It’s Memorial Day weekend, and you know what that means … this is the beginning of the serious grilling season. Time to invite people over and show off your Grill Master skills. It’s really a lot more simple than it seems. All you need is the right tools and some helpful tips.

Choosing the right charcoal: There’s plenty of debate over the kind of charcoal to use — lump, briquettes, or how about wood. Lump burns hotter than briquettes, but not for as long or as consistently. Since lump has varying sizes, it will burn at different rates.

Wood provides a great authentic BBQ smoky flavor. The food you’re cooking won’t really absorb the smoky flavor from wood in 20-30 minutes, so it’s probably not the best choice for cooking quicker meals like hamburgers, steaks, and hot dogs. It is great for meats that take longer to cook, like chicken or a beef or pork roast.

Choosing the right grill: There are many types of grills and rather than go into each kind and what they are best for, this article here goes into depth on types of grills and has some great Memorial Day grilling recipes.

The Utensils: There are four basic grilling tools that are a must-have for grilling–a long-handled spatula, tongs, a carving-type poker, and a long-handled basting brush. Those are the basics. If you’re grilling shrimp and other small items, a grilling basket is a real handy piece of equipment to have and you’ll need skewers if you’re going to be cooking kebobs or want to skewer shrimp or veggies for grilling. You’ll also need a good wire brush for cleaning the grill easily.

Preparation

Cleaning the grill: Use your wire brush to clean off the black crust. This will make your food easy to flip and it won’t stick to the grill.

The Sauce: It’s impossible to get a really good store bought BarBQue Sauce. Making your own is your best bet and it’s not that hard to do. You can find 3 basic BBQ Sauce recipes here and then add to them to make your own unique brand of sauce.

BarBQue Tips and Techniques

Cooking Times: There’s a great grilling cooking time sheet here to use as a guideline.

BBQ chicken: eHow has outlined a perfect technique for grilling whole chickens or part of chicken.

Great Grilled Burgers: Let your meat get to room temperature before grilling and they’ll be juicier if you don’t press them flat on the grill. Your burgers will only be as good as the meat you’re grilling, so start off with high quality ground beef.

Steak: How to Turn Cheap “Choice” Steak into Gucci “Prime” Steak: The best technique for making a cheap cut of steak taste like filet mignon is outlined here.

Give it a Rest: Don’t cut into your meat as soon as it’s off the grill. Doing so will release all the juices. Give it time to reabsorb those juices and you’ll be glad you did.

Now get out there and show off your Grill Master skills for Memorial Day.

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