USING A GAS GRILL FOR INDIRECT COOKING

As with a charcoal grill, size matters when trying to cook certain foods on a gas grill. For instance, the lid must be tall enough to accommodate a turkey resting in a V-rack. (A lid that is less than eight or nine inches tall will be a problem.) Likewise, the size of the cooking grate is important when trying to prepare ribs. Unless the cooking surface has an area of at least 400 square inches, you will need to cook one slab at a time. (If the grill comes with a warming rack, you may cook a second slab there.)

In addition to size, the number of burners is critical. It's not possible to cook indirectly on a grill with only one burner, because the burner is usually positioned in the center of the grill and the "cool" parts of the grill are too small to fit most foods. You must use a grill with at least two burners. With one burner on and one burner off, at least half of the grill will be cool enough for slow cooking.

Just as important, buy a gas grill with a thermometer. You can stick an oven thermometer on the cooking grate, but then you have to open the lid to find out the temperature. Opening the lid causes heat to be lost and prolongs total cooking time. Also try to buy a grill with a gas gauge. Many of the recipes in this book require several hours of cooking, and there's nothing worse than running out of gas unexpectedly.

In our tests, we found it slightly easier to cook on grills with left and right burners rather than front and back. The cooking grate on most gas grills is rectangular. When the grill is divided into front and back cooking zones, the cool part of the grill will be a long, relatively narrow band. Although this shape is well suited to ribs and tenderloin, it can be a challenge when cooking a turkey. When the grill is divided into left and right cooking zones, each side is roughly a square, which we find to be a better shape for cooking birds. Foods that are long and thin, like tenderloin, can be easily curled in a C-shape over the cool side of the grill.

To set up a gas grill for indirect cooking, remove all warming shelves attached to the hood or the back of the grill. (Leave the racks in place when making ribs on a small grill.) Place a foil tray with wood chips (see figures 7 through 10) on top of the primary burner (see figure 11). With some gas grills, one burner must be turned on first. This is the primary burner. With other grills, you may designate a primary burner yourself. Light all burners and cover the grill. When you see a lot of smoke (this will take about 20 minutes), turn off the burner(s) without the chips and place the food over these off burners. If the chips start to flame, douse the fire with water from a squirt bottle.

WOOD ON A GAS GRILL

Chips are the only choice for gas grills since chunks are hard to position right over a lit burner and may not get hot enough to smoke. We tried various methods for adding chips before we hit upon the best solution.

When we tossed either unsoaked or soaked chips directly into the bottom of a gas grill, they burned much too quickly and gave up all their smoke or did not smoke at all because they fell below the burners. We tried the foil packet method that worked well with charcoal, but found that in this case the packet actually was too effective a shield and not enough smoke was being released.

We prefer to place the chips in an open foil tray. The tray (which can be made from heavy-duty aluminum foil; see figures 7 through 10) shields the chips from direct contact with the burner but is open on top to allow the smoke to flow freely. The tray also allows you to spread out the chips so that they are not piled on top of each other, as they are inside a smaller foil packet. More chips can also be added to the tray throughout the cooking process. When we placed unsoaked chips in the tray they caught fire immediately. Soaking the chips for 15 minutes prevents them from igniting and allows them to smolder slowly and produce a lot of smoke.