Direct vs Indirect Grilling

What is direct grilling?

This grilling zone was the only area I was aware of until much more recent than I am willing at admit. This is where the food is grilled directly over the fire (coals, briquettes, gas burners…) and if possible… not charred to a crisp ;-).

But even with direct grilling there are possible variations and differences.

Firstly, the choice of fire material: using charcoal allows higher temperatures to be achieved than with briquettes. But some briquettes burn longer. So if you want to give your steak a crisp outside, for example, you should grill it over charcoal in the direct grill area (all burners on the gas grill on “full throttle”). My tip: always use high-quality charcoal and briquettes, even if they seem a bit more expensive at first, you will be rewarded for the little extra money afterwards. You usually get better grilling results because the material burns better and more constantly, and above all your health will thank you. 

Another factor to consider when grilling directly is the distance between the food being cooked and the fire. The closer it is, the hotter it is (in the so-called “Caveman method” the food, mostly meat, ends up directly in the coals). Most charcoal and gas grills have controlled distances anyway.

A particularly interesting and hot method of direct grilling is grilling directly on the chimney starter. You simply place a grill grate over the completely lit charcoal of your chimney and the temperature at the grate is blistering. The heat from the glowing coals is concentrated by the chimney. Best for high temp searing after sous vide or as the final step in a reverse sear cook.

What is indirect grilling?

With the indirect grilling zone, the food is not placed directly over a fire, but cooked away from the flame, aka indirectly. It is gentler than the direct grill method. This allows you to achieve greater juiciness in your grilled food because the softer heat and lower temperature minimizes evaporation.

To use the grill in the indirect setting, use one or more burners on the gas grill, depending on the size of the food and the grill. Place the food on the opposite side of the grill. This probably works best when there are three or more burners on the gas grill. But even with two burners, indirect grilling is possible by leaving one burner off. No matter how many burners you have – the food goes over the unfired area and the grill lid is closed. With the charcoal grill, the briquettes / charcoal are piled to one side or divided. The charcoal baskets supplied by many grill manufacturers are ideal for this. You fill a basket with the glowing briquettes and position them as far left or right as possible. For large cuts like roasts, it can be beneficial to have heat on both sides by loading up two baskets and splitting them, so that the indirect grilling zone is also created in the middle of the grate on a charcoal grill. Of course, the lid is also closed here.

Whether charcoal or gas, thanks to the air circulation inside the grill, the food is grilled indirectly – a kind of convection oven is created. But convection is only one of three ways a grill cooks. There is also conduction and radiation. More on those in another post…

Combining direct and indirect cooking can have some amazing results. Have you heard of reverse searing? That’s where you cook your steak indirectly until just below the target temperature and remove from the heat, get the grill ripping hot, and throw that meat back on to get a nice crust. The end result? A gorgeous outside with a nice wall-to-wall pink center.

Happy grilling!