie mode.