Learn how to prepare a grill with these helpful tips from The Culinary Institute of America. In this video, chef David Kamen walks you through how to turn on a gas grill, then set it to two separate heats for a two-stage grill. He cleans the grill with a grill brush to get rid of residue from prior cooking, then lubricates the rods with a towel that has been soaked in a pan of oil. And the final, crucial step is letting the grill preheat for 20 to 30 minutes to achieve optimal temperature for cooking.
For 60 years, The Culinary Institute of America has been setting the standard for excellence in professional culinary education. In this video series, experienced chefs and educators show you how to tackle essential cooking techniques.
I'm Chef David Kamen from the Culinary Institute of America, and I'm going to show you this kitchen basic: Grilling 101.
Today we're talking about some grilling basics, and the most basic things you need to have for grilling are some essential tools. We have a little pan with some oil inside, for keeping the grill nice and clean. We have a brush, for brushing down the grill in between cooking. We have some tongs, and a couple of different spatulas, for handling the meat.
So, first we have to go ahead and preheat our grill. We're working on a gas grill today, and the way gas grills work, you want to turn the gas on to high, and then you can go ahead and push the igniter button. Push that a couple of times until you hear it pop, and you'll see a little blue flame going on inside there - and now you're ready to go.
We're going to turn this knob on high and this one over here all the way down low, and that will give us what's called a two-stage grill. That will allow us to brown some things on one side, and then move things off to the other side where they can cook nice and slow and low.
The next thing we want to do, to get our grill ready, is take our grill brush and just start by gently brushing down the grill rods. That will get rid of any food residue that was left over from last time you grilled. Then you also want to go ahead and oil the grill, so we have a towel in a little pan of oil, and we're just going to wipe the rods. That will lubricate them and will also clean off any of the dust you picked up from scraping.
Once the grill's been cleaned we're going to close the lid, and we'll let this preheat for about twenty to thirty minutes before we start to grill. So that's Grilling 101.