Serves: 5
Plan Your Timing.
Ever notice how time flies when you're surrounded by friends and family? What a drag to get back to the grill to start your entrée and find the first round of coals dying out--or the gas tank empty. So make sure you have plenty of fuel to keep you going through all the courses you're preparing. It takes any newly added coals about 25 minutes to get up to cooking temperature, so add charcoal every hour. Don't worry about lag time for them to catch up, just add them on schedule and you'll be fine.
Align Your Cooking Methods.
If you're grilling with charcoal, you might not want to reconfigure your coals between courses, so pick a starter that's cooked over the same kind of heat (Direct or Indirect) as your entrée. And pay attention to the temperature. Take steaks, for example. You'll want a Direct fire for steaks, and you may want to sear them over High heat. Grilled shrimp and oysters are great choices for a first course. They can go over Direct High heat, and will be consumed quickly so you can get back to preparing the steaks before the coals burn down.
Get Your Directions Straight.
If your entrée is a long-cooking one, pick a starter that's meant to be grilled over Direct heat. That way you can simply slip the starter in over Direct heat alongside your entrée, which will already be set over Indirect heat. Also, pick a starter recipe that won't require you to lift the grill lid too much (forget anything basted), and remember to add grilling time to your entrée to accommodate the heat lost from lifting the lid to tend to the starters.
Fire It Up Twice!
If you have a second grill and don't want to worry about timing, by all means, pull it out and use it for your starters. (Who knows, you might be inspired to try a grilled dessert on there after you pull off the starters.)
If you have a six-burner grill, try setting it up like two side-by-side grills--but don't forget to adjust cooking times for excessive lid-lifting.
Take The Easy Way Out.
Another great way to use your grill is to prepare as many make-ahead ingredients as you can the night before. For the early arrivers, we like to put out a few dips and munchy-type snacks made with grilled ingredients prepared earlier, then fire up the grill for the hot and snazzy starters that demonstrate our grilling prowess.
From Weber’s Big Book of Grilling. Copyright © 2001 Weber-Stephen Products Co. All rights reserved. First published by Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, California.
This _Starters On The Grill: Okay, Put Down The Cheese Ball And No One Will Get Hurt recipe is from the Weber's Big Book of Grilling Cookbook. Download this Cookbook today.
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