First of all, look for good meat.  Try not to skimp and buy the cheapest ground beef you can find, try to buy a better grade of meat.  Also, it is helpful to mix two different types of meat together, like ground chuck and ground round, or even ground beef.  The fat content in one meat will help balance the other out and make it a juicier burger.  It also helps not to shrink up the burgers too small, as in the case of using only a cheaper ground beef with a lot of fat that grills away and leaves you with a tiny hamburger.

The meat can be seasoned with seasoning salts, herbs or spices, dried minced onions, etc.  Season them to your taste.  Some cheeses can also be added for an extra boost in the burger.  Cheese can always be added at the end of grilling as well.

If you are making sliders, try to make the burgers uniform in size so they will cook in the same amount of time.  Also, when making the sliders, use your thumb and push a small indention into the top of each burger.  This will help the slider to cook more evenly and not have a hump in the top of the burger when done. I hate when my sliders have a dome on them. Just press the middle with your thumb before they hit the grill.

It is helpful sometimes to buy meat in larger packages and make hamburgers ahead of time, freezing what you don’t need today to use at a later date.  One good tool for that is a hamburger press with freezer containers.  This allows you to make uniform sized patties and store them in freezer safe containers to pull out and use at a moment’s notice.

When grilling make sure you have the heat set at a medium temperature and not too hot.  Once the burgers are placed on the grill, close the lid and don’t open it for about four minutes.  Turn the burgers once and then repeat the process, not opening the lid for four minutes.  Then you can check for doneness.  If some people want their burger a little rarer, then those can be pulled off while the other meat continues to cook a little longer.  Be sure to let the meat set on a plate for a few minutes off of the grill before serving to allow for a juicier burger.

So, what do you do with your grill?

First of all… USE IT!! Wait for a day that creeps above freezing, and go out and use it. Cook some burgers, dogs, or some BBQ chicken.

Secondly, if you’re going to put your grill in hybernation for 2-3 months, then here are some tips for winterizing your grill:

1. Clean it well. Get a grill cleaner/solvent from a grill store or hardware store. Get the inside clean. You don’t want to be cooking with last year’s grease and grime when you finally pull your grill out of hybernation.
2. Clean the outside of the grill too. I use something like Windex or 409. But, you can also use a stainless steel cleaner.
3. If there are any non-stainless steel spots on your grill, you might want to try this – get a can of 3in1 oil and put a rub some oil on those spots to keep them from getting weathered or rusted.
4. If you have ceramic grates on your grill, take them in and store them in the garage. I don’t think they’ll crack in the sub-zero weather, but no use taking a chance.
5. Take the battery out of your electric starter. Most people forget they have a AA battery in there and remember in the Spring when it gets all corroded.
6. Turn off your gas tank. Just make sure it’s off. You don’t want any mosture freezing in the connection, expanding and contracting. I always turn off my gas and unscrew the hose.
7. And, for Pete’s sake… put a Grill Cover over the top of your grill.  Make sure it is velcroed, tied, or whatever you need to do to make sure the wind doesn’t sweep up underneath and blow in ice and snow.
8. Finally, wheel your grill to a location where it will get the least amount of exposure to the elements.

All in all… about 60 minutes worth of work to save your investment.

For those who live in the South… ignore this article… except for the cleaning part. Enjoy your grill year-round.

I love seafood, especially ocean fish. I was at a friend’s house not long ago and he grilled fish that was unbelievable. It had a cracker crust and was perfect.  Since then, I’ve tried to duplicate what he did… failure.

• Fish was soggy
• Fish fell through the grate
• Fish got burnt
• Fish tasted like hamburger

So, I did what I typically do when I don’t know how to do something, I turn to YouTube and check out what they have to say.  I found the following video, and the results have been great. The video is in HD, so if you have a slower connection, you’ll want to change the resolution on the control bar from 720p to 360p.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Notice how he uses two spatulas to turn the fish. That’s a bit tricky. You might want to go get a fish basket.

If you’ve struggled like me to grill fish, watch the video above and knock em dead. I can’t hardly eat fish any other way now. I have tried orange roughy and halibut so far. I’m going for salmon and some shrimp on the ole BBQ next time out.

Then, I walk out on my back patio and see my grill with the black cover.  A nice cover, but it would look even better with a college logo on it. I began looking around at some of my local stores, like Home Depot and Lowes. They had a couple, but I wanted to find a really cool grill cover.

There isn’t anything you can’t find online… and usually for a better price.  One of the best places to find this kind of stuff is on Amazon.  Here is what I found:

At Amazon.com you can find just about every college team out there, from Florida State, to the Longhorns, to Alabama, to USC. They have black covers with the logos on them. They have the team colors with the logo on it. For example, the Texas Longhorns is an all burnt orange cover with a white longhorn on it. Pretty cool. Then, they have a cover that is white and looks like a jersey with shoulder pads, with college name and numbers on it.

Prices for a college grill cover looks to run between $25 to about $75, depending upon the brand, thickness of the material, and overall quality.

One of the things I did was read the reviews.  Some of the solid color ones didn’t always get the best rating because the colors faded. That kinda sucks. The burnt orange becomes yellow and that ain’t right.

The white jersey college grill covers seemed to get the best ratings, about 4.5 stars out of 5. The durability was good, the colors were bright, and lasted at least 3 years. These are also the more expensive covers.

The traditional black ones are about average on rating.

While the college logos and stuff is great, still remember to be smart when buying. You may find a cheap price on a $25 USC Trojans grill cover, only to find the colors fading to pink and the cover rip on the corner of your grill… or some kind of nasty tie string at the bottom.

College grill covers are going to cost a bit more than a plain black one for obvious reasons. So, if you’re willing to fork out the extra cash for your team, get a quality one with the velcro straps, air vent, good quality thick material, and trust some of the reviews.

Go get yourself one, have your friends over on a Saturday afternoon, show over the grill cover, and the grill envy will begin.

I wouldn’t mind having a few of those dance moves myself. Either way, they do a good job featuring their grills and owning anything but a Weber just won’t be the same.

If you own a Weber Grill… you ought to get some friends together, shoot your own video, and upload it to YouTube. I’ve seen a couple people do them, but it would be fun. We need some lassos, windshield wipers, and running man action though.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Grill utensils – afterall, what you do you want to flip a burger with? You can try your fingers or that tiny spatula in the kitchen. Either way you’re going to burn your fingers or the hair off your knuckles. You need a nice set of utensils. No debate.
2. Grill cover – The outside stainless steel or painted finish of your grill is not the only thing that should cover your grill. You need a cover. No debate. Let me tell you why.

Let me give you an example from a Weber grill my friend just bought.  He bought a nice Weber Genesis E-330. It’s a real nice green color. He spent about $800 on the grill once you figure the tax. Nice side burner grill, everything looked nice.

He got himself a set of cool utensils and accessories that same day for another $100. He was all set.

What he did not get was a Weber Grill Cover.  I believe a Weber brand specifically made for that grill is about $50. Since it is Weber brand, it would have been a bit more expensive.

Six weeks later, into the heat of the Texas summer, he realized why he needed one.  Near his patio is a bird feeder and bird bath. With the extra heat and lack of rain, it attacted more birds than normal. Those birds began to look for places to roost. A few began to roost on his new grill.

Over a period of a few weeks, several birds began to poop over the surface of his green grill. With the 107 degree heat, it began to bake in. As my friend tried to clean it, it had damaged the paint and finish of the green grill. Furthermore, some bird poop had gotten down inside of the side burner.

Not having a cover ruined the surface of his grill and created an extra chore of cleaning out his burners.

While this is one example of what a good Weber grill cover could help prevent, there are many other reasons. My top 2 reasons are:

1. To prevent oxidation of the grill grate. You don’t need your grate getting rusty because of excess moisture.
2. To protect the outside of the grill from the elements, dirt, dust… and even birds.

This grill is a 20-burger grill, this infared is a 35-burger grill, or this mamoth is a 50-burger grill. Some of them are just downright huge. But, that led me to two questions when trying to figure out how many burgers big I wanted my grill:

1. How big are the burgers that they are using for measurement? Are these standard burgers, White Castle slider size, or what?
2. How close are these burgers together? I mean I need space between my burgers to flip them and not have them land on each other while I’m flipping them.

So, my advice – don’t worry about how many burgers big the grill size is because you will never, ever be able to fit that many burgers on your grill and cook with any sort of efficiency. In fact, if you have a 40-burger grill and you’re cooking 40 burgers on it, I don’t want one of your burgers.

Here’s what I would do instead…

Get the approximate size of your last grill and go bigger by about 10-20%. Who wants to go smaller. Make sure the new grill has the features you’re wanting, infared, rotisserie, side burner, storage, prep table, temperature guage, light, etc. While I want a bigger grill, I would give up some size to get the features I want.

To me, the number of burgers my grill will hold is somewhat irrelevant. When I’m having a party and I’ve got dogs and burgers going, I’m rotating out burgers, putting cheese on some, flipping others, taking off the ones that are done, putting on the new ones. I don’t need to cook 40 burgers at once. That’s too many for any one man to watch.

So, the next time you’re needing a new grill, go measure your old one, add 10-20%, pick out your features, and go. And, since this is a blog about cool grill covers, make sure you set aside an extra $30 for a premium grill cover. You’ll never regret it.

First, I needed to know the size of the grill. Each brand and each style have different dimensions, so it is very important to find out the length, width and height of the grill you want to cover. Next, I wanted to find out some of his favorite things, as grill covers come in about every color and pattern you can imagine. Sports teams are a popular cover, as well as college teams, and even some states have covers.

There are some covers available at your local hardware store or discount stores, maybe even department stores. There are also many websites that offer grill covers for sale. The internet is a good place to start looking for ideas, because it will save you time and gas of having to go to all of the different stores. I found some covers on-line that I liked and thought my friend would like as well, so I checked at some of the stores and found that one of the stores carried that style.

It is important to read about what material the cover is made from since some of the materials will not hold up as well as others. There are people who post reviews of products–yes, even grill covers–on the internet and they are helpful to read over before purchasing a cover. I did discover that some of the sports covers, specialty covers, etc. are not always made from a high quality material and will fade, shred and fall apart if the grill is in the sun or harsh weather.

It is nice to have a BBQ Grill Cover with Velcro straps or some other type of fastener on the sides to hold the cover in place on the grill. It keeps the cover in place when it is windy out. I am glad that the grill cover I purchased is still working well, has not fallen apart and is doing its job.

Set the Backdrop

Texan BBQ gatherings will be a enjoyable – frolicking experience for you and your company. To be swept in the spirits of Texan style get together give up the fancy tableware and get towards the down-home strategy. So set the stage for the Texan atmosphere in your yard.

Begin with a dress rule of faded blue denim jeans or head-to-spur fringe to help keep the attendees in the Texan way of thinking. You could draw out some posters with naughty slogans similar to – ‘high noon until the cows come home’ or perhaps ‘eat barbecue without a napkin’ etc. Spread a desperado décor simply by transforming your yard into tumbleweed-strewn dust bowl with straw on the patio or deck and also hay bales for family and friends to sit down.

Bobby Flay is among the most flourishing chefs who specialize in grilling and barbecues. In 1991, Flay’s restaurant, Mesa Grill opened and was called as the Best Restaurant by New York magazine. In 1993, Chef Bobby Flay was chosen as James Beard Foundation’s Rising Star Chef of the Year. It had been during the same 12 months that his other restaurant, Bolo opened up. Bobby Flay’s relationship with the bbq grill might be best experienced through his Tv programs, BBQ with Bobby Flay, Hot Off the Grill with Bobby Flay, and Boy Meets Grills, along with his cook books Boy Meets Grill, and its sequel, Boy Gets Grill.

Larry Gerber a.k.a. The BarBeQue Man. Named as the Barbeque Man or simply Que, Larry Gerber has become the face and voice of pretty much nearly anything in connection with barbecuing and barbecues. His organization, Barbeque Man, does endorsements and also promotions of assorted barbecue-related products, functions, as well as issues. Apart from being a personal cook, he also writes for several national cooking publications, hosts a Tv show known as Culinary Adventures, and may be heard on a number of radio stations in the upper Midwest while he discusses the craft of barbequing and also grilling.

Mike Mills is often termed as The Legend in the world of grilling and bbqing as a result of his family’s valued barbecue sauce. Between 1989 and 1994, his team, the Apple City BBQ team earned a huge selection of prizes and also awards in numerous barbecue competitions. They even hold the record for being four-time World Champions and then for being three-time Grand World Champions, that not one other team has ever been capable to beat so far. Nowadays, Mike Mills has 17th Street Bar & Grill in Murphysboro, IL and has published a book titled, Peace, Love, and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and also Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue in 2005.

Steven Raichlen is a journalist, cooking teacher, award winning author as well as PBS TV host. His best-selling Barbecue Bible cook book collection (more than 2 million copies in print) as well as Barbecue University Tv program on PBS has transformed the American bbq for the better. In August, 2003, Raichlen defeated Iron Chef Roksbura Michiba in a barbq battle on Japanese tv. Various other famous quotes about Raichlen include: Oprah named him the “Gladiator of Grilling” and “Howard Stern praised him as the “Michael Jordan of Barbecue.”

At this moment, aren’t you just inspired to get out there and prepare the most amazing bar-b-que recipes on your own? Not a problem – get your barbecue grill set, hit a local meats shop or grocery store and logon to InsaneChicken’s BBQ Sauce Catalog and obtain their own scrumptious dishes which range from barbecue to vegan tasty recipes. As well as, take a look at their great deal of sauces and also marinades to help make your barbecuing dinners insanely bold and even exciting.