Grilling

Grilling is the fast half of outdoor cooking — direct heat, short cook times, and a lot less room for the fire to forgive you. Where a smoker gives you six hours to fix a temperature swing, a grill gives you maybe six minutes before a ribeye goes from medium-rare to a mistake.

That’s the trade you’re making: speed for margin. A steak wants somewhere around 450°F to 500°F of direct heat and a few minutes a side, not a slow climb. Vegetables and seafood live here too, mostly because they cook fast enough that the smoker never made sense for them in the first place — though a cold-smoked salmon is a good argument for crossing categories if you’ve got the afternoon for it.

I still reach for a stick smoker when I want to think about a cook for half a day. I reach for the grill on a Tuesday, when dinner needs to happen in twenty minutes and nobody’s in the mood for logistics. Neither one is the “real” way to cook outside. They’re just different tools for how much patience you’ve got that day.

If you scorch something here, the fix is usually just a hotter or cooler spot on the same grate. That’s the whole safety net. Use it.

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