Killer Barbecue

Infrared grills, depending on who you ask are either the perfect solution to modern grilling or completely unusable for anything other than burning food. The truth is different for each cook and deciding whether infrared grilling technology is right for you and your family’s barbeque depends on what your predominantly cook and how you use your barbecue grill.

Initially restaurants were the proving ground for infrared grills. Before infrared grills, a chef would leave a thick slab of cast iron in the oven for several hours while the kitchen was prepping specials and getting ready to open for dinner. After several hours the cast iron griddle would be searing hot.When a customer ordered a perfectly seared steak or tuna, the meat could be quickly laid on the cast iron griddle to sear the outside layer within minutes. Infrared grills were able to duplicate the intensity of direct heat without hours of preparation.

After infrared grills had proven their worth commercially, grill manufacturers began making the grills more versatile for the residential market.

What happens as you wait is the air trapped in the barbeque hood gets hot enough to cook your food. Put the food on the cooking grates and close the hood so the heat surrounds the food and cooks it – very similar to a broiler or a convection oven but outside.

Conduction style barbeque grills use a conductive medium like lava rocks, briquettes, rods and heavy cooking grates to distribute heat in addition to the heat trapped in the hood.Before infrared grilling was invented, conduction grilling was the only way to cook at temperatures hotter than eight hundred degrees, which is considered the minimum for searing.

Infrared heat is perfect for cooking because the heat is the direct heat generated by the flame, not heat limited by the tolerance of the medium.Instead of finding a way to transfer the heat to air, oil, iron, etc, radiant grills allow the heat from the fire to cook the food.

However, turn on an infrared burner and the heat at the grilling surface will be over one thousand degrees in about sixty seconds without closing the hood. Most infrared gas grills will reach fourteen hundred degrees within three minutes.

When a barbeque grill uses lava rocks, briquettes or some conductive material to transfer heat the flavor dripping out of your food will actually flare up and cause serious inconsistencies in the distribution of heat. It also makes the grill filthy dirty and difficult to clean. The conduction that creates heat at the grilling surface will be hotter than the convectional heat surrounding the food making it easy to miscalculate time and burn the outside of your food.

When your food is placed on an infrared grill the heat will sear the outside layer of the food within a minute. Flip the steak (burger, filet, etc) and sear the other side and within two minutes, your food is “seared”. The outer layer has been sealed and will not lose moisture. Convection and conductive heat transfer dries the food in the process of cooking. Infrared cooking has the opposite effect locking the moisture in the food where it adds to the flavor.The moisture is stuck on the grate and is vaporized by the heat to re-enter the food as smoke.

Criticisms of infrared technology are usually made by people who have not used an infrared grill. In theory a lot more heat should make it easy to burn the food. My first steak cooked on an infrared grill looked perfect until I cut it open and discovered the inside was completely raw.Within ten minutes the steaks were medium and tasted perfect – juicy like they were raw.An additional point to remember is that when the intense heat sears the outside of the food so no moisture can drip out, the seal also prevents your food from absorbing any fumes or gas residue.

An added benefit of infrared grilling is clean-up. There are no barbeque heat shields or flavorizer plates hanging between the cooking grates and the gas burner. Infrared grills have no need for a plate to distribute heat nor a tray that deflects dripping grease off the burner. An infrared grill is the easiest grill you will even need to clean. Although the cooking grates are concave and designed to hold grease let the burner heat the grates to fourteen hundred degrees and it is like having a self cleaning oven. A clean grill will last decades longer than a dirty grill.

This is because the electrode is exactly like a small spark plug. When the plug gets covered with dirt and grease, it has difficulty finding clean steel to spark against. Infrared grill electrodes are positioned above the burner so the ignition electrode is cleaned as you are cooking.

As with anything, the technology will be more expensive than simpler designs of traditional barbeques. With infrared technology we are able to gain the convenience of a gas grill with the superb flavor usually associated with charcoal BBQs.

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