Photo by Rob Howard

Natural-Born Griller By Steven Slon, July & August 2006 How I became my neighborhood barbecue king. (And how you can, too)

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• Setting Up Your Grill
• Dry-Rub Beef Ribs with Smoky Honey-Mustard Barbecue Sauce
• Basic Barbecue Rub
• Smoky Honey-Mustard Barbecue Sauce
• Kielbasa-Grilled Cabbage
• Grilled Corn with Soy Butter and Sesame
• Scallops with Smoked Salmon on Rosemary Skewers
• Bacon Grilled Trout
• Cinnamon Plums with Port Sauce
• Grilled Garlic Bread #5 with Parmesan and Chives
• More Recipes in AARPmagazine.org’s Recipe Guide
• Eating Well Channel (AARP.org)

Barbecuing isn't just about cooking. It's about connection, family, smoke, joy, love, and the sacrament of the shared meal. Tending the fire, wearing the apron, roasting the meat and the vegetables, then divvying it all up with one's clan feels primal.

Possibly it is primal. When our distant cave-dwelling ancestors, the earliest form of Homo erectus, began scavenging the earth for food—still lacking the means to create fire—all their vegetables and meat had to be eaten raw. These early humans spent up to 12 hours a day gnawing on sinewy flesh and coarse plant matter. They were chewing machines. (After foraging, chewing was all anyone had time to do.)

Then, fire.

Roasted meat and roots were tender. Chewing declined to 45 minutes per day. And, by some accounts, this may well have produced the evolutionary change that transformed the ape-man—with his tiny brain and powerful jaws—into modern man. Think of all the free time! The brain surged in response to all the nonchewing stimuli we were suddenly exposed to. In an evolutionary blink of the eye, we went from chewing alone to eating together, which led to dinner conversation, then storytelling, then cave drawing, and then: the pyramids, the printing press, Sputnik, Fotomat, GPS, poetry slams, liposuction, and 24-hour Internet shopping.

All this I learned in a three-day BBQ University course taught by celebrity chef Steven Raichlen at the lush and perfectly manicured campus of The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

So, why grill? Because it takes us from our harried present back through the multitude of generations to that first moment when we sat around the fire, safe and sated, chewing on fresh-cooked meat, while all around us the elements raged, the volcanoes spewed, and the critters lurked. Is it any wonder that so many of us are passionate about open-fire cooking?

Now, at Raichlen's class, assembled on a hillside encampment safely away from the inn, in a blaze of fire and smoke, we are learning about the refinements—the gourmet end of barbecuing. We grill not only chicken, pork, beef, shrimp, and fish but also cabbage, artichokes, corn, pineapples, and plums, searing up five-course meals from start to finish. We discuss and practice our marinades, our sauces, and our rubs. Then we step out of the classroom and fire up a spectacular array of grills, starting with the plain backyard charcoal grill to restaurant-grade gas grills, box-shaped grills, an egg-shaped grill, an infrared grill that cooks at 1,200°F, three types of smokers—19 grills in all.

At the end of the three days it seems we've cooked everything that can be cooked on a grill, which is just about anything you can eat, with the possible exceptions of ceviche and sushi.

But even Raichlen, the P.T. Barnum of open-fire cooking, author of the classic The Barbecue! Bible and seven other books on the subject, including the just published Raichlen on Ribs, Ribs, Outrageous Ribs (Workman Publishing, 2006), would be the first to tell you that you don't have to barbecue fancy to barbecue well. You can't top the act of throwing a piece of swordfish or a steak—sprinkled with sea salt and some freshly ground pepper—over fiery hot coals. It's always satisfying somehow, even when the result isn't perfect. "Open-fire cooking is more art than science," says Raichlen. "Every time you make a mistake, what you've actually done is come up with a new recipe." Still, there are some core principles he taught us that can vastly improve your technique.

1. Learn the lingo
Many people use the words grilling and barbecuing interchangeably. But these are actually quite different. Grilling is high-heat cooking, with the food directly over the heat source. Barbecuing, on the other hand, is long, slow cooking that exposes the food to indirect heat and more smoke. (See "Setting Up Your Grill.")

2. Plan ahead
Before you even light the fire, make sure you have everything you need at grillside: food, sauces, utensils. If you're cooking with charcoal, you'll need enough to build a big base of coals and still have some extra in case the fire runs down. When cooking with gas, your tank should be at least a third full.

3. Prep your work site
You wouldn't think about eating on a dirty plate; likewise, you shouldn't cook on a dirty grill. Use a stiff wire brush to clean the grill before and after grilling.

4. Oil the grate
After you've cleaned the grill but before starting the fire, take a paper towel soaked in vegetable oil and swab it across the grate's surface.

5. Get it hot
The biggest mistake neophyte grillers make is failing to preheat the grill. Cooking on a cool grill can result in dull, gray, rubbery meat. For direct-heat grilling, you want a surface temperature of at least 500°F. With a gas grill you'll need to preheat to high for at least 10 to 15 minutes to get the firebox hot enough. With a charcoal grill, you can use Raichlen's finger test: hold your bare hand six inches over the grill. If you have to snatch your fingers away after three Mississippis, it's hot enough. Five Mississippis means "medium."

6. Don't poke
Always use tongs or a spatula to turn the meat. If you stab it with a carving fork, you'll drain the precious juices into the coals.

7. Baste safely
Most basting sauces can be applied throughout the cooking process. But if you use a marinade that has been exposed to raw meat or seafood (say, prior to cooking), do not apply it within the final three minutes of cooking, as it might contain bacteria from the raw meat. When using a sugar-based barbecue sauce, apply it toward the end of the cooking time, since it may easily burn.

8. Cover up
When cooking larger cuts of meat using an indirect-heat method of barbecuing, keep the lid on tight and resist the urge to peek. Raichlen says each peek costs you 5 to 10 minutes of cooking time.

9. Give it a rest
When the meat comes off the grill, let it stand for a few minutes before carving. "This allows the juices, which have been driven to the center of a roast or steak by the searing heat, to return to the surface," says Raichlen. "The result is a juicier, tastier piece of meat."

10. Never desert your post
Direct-heat grilling means working over a hot fire. Things can and will catch on fire or need turning from moment to moment. Do not: answer the phone, run back to the kitchen for supplies, grab a beer, change the oil in your car, or do anything else to distract yourself from the job at hand. In this, modern man can take a lesson from ape-guy: walk away from the fire and dinner's going to get tough. A person's jaw can start hurting just thinking about it.

Steven Slon is the editor of AARP The Magazine.