How does direct grilling work?

Posted on by Aad Struijk

Direct grilling means cooking very quickly under high temperature. The combination of a high heat with a glowing grill grate will cook the meat in minutes. For meat with an even surface, you get the characteristic grill stripes this way. This method of barbecuing is only suitable for foods of small size, unless the core does not need to be (fully) cooked.

Step by step direct grilling

  • Remove the top (grill) grate, brush it all over with vegetable oil and set aside for now.
  • For direct grilling, charcoal is more suitable, but you can also use briquettes without a problem. Place a pile of charcoal on the lower (heating) grate and insert 2-3 kindling wicks between them. If you use the briquette starter, fill it three-quarters full of briquettes or charcoal and place 2-3 firelighters on the grate.
  • Open the vent all the way. Light the wokkels, or put the starter above the cubes and light the cubes. Then, with the lid open, let the charcoal or briquettes glow for 15 to 30 minutes. The coals are ready for use when the fuel is covered with a thin layer of white/gray ash and is red hot inside.
  • Now distribute the charcoal or briquettes over that part of the fire grate you are going to use. Use old or not-so-expensive meat tongs for this purpose. Always try to leave a piece of the heating grid uncovered. That way you have a safe zone to which you can move meat if the grilling unexpectedly goes too fast.
  • Replace the grill rack, leaving the vents wide open, and close the lid. Wait until the barbecue reaches the desired temperature, then open the lid (then leave it open). You can now start grilling the meat. Use a long meat bar to place the food on the grill rack, as the temperature up there is now very high (230° – 350°C).

With direct grilling, you only need to wait a few minutes until the meat is cooked and can be served. That is, as long as you used the right types of meat, because by no means everything lends itself to direct grilling and certainly not to direct grilling at the very highest temperature. You don’t have to be a culinary mastermind to realize that you won’t get a tough suka steak nice and tender and cooked with this method of your long life. Partly inspired by the cheap and tasteless, purely profit-driven BBQ packages of the supermarket and scrupulous butchers, however, there are also whole tribes of people who unsuspectingly deposit, for example, fatty bratwursts next to the shashlik and satay sticks on the grill rack. With the prompt result that the delicate skin of the sausage bursts open due to the heat and discharges a load of liquid fat onto the hot coals, resulting in high flaring flames. Bon appetit, but not really.
Almost anything (but not everything) that is small and/or thin lends itself to direct grilling. Pieces of meat or fish that are larger in volume but require only minimal cooking to be suitable for consumption can also be grilled successfully. Consider, for example, rare or medium rare steaks or slices of salmon and tuna.