You can't catch a louse without tackle. Have you heard this proverb (or saying?). So - I confirm that this axiom also works in cooking.
You can spend years looking for a recipe for the perfect marinade for barbecue, you can look for a supplier of perfect meat for years, and not I argue - to find all this, but as a result, screw it up to hell because they did not take into account the main thing: fire and heat are things capricious.
Many times I have heard boastful assurances that an excellent shish kebab can be prepared even over a hole dug in the sand or earth. That it is wonderful can be done on the "hearth" hastily folded from old bricks. The main thing, they say, is not equipment, but skill.
So - throw sneakers at me, these are all simple bragging rights.
Hey, the most delicious - in the sense that well-cooked, moderately juicy, moderately fried - barbecue, I ate where the cooks had good equipment for this.
And yes, I went broke on such good equipment. I have a WEBER MASTER-TOUCH GBS.
I'll tell you right away - I had a chance to cook meat both over coals in a pit, and on barbecues cooked from steel sheets of different thicknesses by home craftsmen, and on purchased barbecues of budgetary and more than budgetary price categories.
They had to dance over them with a tambourine, and watch the meat more carefully than a child who had just begun to walk. Now there is no dancing.
In order to get a soft, juicy, aromatic kebab, I follow three simple rules:
Marinate meat in formulations as gentle as possible, and reduce the marinating time to a minimum
No vinegar. The current beef is good enough, it did not "die of old age". And pork with chicken is even softer. For pork, a marinade of onions and salt is enough, very rarely I use a marinade with fruit acids (that is, with fruits) or tomato, these types are more suitable for beef. Chicken can be marinated for a very short time in a teriyaki marinade, for example.
I only cook on the wire rack
In WEBER MASTER-TOUCH GBS I have a special grid on which you can (and should) lay meat. It looks very unusual, it is inserted into the main grill right in the middle.
The plus is that the pieces are evenly baked and covered with a golden brown crust on all sides, moreover, they do not lose juice as actively as when cooking on skewers and skewers.
Reducing cooking time
The disadvantage of open barbecues is that we, in fact, cannot really adjust the temperature. We understand heat upwards, because of this, the meat takes longer to cook, and where does the heating come from? That's right, from below. We constantly turn skewers or skewers, or constantly turn a piece, because from above it is not heat-treated. And from below - it burns. Because of this, you have to look for the height of the skewers. You almost guess and keep track - coal.
Weber has the ability to adjust the grill for indirect heating using the separating trays. Here they are visible in this picture.
So when the pieces are slightly browned, I rake the coals for indirect heating, cover the grill with a lid and - voila, the heat envelops the pieces from all sides, bringing them to readiness without the risk of burning thoroughly and dry out.
No dancing, no constant spraying with water to moisten the meat and nail the burning coals. Simple, fast, not stressful.
And, most importantly, delicious.