Serious about grilling? Want to put together an amazing get together for friends? Want to impress your significant other with your newfound skills? We’ve compiled a list of incredible tips on how you can be the best griller in the neighbourhood.

Get Your Setup Right

This is the most important part of it all! What’s a cook without his gear?

Choosing Your Fuel

Start with deciding between briquettes and charcoal. The consensus is that briquettes are great for someone just starting out with their grill. Charcoal can be lumpy and finicky for lighting. To avoid the difficulties of either, you can save yourself a lot of effort and frustration by investing in a chimney starter.

Choosing a Grill

Ignore the BTUs and heat for the most part—unless you really need to cook a whole bird or roast this weekend. Basically all grills can handle your run-of-the-mill burgers, hot dogs, etc. We recommend checking out our Angus Cart BBQ or our Brahma Cart BBQ.

Keep It Clean… Always

Watch out for black crust on the grill bars. If you see it, YOU NEED to get it off to ensure no-stick cooking and easy food flipping. If you’ve neglected your grill for years, it may need a bit of repair, which you can do yourself with a metal brush and some TLC.

Practice Your Technique

Remember, not everything goes right over the fire. Different types of meat (and vegetables) will work best on different parts of the grill depending on how much heat they need. Check out this infographic to see where everything goes.

A Quick Cheat Sheet

Experience is the best indicator for knowing the precise moment to yank your food off the rack, but Real Simple offers a super-helpful cheat sheet you can print and bring to this culinary test. While you’re at it, don’t forget about the palm test for determining the doneness of a steak.

Perfect Burgers

Use meat that’s as close to room temperature as possible for even cooking. Don’t press them on the grill, unless you like your meat dry. And the best “secret” to great burgers is buying good meat, preferably ground by a butcher while you watch.

Salt your Steaks

Buy a cheap cut of “choice” meat, then salt, salt, salt the heck out of that thing—for only one hour before grilling, and then pat it dry. You can also freeze it for 30 minutes for that perfect seared crust.

Premium Hot Dogs

Spiral-cut your hot dogs to ensure it cooks perfectly straight, with more surface area for that nice grill flavour and plenty of room for all your favourite toppings.