Grilled pizza. Grilled rosemary chicken skewers. Grilled tuna salad niçoise. This may sound like dinner at your favorite Mediterranean restaurant, but there’s no reason why you can’t make this food at home on your own grill. Tricky maneuvers like handling floppy pizza dough, flipping fragile fish fillets, or turning skinny vegetables are a lot easier when you use some of the well-designed equipment now on the market. And grilling even the simplest food is more fun when you’re well-equipped, not with gadgets, but with tools that are truly useful.

After scouring stores and catalogs, I gathered up the stuff that looked promising, piled it in my car (along with my husband and the dog), and headed for the beach in Rhode Island for a weekend of testing and tasting. After grilling everything from herbed flatbread to whole mackerel, I became a fan of the following tools.

选择正确的燃料：硬木木炭或高质量的煤球

If you’re a gas griller, then starting your fire is flick-of-the-switch easy, as long as you have enough liquid propane. Keep track of this with an inexpensive magnetic patch called a liquidpropane level indicator您附着在罐上。它会根据您在水箱中剩下多少气体而改变颜色。如果您拥有木炭烤架，则必须决定使用哪种燃料。我曾经让我的轻便燃烧​​的，笨拙的丈夫统治着烤架。但是，在罗德岛州普罗维登斯的Al Forno任职之后，我学会了将餐厅著名的烤披萨用硬木木炭塞在火上，我看到了灯光，我们再次出生于世界天然硬木木炭. This is the quickest lighting, hottest burning, cleanest, and best smelling fuel for your charcoal fire.

Natural hardwood charcoal is pure wood, aged for a year to eliminate creosote and resins, and then baked in kilns fired by grain alcohol, not petroleum, so that no residual petroleum remains in the charcoal. It is simply the char left after the wood is reduced, like the leavings of a beach bonfire—which is exactly what it smells (and sparks) like when lit. An excellent mail-order source for natural hardwood charcoal is Natures Own Online Store, which carries Nature’s Own 100% Natural Hardwood Chunk Charcoal. All this maple wood comes from a government-approved Canadian reforestation program.

If you can’t get natural hardwood charcoal, buy high-qualitybriquettes. These do contain some binders of lime and cornstarch, but they don’t have the petroleum, nitrates, and cheap fillers of sand and clay that other composition briquettes often have.

Start the fire: kiss lighter fluid goodbye

对于木炭烧烤架，没有三种出色的方法可以在没有液体石油产品的情况下开始大火，这些石油产品臭，对环境不友好，并且在几个州变得非法。Chimney starters,带有耐热手柄的金属罐，易于使用：用木炭加载顶部，底部用皱巴巴的纸，并点亮纸张。空气通过烟囱迅速绘制火焰并加热煤。在大约20分钟内，您的煤会发红，并准备将其塞入烤架中。韦伯的快速烟囱起动器特别好。它具有超大容量，这使其成为大型烤架的理想选择。它还具有漂亮的稳定手柄，可帮助您安全倒入煤。

如果您没有烟囱起动器，请将两三个solid paraffin lighter cubesinto your pile of charcoal to replace the newspaper and kindling you’d normally use to start a fire. Light the starter cubes (which are odorless and smokeless), and they’ll get your coals going.

开火大火的另一种干净有效的方法是电动木炭起动器. Nestle the iron coil inside a pile of coals and plug the starter into a regular 120-volt electric outlet (via a heavy-duty extension cord). It immediately begins heating; remove after eight minutes, and your fire is well on its way. This is by far the easiest method to get a charcoal fire going, but it does have one problem: the starter is white-hot when it comes out of the fire, and it needs to rest in a safe place until it cools down. This could be tricky if you have small children in your household or, as at my house, a large dog with a wagging tail.

Add smoky flavor with wood chips and chunks

Once you’ve got your fire going, you can decide if you want to usewood chips or chunksto lend a smoky flavor to your food. Play around with these flavorings—cherry, apple, pecan, hickory, and mesquite, to name a few—to suit your own taste. You’ll want to add the chips, or the bigger chunks, just a few minutes before you’re ready to put the food on. You can soak them first in water, beer, or wine, or you can use them dry. I found that dry chips provide plenty of smoky flavor, and that I’m not crazy about cooking with the steamy, wet heat of soaked chips.

无论哪种方式，您的食物从木屑中含有的味道都是微妙的。某些树林，例如豆科岩，给您带来更强的风味，您可能会或不喜欢。当慢煮食物（如鸡肉或烤）上，使用木屑和块似乎是最有意义的。食物有更多时间吸收风味。如果直接在火焰或蒸薯条上煮熟的鱼或鸡肉薄片，或者短暂盖上烤架，则可以捡起一些风味。

在木炭烤架中，您可以将芯片或块直接扔进火中（退缩：干薯条像燃料一样起作用，而您的火将有点爆炸），但是在燃气烤架中，最好使用一个好主意metal smoking boxto hold the chips so that the fuel port doesn’t get clogged. The boxes are available with or without covers. A great alternative is all-natural compressed wood pellets that arrive in small tins. All you have to do is remove a sticker to expose a hole, drop the can into the coals (making sure it’s surrounded by heat), and again, stand back. The can takes just a few minutes to heat up, and then it sends off a stream of smoke like a spouting whale. You can also improvise and put loose chips into a disposable aluminum-foil pan punched with holes.

选择最聪明的工具，以便烹饪

Over the years I’ve tried to cook just about every kind of vegetable on my grill. I’ve rigged up all sorts of goofy aluminum-foil trays to keep asparagus spears and the like from falling through the cracks. But now I’m sold on an incredibly versatile grilling tool on which I can cook all those fall-through-thecracks foods, and I can also use it for shellfish and skin-on fish. I had seen theflat porcelain-enameled steel cooking gridsin stores; I’m not sure why I never bought one. All you have to do is brush oil on the grid (sometimes called a Griffo Grill, after its inventor, or a Grill Topper), put it on the grill when the fire’s ready, and let it heat for a minute. Then grill just about anything on it.

你会得到很棒的结果与旗鱼和桶a steaks, salmon fillets, whole skin-on fish, scallops and shrimp, skinny vegetables like green beans and scallions, large slices of eggplant and zucchini, and juicy things like tomatoes. You won’t lose things into the fire, and there’s a handy lip on the grid to push up against when you’re turning food over. Best of all, the porcelain-coated surface is as close to nonstick as you’ll get with equipment designed to withstand high heat.

After trying the flat grid, which is available in small and large sizes, I really had fun with thewok-shaped porcelain enameled steel grid, designed for stir-frying on the grill. I cut up several kinds of vegetable that are usually hard to grill—cabbage, fennel, snow peas, broccoli—and tossed them into the wok over a hot fire. After stirring them around for a few minutes, I had delicious veggies, caramelized on the outside, crisp-tender on the inside. Since there are so many cooks in search of the perfect grilled pizza, I next tried some items designed to solve a few of the problems that come up when working with the dough directly on the grill. I found one瓷器披萨网格(which is more holes—4500 of them—than steel) that I liked. Because of the porcelain finish, dough doesn’t stick, and the grid can be twirled around to move the dough over or away from hot spots on the grill. You can also use a flat enameled grid for small pizzas.

今年新市场的瓷涂层钢网格的另一种变化是fish and vegetable turner. Designed to allow you to flip food without handling it with utensils, this turner consists of two small pieces of porcelain-enameled steel that are joined together like a book with hinges. While it isn’t a perfect tool (it doesn’t hold a lot, and the metal handle is a bit awkward), it is very handy for cooking one small whole fish and does the best job on fully cooking eggplant slices. Usually grilled eggplant winds up charred on the outside, raw on the inside. Sandwiched between the two covers of this turner, the eggplant actually steamed, cooking the inside thoroughly, while the outside became nicely caramelized.

What about all thosegrilling baskets打算容纳鱼类，蔬菜或汉堡包？一些烧烤者喜欢他们，但我发现它们很尴尬。现在，涂有瓷涂层的网格已广泛使用，即使是旨在固定全鱼的篮子也不是真正必要的。我在瓷器的网格上煮了一些大号的鲭鱼，并得到了酥脆的皮肤和完美煮熟的肉。我会避免那些篮子。

You might think to avoid something as funny looking as a porcelain ceramic鸡肉保姆, but you’d be missing out on a scrumptious smoky chicken. This odd-looking thing cooks unbelievably tasty chicken with extra-crispy skin, and it can be used in any grill with a lid tall enough to cover the height of the propped up chicken. There are several variations on this idea on the market. I tested one called theCeramiCooker, made by Early Morning Pottery, by setting it directly on the grill grate. I pushed my hot charcoal to the sides of the grill, put a foil drip pan under the chicken, and covered the grill, leaving the air vents open. The chicken was delicious, and the ceramic cooker cleaned up easily.

A good set ofskewersis essential, andWeber’s Double-Pronged Skewers很多意义。尴尬的虾或者recalcitrant round vegetables like cherry tomatoes will stay put when you turn them, instead of spinning around, so that you can actually grill two sides of the food. Also keep an eye out for metal skewers with a flat edge, which can prevent spinning, too.

If you’re looking for a lovely rustic presentation for a party, try using新鲜的迷迭香串. I was surprised to find that these really do gently flavor whatever is cooked on them. First, strip most of the leaves off and thread chicken or pork in strips (saté style) for a nice presentation.

Cook with heat-resistant tongs and turners

There are a zillion sets of grilling utensils on the market. I’m actually most comfortable with two simple tools: a pair of16英寸不锈钢餐厅风格的钳子and along-handled natural-bristle pastry brushfor basting. I also find that a spatula-type turner can be handy—especially if it’s a combination tool like theturner/tongfrom Lamson & Goodnow. With this terrific utensil, you can move just about anything without damaging it.

如果您真的想拥有淘汰赛set of grilling tools, be sure to hold each piece to see if it’s comfortable before buying the set. And keep an eye out for heat-resistant handles. (This is the disadvantage of all-purpose stainless-steel tongs, which heat up quickly over a hot fire.)OXO Good Grips’set is lightweight and dishwasher safe;Lamson & Goodnow’s坚强，制作精良且长相好。

保护您的手免受热量呢？我不是那些笨重的烧烤小伙子的忠实拥护者；我觉得他们消除了烧烤的触觉感觉。但是，伊多（Ido）将两到三个干净的旧餐垫手动缠绕在热门手柄上或打开烧烤架上的通风孔。

Add fire and flavor with tips from the pros

“我爱我的烟囱起动器，我喜欢像迷你夹一样使用它。当煤发光时，我没有将它们倒出，而是将烤架放在起动器的顶部。我用那种超热的热量为我的妻子和我自己烤金枪鱼牛排，或者快速起泡红铃辣椒。”
—Clifford Pleau, The California Grill, Lake Buena Vista, California

“我最喜欢的烧烤技巧之一是使用草药来调味食物。夏季，当鼠尾草，百里香和迷迭香等草药变得长腿，抓住几个，将它们短暂浸泡在水中，然后将其扔到煤上，将食物放在煤中，然后盖上烤架。食物将捡起草药的美味。”
—John Ash, Fetzer Vineyards, Hopland, California

“A big mistake grillers often make is starting to cook before the coals are really hot. Be sure your coals are glowing red under a layer of white ash. Use a long-handled utensil to stir up the coals, shake off the white ash, and distribute the coals evenly. With a really hot fire, the food will sear properly, and it won’t stick as much.”
—Gordon Hamersley, Hamersley’s Bistro, Boston, Massachusetts

Sources for grilling equipment

Mail-order houses

• Chef’s Catalog,www.chefscatalog.com
• Grill Lover’s Catalog,www.grilllovers.com
• 大自然自己的在线商店，www.char-wood.com
• Sunbeam,www.sunbeam.com

Manufacturers

• AMCO Corporation,www.amcocorporation.com
• Bar-B-Q Woods, Inc., 800 E. 14th St., Newton, KS 67114; 800/528-0819.
• Charcoal Companion, 7955 Edgewater Dr., Oakland, CA 94621; 800/521-0505 (outside California); 510/632-2100.
• Early Morning Pottery,www.earlymorningpottery.com
• Ekco家庭用品，www.ekco.com
• Lamson＆Goodnow，www.lamsonsharp.com
• Oscarware, Inc., 749 Priceville Rd., Bonnieville, KY 42713; 888/672-2797.
• OXO,www.oxo.com
• Weber-Stephen Products Co.,www.weber.com