Cooking over a fire or on hot bars, where radiant heat from below does most of the work and dripping fat contributes the rest.
Technique at a glance
A compact visual model of the lesson. Use the full mechanism and success criteria below when you practice.
Concept
Cooking over a fire or on hot bars, where radiant heat from below does most of the work and dripping fat contributes the rest.
What changes
Grilling combines three heat paths that behave differently.
What good looks like
The coals are ready when they are covered in grey ash rather than glowing red or still flaming.
Practice counts when you cook
Reading this brief does not change your School state. Finish a real practice dish in Cook mode and log the cook; that cook is the evidence that advances the skill.
What to focus on
Mechanism
Grilling combines three heat paths that behave differently. Conduction from the bars makes the marks and browns hardest where metal touches food. Radiant heat from the coals cooks the whole facing surface and is far more intense than an oven's air — a bed of coals radiates at several hundred degrees. And convection carries smoke upward through the food. The distinctive flavour is not from the fire itself but from fat and juices dripping onto the heat source, vaporising, and condensing back onto the surface. That is also the failure mechanism: too much dripping fat causes flare-ups, and flames licking the food deposit soot, which tastes acrid rather than smoky. The essential setup is two zones — hot for searing, cooler for finishing — because almost nothing thicker than a burger can cook through directly over full heat.
Success criteria
The coals are ready when they are covered in grey ash rather than glowing red or still flaming.
You can hold a hand five inches above the grate for two seconds at high heat, five at medium — cruder than a thermometer and more reliable than guessing.
Food releases from the bars when the seared side has set; forcing it early tears it.
Flare-ups are handled by moving the food, not by spraying water, which raises ash into it.
Failure guards
Black outside, raw inside.
Everything cooked over direct high heat with no cooler zone to move to. Thick cuts need to finish away from the flames.
Sooty, acrid flavour.
Flare-ups. Flames touching food deposit unburnt carbon, which is not the same as smoke and does not taste like it.
Food welded to the bars.
Grate not hot or not clean. A hot, clean, lightly oiled grate releases; a cold or dirty one grips.