Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

@susanova You should clean off the residue from your grate each time when you grill—old, brunt food is a not a flavor you want to impart on whatever you're cooking. Let you grill heat up for 5-10 minutes, scrub it clean with a grill brush, then oil the grate to prevent sticking and you'll be good to go.

@RibDog That sounds about right. I can consult the original recipe later and see for sure what they say. I personally have a hard time determining serving sizes, especially for something like a side where it can vary so widely depending on how much each individual takes and how good a side is. This is a particularly good side, so it may be best to default to the lower number of the serving size.

@finewinendine Glad it worked out! I thought the thyme would be pretty rocking here instead of tarragon. Also, the serving this cold is a great idea, perfect for a hot summer day.

Today was barbecue beans, ribs, and beer-can chicken. Tomorrow is grilled pizza with all grilled toppings: roasted red peppers, sausage, grilled pineapple, etc.

@MOZ Yes, this is served a little warm, around room temperature. It needs to sit for about 1 hour for all the flavors to full meld, but then it's served right away, not refrigerated.

Great series of photos.

Was the Men's Health 'Cue Crew using the 22 1/2" bullets? It looks so much bigger mine....so much more delicious barbecue.

I used long skewers and got this done in 8 bunches, so that's 16 skewers total (2 per bunch).

@majacooking I also found a couple recipes calling for grated apple, I'll have to try it sometime!

@velascomike I've never cleaned the charcoal grate, besides removing the old charcoal. With the grill covered, I've also never run into problems with it rusting.

My biggest gripe with charcoal grates is that all of mine have slowly bent out of shape over time from the heat of the charcoal. Luckily, these are replaceable once they've gone too far.

@J. Kenji Lopez-Alt In regards to photography, a good telephoto zoom is nice for keeping a distance from the heat when grilling, although I often use my f/1.4 50mm with a slight fear of melting the camera because food just looks better with it.

If you can, try to put the grill in a shady spot. Assuming you're working with a Weber kettle, the combination of the deep blackness of the grill and high contrast caused by the sun is tricky to overcome without a fill flash. With a flash, you're often left with making a decision to expose correctly for the food or for the grill.

In my space, the grill isn't in the shade until about 4pm, and for photos taken before that, the "Fill Light" slider in Lightroom is my best friend in trying to get some details out of the the usual void that surrounds the food.

I a big lover of contrast and saturation, keeping my Nikon on the "Vivid" setting most of the time. I've been running into issue though with the grill + sun contrast issue making photos come out too saturated on that setting, which in turn loses details and makes the food look a little unnatural. So on those sunny days, I've been setting the picture mode back to Normal to resolve that.

Whew, obviously I should stick to grilling and not try to play scientist with my rudimentary understanding. I'm loving the comments and what I'm learning though.

Despite my technical error, I do stand by my stance to avoid a water bottle against a flare-up.

I took the advice to use it via Alton Brown years ago, but I found that spraying the flare-up first blew up ash everywhere, only to give way to a returning fire burning just as strong, if not stronger, once the ash and smoke cleared.

I thought oxygen in the water might have been fueling some extra flames after that (which I admit my mistake), but from what I'm reading, it seems like the situation was probably that the water couldn't fully control the flaming grease, at least not without extinguishing the coals. If the coals are still burning and the grease is still there, then the flare-up will just return.

So why use water if it can't do the job as well as moving the food or covering the grill?

@dmcavanagh That thermometer is built into my grill, but you can get your own and just hang it through a hole in the air vent. That's what I do for my smoker that doesn't have a built in thermometer/