10 Great BBQ Essentials for Every Backyard

When it comes to cooking, few things are as elemental as grilling. All you need is some heat – from burning wood, charcoal, or gas and your food sizzling in that heat. It’s simple, but it can be daunting.

How do you know when your meat is done? How do you get an even sear? As with most things, having the right tools makes the job much easier.

1. An Instant-Read Thermometer

After the actual cooker, nothing will improve your grilling like an instant-read thermometer. No more guesswork about when to pull that steak off the heat, just insert the thermometer into the thickest part of the meat and check.

2. A Smart Temperature Hub

For more advanced grilling, go for a temperature hub that allows you to monitor the heat inside your grill and the internal temperatures of multiple pieces of meat at once. Some even have Bluetooth connectivity to control the heat from your phone.

3. A Chimney Starter

Tired of trying to light charcoal with lighter fluid and ending up with a chemical taste on your food? Switch to a chimney starter, which uses just newspaper to start the coals.

4. Heat-Resistant Gloves

Protect your hands from heat with a pair of heat-resistant gloves while handling hot grates or moving food on and off the grill.

While these gloves may help, they are not heat-proof. You’re still dealing with very high temperatures when grilling, so please be cautious.

5. Heavy-Duty Tongs

Tongs are the essential tool for flipping and maneuvering food on the grill. Go for a sturdy pair with comfortable grips that won’t bend or break under the weight of your food.

Cooking large cuts of meat means flipping heavy hunks of meat. Most kitchen tongs are not up the task. To avoid dropping your half-cooked food, its recommend heavy-duty stainless steel tongs.

6. A Grate for Your Grill

Grates provides a unique flavor to your food that you can’t get from grilling with gas or charcoal. The taste comes from the rendered fat dripping off your food and hitting the coals below, which then creates smoke that flavors your food.

The grill gives you the same flavorful effect without the charcoal, trapping juices in its deep grooves and preventing flare-ups. They can replace your existing grates or just cover them.

7. Charcoal Baskets

Adding charcoal baskets to your BBQ repertoire makes it simple to transfer heat indirectly, or smoke meat.

If you utilized these in combination with a hinged grill, you would have an easy way of continuously feeding fresh fuel as the process continues. Consequently, this would make your food taste better!

8. A Veggie Basket

Veggies can easily fall through the grates, but a veggie basket helps keep them contained and evenly cooks them to perfection.

9. A Marinade Brush

A marinade brush is essential for basting your food with delicious sauces or marinades during the grilling process. Get one with a heat-resistant silicone or nylon bristles to make sure they don’t melt on the grill.

10. A Good Cleaning Tool

After all the grilling is done, don’t forget about cleaning your grill. A wire brush or scraper will help remove stuck-on bits and make sure your grill is ready for the next round of cooking.

Grilling may be elemental, but having the right tools can take it to a whole new level. Stock up on these BBQ essentials and become a backyard grilling pro.