The Great American BBQ

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Covered grill: An open grill works well for hot dogs, but a covered one helps regulate the low, slow fire needed for barbecuing, and gives the meat a smokier taste.

Charcoal briquettes: Although people have been cooking over charcoal since someone first relit a half-charred log, it took Henry Ford to bring us the briquette. Distressed that his wood alcohol distillation plant was producing huge piles of apparently useless charcoal as a by-product, he turned to his friend Thomas Edison for help. Edison designed the machinery; and, beginning in 1921, Ford manufactured and sold briquettes first to foundries, then to hotels and restaurants, then, in the super-domestic '50s, to outdoor cooks who wanted to keep the home fires burning. For barbecuers, briquettes' great advantage is that they make it possible to maintain a small, cool fire for hours.

Most briquettes are a mixture of hardwood charcoal (wood that burns incompletely in the presence of little or no oxygen), anthracite coal and starch or petroleum binders; some contain lighting ingredients. Brands vary in quality. Some put out smoke that smells of hardwood, and others reek of chemicals. Perhaps the wisest course is to try small bags of various brands in order to select the best.

Wood: Although charcoal provides the base fire, wood supplies the flavor of real barbecue. While chips are good for grilling (they smoke well for short periods of time), serious barbecuing requires larger chunks, or even small pieces, of wood. Use whatever hardwood is available—hickory left over from last winter's fires, prunings from the fruit trees. (If purchased wood chips are your only option, simply add them more often.) Never use pine or other resinous softwoods; they impart a bitter, piney taste.

The fire: Soak the wood chunks in water for at least an hour; their function is to smoke, not burn. Build a fire in the grill, using 12 to 24 briquettes, and let them burn down until they're covered with thick gray ash and you can hold your hand near them for five or six seconds. (The coals should be ready in 30 to 40 minutes.) Your goal is a cool fire—175° to 225°F. When the coals are ready, move half to one side of the grill and half to the other, and place a metal or foil pan in the middle; or move all the coals to one side and place the pan on the other. (The idea is to get the meat and the coals as far apart as the grill allows.) The pan will catch the fat and any basting sauce that drips off the meat, both of which can cause the fire to flame up. (The drippings can also be used for basting.) Drain the wood chunks well, and put them on the coals, place the grill as high above the coals as possible, and put the meat on to cook.

If the fire burns too low during cooking, start some more briquettes in a separate container, let them burn until ashy, then add them to the grill. Throughout the process, keep a spray bottle of water handy to douse any flames that threaten to scorch your dinner.

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