BBQ Grilling vs BBQ Smoking

If you were to call barbecueing merely another method of cooking, you're bound to raise the ire of many a seasoned barbecuers. To those who care about their BBQ, it's not merely another way to cook food; it is an art and the hundreds of thousands of professional and amateur chefs who stand before an open fire on a warm summer afternoon, its finest of practioners.

No method of cooking has such a cult devoted to it as barbecueing. It is so because cooking meat on an open fire requires far more skill than any other method. It can take years to hone this skill - knowing exactly how much sauce to apply, how long to cook, and what to cook. BBQ connoisseurs will go out of their way to sample the best of BBQ food.

But even in this united community of BBQ lovers, there is a division: between those who prefer grilling, and those who pick smoking.

What exactly is the difference between them? Pardon the longish intro - this is exactly what I wanted to get to in this article.

For most people, their barbecue experience is associated largely with grilling. Barbecue grilling is the process of cooking food over an open flame, either directly or indirectly. If you've ever fired up a grill and cooked a chicken breast or steak on it, you've experienced barbecue grilling.

BBQ grilling is divided into two types: direct and indirect grilling. Direct grilling is when you cook food directly over an open flame. It's perfect for cooking relatively smaller pieces of meat, like steaks, chicken breasts, pork chops, etc. To properly grill meat directly, you'll require a relatively powerful grill so that the meat is cooked thoroughly.

In indirect grilling, the meat is kept away from the direct heat and towards the sides of the grill. It's perfect for cooking larger pieces of meat, such as a whole chicken. Indirect grilling requires more time than direct grilling, but the results, most connoisseurs admit, are far better.

Typically, an experienced griller might use both methods for cooking food - direct grilling to sear the meat, later, switching to indirect grilling to complete the cooking process.

Grills come in a variety of shapes and sizes, using fuels ranging from gas to charcoal to electricity, fitting every pocket, from small electric grills costing less than $50, to massive $2000 gas grills that can feed a small army.

Smoking requires patience. It requires skill. Unlike grilling, you don't cook food over a direct heat. Rather, the food is cooked through the smoke generated by heating fuel. It is a time consuming process that requires years of practice to perfect. While grilling is ideal for cooking smaller pieces of meat - a whole chicken at most - barbecue smoking is for those larger meats like ribs, briskets, roasts, etc.

Smoking, because it is so technically challenging, is also the favorite cooking method for professional barbecue teams. Those gigantic machines you see on TV being lugged by a championship BBQ team? Those are smokers, designed to accommodate massive hunks of meats.

Smoking can be done through a normal grill, though you're much better off buying a dedicated smoker. Smoking requires that you maintain a temperature between 200 to 225 degrees throughout the cooking process, which can take hours for larger cuts of meat. You also need to choose the right fuel for smoking. Wood is the preferred choice since it imparts its own flavor to the meat. You can also buy smokers that run on charcoal or gas, though most connoisseurs would look down on this practice.

I hope this clears some of the doubts about barbecue smoking vs grilling. As a connoisseur would put it: smoking is what separates the men from the boys. That shouldn't take anything away from the fact that mastering grilling itself requires a great deal of experience and skill.