Direct vs Indirect
Left: Indirect cooking zone, Right: Direct cooking zone. Flank Steak on the PK Grill.
Indirect and Direct cooking both play critical roles in everyday cooking. They do much more when cooking outside with natural fuels such as charcoal and/or wood. Indirect cooking is just like what it sounds, cooking something without the heat directly contacting the food. Meaning you have a heat source separated and you are using the heat but not the flames. Direct is well, you can imagine what you’re cooking directly over the fire. Let’s talk about why these two techniques are critical in our craft.
Let’s give some examples first, let’s take a NY steak and a tri-tip roast. I use a combination of direct heat and indirect heat on both of these examples when I cook them on my charcoal grill. But the ratios are much different. You could grill the roast over direct heat for as long as it would take to cook it but it would be a burnt mess by the time you’re done with it. You want it to cook evenly without burning it right? Conversely, you could cook a steak entirely with indirect heat perfectly but it will be missing something. What you’re missing is the char flavor. Every great steakhouse I’ve been to serves up my steaks with a char on them. So what’s the dividing line between steak and roast? Nope, that’s not the question we should be asking here. I ask myself how I want the meat to be done after I'm finished cooking. I think of the flavors I want and the two on the top of my list are wood smoke and char.
Let’s talk about the scenario with the tri-tip roast for a minute. The majority of my cook is done indirectly when I do a tri-tip. This may seem like a boring or uninteresting part of the cook but it’s one of the most important steps for flavor! I’ll fire the kettle up to medium heat and put some smoke one it. During this time the wood smoke is introduced into the meat. It doesn’t matter too much to me how hot the kettle is, just that the meat is not directly over the fire.
Reverse Sear Tri-tip on the PK Grill
Another great benefit of indirect cooking is that we can cook many things at the same time, by bunching your fire to one side of your cooker you open up a lot of cooking real estate to heat other foods. I’ve been known to do this with chicken wings, putting a small fire in one corner and then “reverse searing” them by cooking them about 90% indirect and then moving them over to direct fire to finish them off. You’ll often read in cooking articles that the sear comes first then the indirect portion of cooking. Reverse sear takes advantage of the flavor component of indirect cooking by infusing your food with natural wood smoke flavor.
Direct cooking though, is my favorite part of grilling. You get to play with fire! Something about grilling meats over a live fire makes me feel more manly. In my best He-man voice: I have the power!! Direct cooking is cooking directly over the heat source or fire. With charcoal and/or wood, direct cooking can produce some amazing flavor too. Let’s go back to that steak scenario. Man, I love me some steaks. I like to do my steaks hot and fast with nearly 100% direct cooking, they get maximum char via that wonderful maillard reaction. Maillard reaction is a crazy process that involves reducing sugars and proteins with heat. I won’t bore you with the details but it’s delicious. Just know that it’s probably the flavor you’re expecting when eating steak.
Ribeye Steaks on the PK Grill, direct heat on grill grates
The purpose of this article is to explain why both cooking types are necessary in our wonderful world of outdoor cooking. There are lots of cookers now that offer variations of direct and indirect cooking capabilities. Check out our show “Types of cookers”. At the time of writing this, a lot of pellet cooker manufacturers are starting to acknowledge that people want to use direct heat to get that wonderful char. They are starting to package these options with their cookers. What a great time to be an outdoor cooking enthusiast!
Get out there and grill!