Indoor Grillin’

Lesson

Most of the recipes that are written for the backyard grill can almost always be taken indoors and created on or in your kitchen stove. Well, almost always.

One factor that limits what you can and can’t do inside your home: the production of smoke, carbon monoxide, CO2, and other unfriendly byproducts of outdoor cooking. Carbon monoxide can be lethal, and is especially dangerous in enclosed spaces. In other words, don’t use a charcoal grill indoors.

You can, however, grill on your stovetop or bake in your oven. You can even cook with smoke inside your kitchen with clever new smoking bags. They create real smoke and impart that outdoor, woodsy flavor to food you cook in the bags in your oven. Just make sure to turn on your kitchen’s exhaust fan to be safe.

Grillin’ indoors comes in two styles: broiling and grillin’ on the stove

To broil food, you simply need to place meat on a broiler pan, add water inside the pan, and place it under a hot broiler (assuming your oven has a broiler). This method is sort of like cooking over heat on a BBQ, except you’re cooking under the heat.

Grillin’ food on the stovetop is simple. Any open grill recipe can be duplicated easily in the kitchen on a cast iron grill surface over gas burners (electric burners don’t get hot enough). Just remember to turn on the exhaust fan when grillin’ and be careful of the grease that often spatters off meat on a hot surface.

Another possibility: electric grills

Several companies now make small electric units that you can safely use inside to barbecue. Unfortunately, these electric grills don’t get hot enough to really sear meats, but they do a decent job. Since much of barbecue is “low and slow,” the less-powerful electric barbecue elements can produce a pretty good roast, chicken, or fish dinner.

Reproducing a smoky, outdoor flavor—carefully

If you miss the smoke flavor of an outdoor grill, try adding only a pinch of hickory or mesquite powdered smoke. Many of these smoky powders and granules are very strong. If you use too much, you will end up with a bitter, over-smoked flavor.

Don’t use liquid smoke. This is a foul chemical manufactured by the controlled burning of wood chips or sawdust, where the resulting smoke is passed through water, which captures and dissolves the smoke-flavored components in a solution. That’s like smoking a cigarette, blowing the smoke into a sealed container of water, and then drinking it. Need we say more?