It won’t take long if you start hanging out with cooks to realise that grilling and barbecuing isn't the same thing. This can happen when people from different parts of the country gather together because the terms have varied connotations in different parts of the country. It’s only a matter of time before someone attempts to explain how smoking differs from the barbecue. The next thing you know, everyone is squabbling instead of cooking, and you’re all going hungry. Let’s look at the three techniques and explain their basic procedures and distinctions to help you avoid this problem in the future.
Barbecuing is a way of cooking meat slowly over indirect heat. Barbecuing is all about low heat and slow cooking time. BBQ temperatures normally range between 190 and 275 degrees Fahrenheit, which means a piece of meat will take several hours to properly cook. BBQ can be done on a wood-fired grill, a gas grill, or a charcoal grill. Any sort of meat can be barbecued, although the lengthy cook times promote softness in huge, tough, fatty chunks of meat. Some of the better barbecue selections include pork ribs, pig butt, and pork shoulder. Marbling in meat indicates that fat is dispersed throughout the muscle, which is ideal for BBQ. A well-barbecued piece of meat is juicy, tender, and readily slips off the bone.
On the other hand, the process of exposing food to smoke in order to preserve, brown, and flavour is known as smoking. Smoking meat is done by hanging it or placing it on racks inside a chamber that collects smoke produced by a hardwood fire that provides low indirect heat. Different types of wood chips or chunks - hickory, mesquite, oak, maple, and apple are popular favourites - create a distinct aromatic wood smoke that imparts a distinct flavour to the meat. Because smoking, like BBQ, is a slow cooking process, is good for tougher pieces of meat with a lot of fat and connective tissue in the form of collagen. During the extended smoking process, the fat preserves the meat from drying up, while the collagen melts into delicate gelatin.
Again, grilling is a method of cooking food directly on a metal grate over an open flame - a gas flame, hot coals, or firewood - that involves heat transfer by radiation. Grilling’s high heat allows for very rapid browning, making it ideal for dishes that do not require extensive cooking. It is great for thin pieces of meat and tender vegetables since it entails high temperatures. Chicken meat parts such as chicken breasts, chicken thighs, chicken wings, or chicken drumsticks are ideal for grilling. Hot dogs and hamburgers can also be grilled.
