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No home should be without a BBQ. Available in a variety of formats, this quintessential cooking tool provides easy access to delicious food and an accommodating lifestyle. And yet, these benefits don’t come for free. By being careless or ignorant, your grill or smoker can run the risk of becoming a BBQ nightmare.
It isn’t a stretch to say that a lot can go wrong when a BBQ is involved. Here, we list many ways in which disaster can befall your backyard grill as well as the ways you can protect yourself.
Fire
As the world’s oldest cooking method, fire is instrumental in the grilling process. It provides beautifully charred meat, sensuous smoky flavors, and grill marks that no BBQ aficionado can live without. But even as grill technology improves, modern grills and smokers remain a serious safety risk.
Stay aware of where you place your grill or smoker. Refrain from putting it under a roof or umbrella, or on an unstable/flammable table. Take care not to cook near buildings or trees. As well, don’t use your grill or smoker during forest fire hazard conditions.
Fire safety also means knowing what to do when things go wrong. Be prepared by having a fire extinguisher nearby. In the case that a grease fire should break out on your BBQ, under no circumstances should you put it out with water. First, once it’s safe to do so, turn off the burner to cut off the supply of fuel. Next, remove the ingredients and extinguish the fire using baking soda or kosher salt. Finally, cut off the fire’s supply of oxygen by closing the lid or grill vents.
The easy familiarity of the BBQ process can sometimes bring about lapses in safety. You may think it’s okay to use a BBQ indoors or use different fuels or accelerants like gasoline, but it’s better to follow safety regulations at all times.
Whenever fire is involved, you need to always be careful. Take the time to learn and practice the necessary steps to keep you and your family safe.
Dirty Grill
For all the specs the salesman will quote at the store, the one thing they won’t tell you is the many hours you’ll spend cleaning your BBQ. Although some may purport their units to be “self-cleaning”, the truth is that you’ll need to spend a lot of time scouring your grills. Cleaning is not what you’d call the fun part of barbecue, but it is important. This is because a grill or smoker left uncleaned can become a BBQ nightmare that spirals out of control.
For one thing, unkempt BBQs are a health hazard. Dirty grills attract germs and mold while leftover charred red meat can represent an accumulation of cancer-causing agents. Not only that, thick layers of grease can build up on a grill when left uncleaned. When heated, this accumulation can liquify and vaporize, causing flare-ups that pose a fire risk as well as affecting grill performance.
READ: How to Clean Your Gas Grill Burner with Minimal Effort
Before your next big cookout, be sure to take the time to clean your grill. Scrub off residue using a grill brush and a cleaning agent such as dish soap or a degreaser. It’s hard work, but think of the nice clean grill you’ll be able to use!
Cleaning is definitely the unglamorous part of the BBQ lifestyle, but it is important for avoiding potential calamities.
Frozen Ingredients
For all the fun and atmosphere they provide, backyard cookouts can greatly vary in quality. It could be that the beer isn’t cold enough, or the potato salad has been left too long in the sun. Or it could be when the host trots out holding a tray of frozen ingredients for the grill, something that is beneath most seasoned pitmasters.
To be clear, the USDA states that it’s okay to grill frozen meat and poultry, but that it will take much longer than ingredients that have been properly thawed. To ensure food has been properly cooked, the USDA suggests using a meat thermometer like the ThermoPro Lightning, an instant-read meat thermometer that can provide readings in one second flat.
READ: How to Grill a Frozen Steak – Tips and Tricks
The practice of grilling frozen ingredients is best suited for meat that is uniformly thin, such as hamburger patties. But something you could do something doesn’t mean you should do it. Putting frozen burgers or chicken on the grill is a lost opportunity to season your meat. Not only that, given the wide temperature ranges reached by different grills and smokers, it’s very likely that the outside of your frozen ingredient will be cooked far sooner than its inside, leading to uneven cooks that could be burnt.
Save yourself the hassle of a BBQ nightmare by avoiding frozen ingredients at your next cookout. At the very least, you should avoid some raised eyebrows from your BBQ-savvy guests.
Faux Pas
As a cruel mistress, the BBQ lifestyle can sometimes be just as punishing as it is rewarding. As a largely social activity, your BBQ ability will likely come under scrutiny from inquiring guests.
To avoid humiliating faux pas that could derail any BBQ you have engendered, take the following steps:
- Don’t drop food on the ground: Get your wrist muscles in shape and ensure your barbecue tongs are up to standard. Don’t make a grown man cry by dropping a perfectly grilled steak onto the ground.
- Don’t provide ketchup for hot dogs: No matter which side of the debate you are on, prevent any controversies from happening by providing ample amounts of mustard for your hot dogs.
- Let the man grill: As a guest invited to someone else’s barbecue, don’t make the mistake of criticizing the host’s BBQ skills. Simply put: the food is finished when the cook is done with it. You don’t have to like it, that’s all.
Final Thoughts
Barbecuing is fun, but it’s also a responsibility. Be proactive when preparing for your next cookout to avoid having a BBQ nightmare!
Are you interested in getting a meat thermometer for your grill or smoker? ThermoPro offers a wide lineup of products that include instant-read thermometers like the ThermoPro Lightning and wireless probe thermometers like the ThermoPro TempSpike. Shop our products on Amazon!
