6 Grilling Mistakes and How to Fix Them, According to Grill Masters

There’s nothing like grilling season, when food seems to taste its best and can be enjoyed outdoors. Since you grill regularly, you might assume you’ve mastered the techniques, but many of us make common grilling mistakes. Avoiding these mistakes will result in better-tasting grilled chicken, burgers, steaks, and more. Better yet, you’ll spend less time cleaning the grill. Grilling experts and chefs share the most common grilling mistakes and how to avoid them.

Hurry the cook

Politely tell hungry onlookers to leave you alone when you’re tinkering with the grill. “When you have guests over or are just distracted, time can slip away and you can feel rushed at the grill or smoker. This can lead to undercooked or overcooked food, uneven cooking, or bland tasting food,” says fire-cooking enthusiast Derek Wolf, founder of overthefirecooking.com and brand ambassador for Breeo. Make sure you keep track of how long it takes you to cook different dishes, a process made easier by setting some timers.

Packing the grill

Wolf also urges people to avoid crowding the grill. “There’s only so much space on a grill, and some people may be tempted to rush in and grill everything at once. What will actually happen is that the food will cook, but not at a high enough temperature,” he says. To avoid this, cook in batches as needed, putting “longer-cooked items (breast, ribs, whole chicken)” on the grill first and “shorter-cooked items (steak, shrimp, vegetables)” near the end of cooking, he says.

Not paying attention to the temperature

Monitoring and controlling the temperature of your grill is critical if you want to sink your chops into that otherworldly steak, burger, or grilled zucchini. Amy Mills, owner of 17th Street Barbecue and author of Peace, love and barbecue and Praise the lardHe says the most common mistake when grilling is the inability to control the fire.

“You’ll always need to monitor the fire while cooking, and there will always be variables that affect your ability to maintain a consistent temperature, such as the grill itself, the weather, the air quality, the brand of charcoal, and the number of times you open the lid,” says Mills. “Once you learn the principles of fire — how to build it slowly, what fuels it, and how to turn it up and down when necessary — you’ll be able to make quality food,” he says, adding that it’s critical to use the lowest heat you can consistently maintain and to be patient while grilling.

Cooking cold meat

Chef Laurent Tourondel, owner of the catering company Chef Laurent Tourondel Hospitality, says his favorite thing about grilling is being able to cook larger ingredients, like certain vegetables and large steaks that you wouldn’t normally cook on a stovetop or in the oven. We agree. But when cooking that steak, “it’s critical that the meat is at room temperature and not ice-cold straight out of the fridge,” he says, noting that this will allow for a more even cooking experience. “If the meat is cold when it’s placed on the grill, the outside will cook much faster than the inside, which could lead to burning and undercooked meat,” he says.

Using lighter fluid Too Mich

If you’re using a charcoal grill, excess lighter fluid can cause the flavor of the meat to fade a bit due to the fumes, says Robbie Shoults, grillmaster and owner of Bear Creek Smokehouse in Marshall, Texas, and author of the cookbook Happiness at the bottom of the bear“An easy remedy for this is to use charcoal, chimney paper, and newspaper to first light the charcoal and then transfer it to the grill,” he says. If you can, skip the lighter fluid altogether. We’re fans of this innovative device that lights your grill in seconds without any dangerous chemicals.

Do not let the meat rest

Picture this: You’ve just cooked some amazing sausages on the grill and you dig into them a minute later. But you shouldn’t. “All meat — and I mean all meat — that comes off the grill needs to rest before serving. This is for two main reasons,” Wolf says. “The first is so that it’s not super hot when you eat it and burn your mouth. The second is so that the juices redistribute into the meat and not onto the plate.” While Wolf says you don’t need to wait hours (though you might with a large brisket or pork shoulder), you should wait 10 minutes before eating.