How to BBQ: Cooking

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Ten Tips For Cooking Perfect Shrimp

There are many ways to cook shrimp. You will see me say it over and over again but it's important to get the point across. The single biggest tip for cooking shrimp is "Do Not Over Cook It."

Whether you are charcoal grilling or gas grilling shrimp, broiling shrimp, pan frying it or deep frying shrimp, you do not want to cook it too long. Overcooking shrimp makes it tough and it loses flavor.

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So what are the 10 tips for cooking perfect shrimp? Here they are:

Ten Tips For Cooking Perfect Shrimp

1. Do not over cook shrimp, I repeat Do Not Over Cook Shrimp!

2. If your recipe calls for thawed shrimp, thaw shrimp in the refrigerator (Allow it to thaw overnight.) or thaw under cold running water (this usually takes about 15 or less depending on how much you are thawing)

3. Never thaw at room temperature or under warm/hot water.

4. Never refreeze thawed shrimp

5. Use fresh shrimp within 24 hours after purchasing, the sooner the better. Shrimp is very perishable. Check with your seafood market to see if the shrimp is fresh or previously frozen. Most shrimp is previously frozen so you will not want to refreeze it. If you are wanting to freeze, just buy frozen shrimp to begin with (our recommendation anyway

6. For Broiling Shrimp, clean and devein shrimp first and then spread the shell open until it lies flat, rinse it under cold water. Season and prepare shrimp, then broil in oven for 4-5 minutes. It is a good idea to baste the shrimp during broiling period to help prevent burnt edges.

7. For Pan frying shrimp (sautéing), be sure to thaw the shrimp first. If you don't, it will tend to spatter too much. Then, Heat ¼ teaspoon olive oil in large skillet. Add shrimp and desired seasoning. (I recommend McCormick Bayou Cajun Seasoning. It's my favorite seasoning for shrimp) Cook 3 to 5 minutes; do not overcook. (Did I mention, do not overcook it :)

8. For Grilled Shrimp - You also want to start with raw shrimp because using pre-cooked shrimp and grilling it will cause dried out, chewy shrimp. This can be bad, very bad!

9. For grilling shrimp, my recommendation is to use large or extra large shrimp. The larger sized shrimp stay on the grill better. Also, If making shrimp kabobs they hold on the skewer better.

10. Have fun and be creative. Play with the recipe and make it your own.

One thing I have learned along the way is that you do not have to follow cooking recipes 100% to get great results. (Baking may be another story) But for most of the recipes you can play around and give them your own twist, if you dare!

Ten Tips For Cooking Perfect Shrimp

This article is brought to you by Beth Brawn, creator of http://www.free-shrimp-recipes.com You can visit her website for many Free Shrimp Recipes along with many other Shrimp Cooking Tips and Cooking Videos. Copyright- You may freely republish this article, provided the text, author credit, the active links and this copyright notice remain in place.

What is the Best Turkey Cooking Temperature?

If you've ever had turkey at a thanksgiving dinner, but found it dry or bland, then this article may help you understand why. Sometimes it is simply down to the flavoring they used, but often it is down to the way the turkey was cooked - either it was not basted properly, or often enough, or it was cooked at the wrong temperature.

Some people mistakenly cook a turkey at too high a temperature, and keep it in for far too long - this can leave you with a turkey that is very dry and over cooked. While this has a less than ideal taste, it is better than the alternative - an undercooked turkey, and food poisoning.

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The Right Way to Cook a Turkey

What is the Best Turkey Cooking Temperature?

In general, turkeys should be cooked at 325 degrees. Preheat the oven, and then keep everyone away from it - especially inquisitive children who could be inclined to try to play with the knobs! Try not to open the oven door unless it is time to baste the turkey, as this lets out the heat, and slows down the cooking process.

You can rely on the cooking directions to get an idea of how long the turkey should take to cook, but if you have a meat thermometer this is even better. Insert it into the deepest part of the turkey to check the temperature. A turkey is fully cooked when the meat thermometer reads 165 degrees. If it is anything less than this, put the turkey back in for a bit longer, as you could risk giving your guests food poisoning if you serve up an undercooked turkey, and food poisoning is most certainly not fun!

What is the Best Turkey Cooking Temperature?

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Prime Rib Cooking Times

As you look over a couple of prime rib recipes you'll notice a wide range of prime rib cooking times. Some recipes call for a cooking time of one hour and some recipes say that the roast should be cooked for six hours. Very confusing! Well, there's a reason for this discrepancy -- prime rib cooking times depend a lot on the cooking temperature and the size of the roast.

There are two basic methods for cooking prime rib roasts -- high temperature and low temperature. Each method has its advantages and there are people who swear by a one cooking process or the other. Prime rib cooking times are mostly determined by whether you are cooking the meat at high temperatures or low temperatures.

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Some people love the slow cooking methods that is used in smoker barbecues. It can't be denied that smoking brings out wonderful flavors in the prime rib and produces some of the juiciest roasts imaginable. The low temperature of smoker barbecues means that prime rib cooking times can be extended to five or six hours.

Prime Rib Cooking Times

On the other hand, there are those who swear by cooking the prime rib in a hot oven. This method reduces prime rib cooking times to the minimum while searing the exterior of the meat so that it contains the juices. When placed in a 500° oven, a 12 pound roast will cook in less than an hour.

This fast cooking method, however, depends on the roast staying in the warm oven for at least one more hour after the heat is turned off. During this time, the meat is still cooking, so you could say that this method requires prime rib cooking times of three hours.

No matter which way you cook the meat, you have to check the interior temperature to make sure that it is cooked all the way through. A good-quality meat thermometer will tell you the temperature of the roast and you might have to extend the prime rib cooking times by an hour or two.

Prime Rib Cooking Times

Hans is author of Steaks, Seafood and Barbeque guide at http://www.steaks-guide.com

Cooking Roast Prime Rib on the Grill

Love the taste of prime rib? Love the taste of barbecue? You can combine them together for cooking roast prime rib on the grill. It takes a bit longer than hamburgers, but cooking roast prime rib on the grill gives you a fabulous roast that everyone enjoys.

You need a lot of charcoal for cooking prime rib on the grill. The cooking time is about two hours so you need about 8 pounds of good quality charcoal. Fire up the charcoal and wait until the flames die down and the charcoal is giving off a good heat.

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When cooking prime rib on the grill, you don't want the meat to be directly over the hot coals. Move them over to one side of the grill so that you can place the roast on the other side. Before putting the meat on the barbecue, rub the exterior with a mixture of coarse salt, pepper and herbs.

Cooking Roast Prime Rib on the Grill

You can use either bone on or bone off when cooking roast prime rib on the grill. You can ask the butcher to remove the bones and then tie them back onto the meat. This gives you the best of both worlds -- easy carving and great tasting ribs.

Place the meat on the grill and cover it tightly. If the cover has vents, you want to close them as well. Check the grill from time to time to make sure it has enough heat to for cooking roast prime rib on the grill. If it cools off, you can open the events to let the flames build up again.

After two hours of cooking roast prime rib on the grill, take the cover off and check the temperature with a meat thermometer. The interior will be about 115° when the meat is rare, and 150° is well done. Be sure to check the temperature as close to the middle as possible.

After cooking roast prime rib on the grill to your taste, remove it from the grill and let it sit for about 15 minutes before serving. I hope you bought a big enough roast because your guests will ask for seconds and thirds!

Cooking Roast Prime Rib on the Grill

You are free to publish the above article in your ezine or website, provided credit in the form of an (HTML clickable) hyperlink is given to the author.

Hans is author of http://www.steaks-guide.com/ and the barbeque and grill section of http://www.patio-furniture-ideas.com/

Barbeque Cooking Made Easy

If you have trouble cooking on a barbeque then don't worry - you're by no means alone. Cooking in this way can be tricky, but there are some handy tips that you can use to make things better.

So where should you begin? The first thing that you should consider is of real importance and it too often overlooked by amateur cooks. We're talking about the issue of food hygiene. If you're used to cooking a lot then you may be aware of food hygiene issues already. It's vital that you apply those same rules when cooking on a barbeque.

Bbq Recipe

The way in which you handle meat is of particular importance. You should never allow cooked and raw meats to come into contact with each other. Equally, you should not allow the juices to be contaminated.

What this means for you is that you need to concentrate on how you prepare food, taking particular care to wash hands and equipment at regular intervals. If you're worried about being able to do this on the day then you should consider how much of the food preparation can be done prior to the occasion. Just as you won't want to take risks with the preparation, you'll also want to cook all food properly. It's vital that you have suitable equipment for the task.

Many like to use Weber BBQ grills, but you should use whatever you are comfortable with. Make sure that you know how the equipment works and which parts of the cooking surface reach which temperatures.

This is important because a failure to have this information will make it very difficult for you to cook food properly. You won't want to serve food that doesn't taste very good, or that could be harmful to your guests.

Cooking effectively on a barbeque needn't be an impossible task. Keep an eye on all food as it cooks, so that you are ready to step in if there are any problems. You can have an enjoyable day and make it one that your guests will all remember for the right reasons.

Barbeque Cooking Made Easy

Find out more about Weber bbq cooking by reading further articles by Keith Barrett. This article may be used by any website publisher, though this resource box must always be included in full.

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Cooking with a Wood Fired Barbecue

Long before the advent of charcoal briquettes and propane people were cooking their meals over wood fueled fires. From the days of cave-men to less than one hundred years ago wood was the fuel of choice when it came to cooking. In this modern age we are constantly looking for a faster, cleaner and easier way to do everything, including preparing our meals. This has led to the development of bigger accessory laden gas fueled grills lining the isles of home improvement stores and showing up in our backyards.

But for the barbeque purists out there nothing tastes quite the same as preparing their favorite barbeque dish over a wood fired grill.

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Why is this? What could possibly work better then the latest and greatest in barbecue technology?

Depending on the type of wood used the "Grill-Master" (that guy who hovers over the grill creating barbecue master pieces) can create flavors in the meat, poultry or fish that just cannot be had over a more modern gas fueled grill. This flavor can further be adjusted just by the amount of wood used, how hot the fire is, and how much smoke the meat is allowed to marinate in.

There are several types of wood fired barbeques on the market today. They are sometimes referred to as smoker grills.

The offset firebox is the one most of us are used to seeing. These come in all sizes, from small family sized units to large trailer born monsters capable of feeding several hundred people. The distinguishing characteristic of the offset firebox is, well the offset firebox. Set off to the side and slightly below the main cooking chamber is the firebox. This separates the food from direct heat and allows for a nice slow cooking temperature.

The bullet style smoker is not actually a smoker but more of what is called a cold smoker or water smoker. They use a pan of water between the heat source and the meat, thereby blocking any direct heat that would cause any overcooking. In a sense they are not really considered a barbecue because of the way they work.

The main chamber cooker is the third type of wood fired barbeque. These are barrel shaped and allow the fire to be built off to one side with the meat offset from the wood allowing for an indirect cooking method. You do need to be careful with how large of a fire gets built because there is no physical separation between the heat source and the meat. The fire need to be kept small and tended in a timely manner throughout the cooking process.

Of course all this is a moot point if you do not select the right type of wood. For a wood fired barbecue nothing works better than a fruit bearing hardwood such as oak, hickory, pecan, maple apple and of course from Texas mesquite. Do not use softwoods or the wood from evergreens or conifers. Aside from burning at a lower temperature they are loaded with sap which will leave a bad taste on anything you cook.

Cooking meat over a wood fire has been something humans have been doing for thousands of years. With the newer and more modern wood barbecue smokers on the market today it is possible for just about anyone to enjoy real wood fired barbecue.

Cooking with a Wood Fired Barbecue

Andrew Bicknell is a barbeque aficionado with a website about barbequing. For more tips and trick about wood fired barbecues visit his web site Backyard Barbeque.

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Cooking Roast Prime Rib on the Grill

Love the taste of prime rib? Love the taste of barbecue? You can combine them together for cooking roast prime rib on the grill. It takes a bit longer than hamburgers, but cooking roast prime rib on the grill gives you a fabulous roast that everyone enjoys.

Barbecue

When cooking prime rib on the grill, you don't want the meat to be directly over the hot coals. Move them over to one side of the grill so that you can place the roast on the other side. Before putting the meat on the barbecue, rub the exterior with a mixture of coarse salt, pepper and herbs.

Cooking Roast Prime Rib on the Grill

You are free to publish the above article in your ezine or website, provided credit in the form of an (HTML clickable) hyperlink is given to the author.

Hans is author of http://www.steaks-guide.com/ and the barbeque and grill section of http://www.patio-furniture-ideas.com/

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Barbecue Cooking Tips - Indirect Heat Grilling For Perfectly Done Outdoor Roasts

The spring and summer months are a great time to pull the old grill out of the garage, dust it off and start planning some delicious barbecue dishes.

Most of us know how to make basic grilled foods like burgers, hot dogs, steaks and sausages. These are generally cooked by the most basic form of grill cooking, direct heat cooking. Direct heat grilling means that the food is directly over your heat source (hot coals or gas burners) and cooks from this direct heat. Direct heat is perfect for smaller food items that you want to quickly sear the outside, producing that beautiful browned caramelization on the surface, while sealing in the juicy freshness of the inside. It is the ideal cooking style for steak which is nice and browned on the outside yet pink and juicy on the inside.

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However, what many grilling neophytes don't know is that direct heat is not the only way to cook on a barbecue! Another important style of cooking is indirect heat grilling. Indirect heat relies on a heat source which is not directly next to or beneath the grilling food, but is rather separated by some distance. With the lid closed on your barbecue, this gentler form of heat cooks the food by convection of ambient heat in the hot air and smoke within your grill, rather than by direct radiant heat from the coals. This is similar to the way food cooks in your oven when roasting, except without the wood smoke!

So why should you learn how to cook with indirect heat? What is it good for? Well, if you tried to grill a whole chicken with direct heat over very hot coals, the surface skin and fat would be burnt to a crispy, black char long before the interior was fully cooked. Also, by the time the middle was cooked, the flesh would be dried out. You would loose the surface flavors and juicy interior of a well roasted chicken. So the solution? You guessed it, indirect heat. Indirect heat allows your larger cuts of meat to cook slowly, developing the outer brown color more slowly while allowing the interior to cook to perfect doneness. A perfect rack of ribs requires the meat to cook slowly until the meat is tender and almost falling off the bone. A chicken should cook completely while the exterior does not char. All this and more can be accomplished with indirect heat.

So how do you do it? Lets find out!

For starters, you will need a couple of things to help make your indirect grilling perfect (you can do without them, but they are helpful:
- A shallow metal pan or dish half-filled with tap water
- A meat thermometer
- A grill thermometer (if your grill doesn't have one built-in)
Start your charcoal or gas burners as you normally would.
If you are using charcoal, when your charcoal is all hot and ready (when the briquets have a layer of grey ash over them), separate the coals onto the two sides of your grill. You will have two piles of coals on either side of your grill with a large empty space in the middle. Weber and other companies make indirect grilling coal holders just for this purpose which are basically metal baskets that hold charcoal on either side of your grill. However, you can do without any special equipment. If you are using a gas grill, you can use indirect heat by turning off one of your burners to have a less hot spot on your grill. Ideally, if you have three burners, you would turn off the middle one, leaving the two side ones on. If you only have two burners, turn on on and leave the other off.
Place the metal pan with water in it in the middle of your charcoal grate, between the two piles of charcoal (on on the turned off burner if you have a gas grill). This will catch drippings from your roasting meat and will also help keep the interior of your grill humidified so that your meat doesn't dry out.
Put your grill grate on.
Close the lid of your grill and let the heat accumulate. Use your grill thermometer to check the temperature inside your close grill to make sure there is adequate heat. If it is not warming up, either add more coals and wait for them to start burning or turn up your burners if you have a gas grill
Open your grill and place your prepared food (whole chicken, ribs, roast, etc.) in the "indirect heat zone" of your grill. This is the open area, under which there are no coals or gas burners burning.
Close the lid and let your food roast.
Check back periodically and flip your meat over or rotate it occasionally. Also check that there is still adequate heat in your barbecue. Baste your meat regularly when the surface dries out to keep it moist, about every 15 minutes. If the surface of your meat looks like it is browning too fast in any one area, be sure to turn or flip it so that all sides get equal heat and exposure. If it still seems like the surface is cooking too fast, your heat may be too high or the roast is getting too much direct heat from one of the heat sources. Attempt to move the charcoal away further or move the roast to a more isolated spot on the grill. Always remember to keep the cover of your grill closed between checking on your food. You want to keep all that good heat inside to help roast your meat!
When your roast is looking like it may be done, begin testing for doneness. The most accurate way to do this is with a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the meat (on a chicken this is the deepest part of the inner thigh meat or deep in the breast). Do not put your thermometer up against bone as this can artificially increase the temperature reading. Most thermometers have readings for doneness for beef, pork, and chicken. If yours does not, general rules to go by for chicken is 165 degrees, pork 160 - 170 degrees, beef/lamb/veal 145 for medium rare, 160 for medium and 170 for well done. If you do not have a meat thermometer, you can prick the meat deeply with a skewer or fork. If pork and chicken are done adequately, the fluid that runs out should be clear, not red or pink. If all else fails, cut a small slice into a deep part of meat to check the color.
When your food has reached its ideal level of interior doneness, remove from the grill and place on a large platter or plate.
Cover with tin foil and let your roast sit for 5 to 10 minutes at least so that the interior juices and heat redistributes.
Carve and serve!

A few other tips to make your indirect heat grilled foods shine!

Marinating - Because grilling is a dry heat that can have the tendency to dry out meats that are cooked for a long time, marinating your food before cooking is a great way to both add savory flavors as well as increase the juiciness. There are many recipes for delicious marinades for poultry, pork and beef and even many bottled marinades available in supermarkets. Another option similar to marinating is brining which really seals in and concentrates flavors.
Basting - I strongly recommend basting your meat as it cooks over indirect heat. When the surface dries out, every 15 minutes or so during the cooking time, baste it generously with a basting brush. The basting mixture can be similar to the marinating mixture or alternatively it can introduce new flavors. For example, barbecue sauce is not good to marinate with, it will just burn on the meat if it cooks too long. However, introduced later in the cooking process to baste the meat a few times before it is done creates a great, savory coating of flavor. Other great options for marinating include lemon juice, olive oil, and red wine vinegar, either together or alone. Again, there are many recipes with recommendations for basting mixtures for your slow roasted grilled foods. For safety, if you baste with your marinade, remember that your marinade came in contact with your raw meat. Therefore, avoid adding this mixture in the last 15 to 20 minutes of cooking so you don't introduce any uncooked meat to the surface of your roast! Its best to use a fresh basting mixture if possible.

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Barbecue Cooking Tips - Indirect Heat Grilling For Perfectly Done Outdoor Roasts

Josh Dusick is the editor of the Fire Pit and Grilling Guru website at http://www.firepit-and-grilling-guru.com where you can get information about grills, barbecues, fire pits, indoor grills, firewood, charcoal, grill and fire pit cooking, cooking in your fireplace, grill food and wine pairing and even how to build an outdoor fire pit. There are even some delicious free grilling recipes. Take your cooking with fire to the next level!