The thrill of the grill
By David Gibbons
|
 |
|
|
Photo by Azikiwe Mohammed
Tom Colicchio at his restaurant in Chelsea
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ask Tom Colicchio his favorite food to grill and he’ll flash you a grin, then shoot back the culinary version of that famous triple-locution about the three most important factors in real estate (“location, location, location”) — “Meat, meat, meat!” A few breaths later he’ll tell you vegetables are definitely, above anything else, his favorite to grill. Soon you’ll discover he knows quite a few secrets about the tricky skill of grilling fish — not to mention that he keeps a charcoal kettle, ready to fire up at a moment’s notice, on the roof of his West Village home. and that his first cooking memory is of grilling:
“Once, when I was 10 years old, we went to our swim club, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where I grew up. My father had a bunch of club steaks in his cooler. There was a grill set up with a hot fire. So I put a steak on for myself. When I ate it, something told me it needed salt. I grabbed the salt shaker off the table, salted the steak, tasted it and said: ‘Wow!’ Then I added a little more salt and thought: ‘That is amazing, what that does.’ It didn’t make it salty; you just started tasting the meat. It was incredible: I had to try it again. So I put another steak on the grill. This time I tried salting the meat beforehand. It was great. I went through four steaks. My dad came back and said: ‘What happened to my steaks!?!?’ I got in a little bit of trouble, but, at a very young age I had learned a lesson about how to use salt.”
Regardless of his award-winning celebrity-chef pedigree, Colicchio steadfastly remains a regular guy from working-class Jersey with a genuine passion for cooking out. And he’s happy to talk about it. So he found an opening in his tight schedule and sat down at his Chelsea establishment, Craftsteak. to share some fundamental tips and techniques for America’s favorite summer-cooking ritual.
Among the burning questions (pun intended) I set out to ask Chef Colicchio: How do you know when your steak is perfectly done? Is it possible to grill a fish fillet without hopelessly overcooking it or having it flake apart into a million pieces? What about vegetables?
The fire
First things first. “If you’re cooking outside, don’t use a gas grill, use a charcoal one. Build a fire — with wood if you want — but at least with good hardwood charcoal or briquets. Just don’t turn on the gas — please!”
Chef Colicchio counsels us to plan ahead and don’t rush: “My recommendation is to start your fire a good half- hour before you’re ready to cook. If you don’t have one of those chimney devices, just pile up the briquets in the middle of your grill. Your fire is ready when all the coals are whitish gray and glowing. There shouldn’t be any black pieces. Be ready to cook at that point — don’t wait till it burns down too far and you lose the high heat.”
Once all the coals are well lit, spread them out around the bottom of your kettle — but not all in one uniform layer. Whether you’re grilling individual pieces of food — steaks, fish fillets, sliced vegetables — or whole chickens, whole fish, or a roast, you want to pile the coals higher at one end and leave them sparse in at least one area to allow for a lower-heat zone. The key to any and all cooking is judicious, controlled application of heat. Clearly, this is going to be trickier over an open charcoal fire than on a stove or gas grill with adjustable dials. If your grill has a totally uniform layer of lit coals, there’s no way to lower the temperature or deal with “emergencies” such as grease flare-ups. Consequently, you’re far more likely to end up with overdone — even charred, bitter-tasting — food. You always want to leave yourself the option of moving the food to a cooler part of the grill (that is, with the exception of fish — see below).
For grilling meat, the fire should be quite hot. Once the coals are glowing to your satisfaction, you can do a hand test: “You shouldn’t be able to hold your hand a few inches above the grill for more than a couple of seconds,” says Colicchio. “For fish, the fire should be hot but not quite as hot as for meat.”
Buy only the best
The cornerstone of any top chef’s philosophy has to be an insistence on obtaining only the highest quality, freshest — and preferably local and/or organically grown — ingredients possible. If you want to maximize your results at home — for grilling or any other form of preparation — you need to take the same approach. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that the high heat and casual or simplistic nature of the menus means you can skimp on quality and expect the outdoor grilling procedure to mask any shortcomings in your produce. If you’re cooking steak, for example, buy prime meat, which is the highest grade (the one above “choice”), and make sure it’s been aged at least 21 days (28 is even better). Colicchio’s steakhouses feature the Niman Ranch brand from the U.S. and Wagyu from the Mishima Prefecture of Japan. You can source the same high level of meat at your local gourmet supermarket (Whole Foods, Fairview, and the like) or — better yet — your neighborhood butcher shop. Colicchio recommends grilling a porterhouse steak on the bone; well-marbled strip steaks are another good alternative. (If you’re worried about the fat intake, skip the steak altogether and move on to fish.) A two-inch thick porterhouse is considered sufficient for two people. For more diners, you can splurge on three-inch thick steaks, which take longer to cook and in turn offer the added benefit of increased flavor development. Your patience will be rewarded.
Seasoning your meat
As Chef Colicchio discovered way back as a kid, salt is the key to bringing out flavor, particularly when you’re grilling meat. “You salt two times: before you cook it and after you cook it,” he says. Use common sense and give it a generous dose of salt and pepper before grilling; do this immediately before cooking, otherwise the moisture is drawn out of the meat. Then, after the resting period (see below), slice the meat, and season it again with salt and pepper to taste.
Doneness
Judge doneness by look and feel, using visual and tactile evidence. Remember the cues for the next time you’re grilling, accumulate experience and exercise patience. Before you know it, you’ll be thinking like a chef, which, not coincidentally, is the title of Colicchio’s brilliant first cookbook. “Don’t just mindlessly throw something on the grill, walk away, then come back just long enough to turn it. Spend some time with it, pay attention to it. Take a good look at it. It’ll tell you when it’s done. If food looks like it’s burnt, it’s burnt. If it looks overcooked, it probably is. If it looks really good, it’s probably really good.”
Also don’t forget to take into account all the key temperature factors — not just how hot your gill is but also the air temperature outside and the temperature of the food itself when it’s about to be put on the grill. Did you pull it right out of the fridge or did you give it time to come to room temperature?
Meat: How to tell when a steak is done to your exact medium-rare — or rare, or, God forbid, medium — preference is probably the biggest FAQ of the grilling world. The niftiest of chef tricks — they way they casually, at times surreptitiously, judge doneness with just a few pokes of a finger — can seem a mysterious form of wizardry. Really, though, it’s nothing more than a combination of careful observation, patience, and an accumulation of experience. Most chefs, including Tom Colicchio, like to demonstrate this trick by inviting you to make a fist and having you poke at the fleshy part of your hand between your thumb and the base of your first finger. Make a tight fist and the poke simulates well done; a slightly relaxed fist gives the feel of medium; a little more relaxed is medium-rare; and totally relaxed is rare, bordering on raw.
For a two- to three-inch porterhouse steak on the bone, grill it about 4 minutes per side on each side, then continue to grill for another 3 to 4 minutes per side (for a total of 7 to 9 minutes) before giving it the “poke test” right in the middle.
“You touch it, you feel it, and in the end it comes down to experience,” says our chef. “After cooking for a time, you begin to develop a sense for how long something needs to be on the grill to be cooked. The other thing you can do is buy a kitchen thermometer and check the interior temperature of the meat.” If you’re using a thermometer, the temperatures at which you should take your steak off the grill — and remember, this is important, because during the resting period (see below) the temperature will continue to rise somewhat — are about 125 for rare; 130 for medium rare; 140 for medium, and 150 to 160 for medium-well to well-done.
Fish: If the “poke test” is the key to judging a steak’s doneness, the most important clue with fish is a visual one (don’t poke it, don’t move it — you don’t want it to stick): “When the albumens and proteins start coming out, that is when you see some white material start to seep out around the edges, it’s getting to the point where it’s cooked. This differs somewhat from one fish to another. For example, I like tuna medium-rarish; but in the case of striped bass, I like it just cooked through. In either case, fish should still be nice and moist in the center. It definitely does not like to be overcooked.”
Give your meat a rest
“When you’re grilling meat, the key is to let it rest for 3 or 4 minutes. Don’t just take it off the grill and cut it. What happens is when you’re cooking all the juices get forced to the centerm and if you cut it at that moment, then it all just runs right out. If you give it some time, the juices are absorbed back into the meat and that’s exactly what you want.”
Fish
A foolproof option for grilling fish is to make a foil packet and wrap the fillet(s) up in it with some olive oil or butter and some herbsm then cook it on the grill. (You can also grill a whole, gutted fish by stuffing its cavity with chopped vegetables, a little oil or butter, and a sprinkling of herbs, then wrapping it in foil.) “It’s very hard to grill a delicate piece of fish like red snapper; it’s much easier with the meatier, thicker varieties like salmon, striped bass, or sea bass. And the thicker a piece of fish is, the longer it stays on the grill.”
The keys to grilling fish are a clean grill rack, a hot fire in the kettle, and making sure the fish is dry: “Make sure the fish is really dry. If it’s wet, it’s going to stick to the grill. Then, put the fish on the grill and do not attempt to move it. Too often, people try to move it as soon as it hits the grill. It will release when it’s ready to release. Once it’s on the grill, leave it alone. Then, when it’s ready, you can just roll it off the grill instead of having to slide something underneath it. If you try to rush it, it’s going to stick — simple as that. So leave it alone and be patient.”
Vegetables
“I love grilling vegetables, actually more so than meat or fish. If you want to do whole corn, keep it in the husk, soak it for 5 minutes in water before grilling, and it will actually steam inside the husk. I like grilling Vidalia onions or red onions; simply slice them, brush them with a light coating of olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. You can do the same with red peppers, zucchini, or yellow squash. Asparagus works well too, as long as it’s big and thick. Try grilling some portobello mushroom tops brushed with a mixture of olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.”
Whole heads of garlic, with their tops trimmed off, can be wrapped in foil and placed right down in the coals, even while some of them are still black, i.e., before they’re ready to grill on the rack. When they’re ready, the soft, cooked flesh from each individual clove can be squeezed out and spread onto toasted bread. Fingerling or small red potatoes do very well with similar treatment — drizzled with oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, wrapped in foil, and cooked right down in the belly of the fire. Baby artichokes take the same treatment, but add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and sprinkle with fresh chopped herbs.
The multi-level layout of coals is as valuable for vegetables as it is for meat and fish: “I like to start vegetables out on a hot area, just to get cooking, and then move them to a slower part of the grill. You want them to cook through, not be raw in the middle. Raw vegetables off the grill are terrible. You want them to cook, but you don’t want them to cook too quickly.”
Dealing with those ugly flare-ups
“Flare-ups happen, and they can turn any food bitter. First, remember, you don’t need to brush a lot of oil on the food, just a little. If you’re cooking a steak, try to trim off all the excess fat around the outside because that’s what’s going to drip down and burn. If there is a flare-up, just move the food, because the flare-up is coming from grease that’s already dripped onto the coals. So if you move your food that flame will die down, and then you can eventually move the cooking back to that area.”
Try something different
Grill whole lobsters — no need to split them, which is a popular and oft-recommended procedure but which makes a mess of your rack and kettle, and requires a fair amount of burn-off to get rid of the smell. “Just put them whole on the grill and let them cook 10 to 12 minutes. Then cover them up, let them cool down, and break them up. Lobster on the grill is really delicious.”
Another suggestion is whole chicken(s) or leg(s) of lamb, in which case you build a good-sized fire off to one side of a kettle grill and cook the larger pieces of food on the other side, covering the grill, regulating the heat, and keeping the fire going longer and stronger by adjusting the vents as needed. Patience, patience: It takes a little extra time and care, but the results—including the ooh’s and aah’s from your guests when they taste them—are well worth it.
Tom Colicchio was born and bred in Elizabeth, New Jersey, taught himself to cook starting at a young age, and began his professional career in the kitchen at 17. He gained widespread critical acclaim in the late 1980s as executive chef of Mondrian and later at The Gramercy Tavern; he earned three stars from The New York Times at each of these posts. Colicchio has a string of highly successful restaurants under the Craft brand, which he created, including the original Craft on East 19th Street in Manhattan; Craftsteak (15th Street and Tenth Avenue), Craftsteak Las Vegas (at the MGM Grand Hotel), and Craftsteak Dallas. He has numerous accolades, including three James Beard awards, and a starring role in the reality TV show Top Chef on Bravo Network. Colicchio lives in the West Village with his wife, filmmaker Lori Silverbush, and their son.
David Gibbons is senior editor of this magazine and has ghost-written five cookbooks, including Geoffrey Zakarian’s Town/Country. He is also the co-author of two acclaimed cheese books with maître fromager Max McCalman.
