Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Microsoft's CTO, is the founder of Intellectual Ventures and co-author of the 2,438-page multivolume masterwork Modernist Cuisine (Cooking Lab, £697). He also won gold at the World Championship Barbecuing Contest -- here are his hot barbie tips.
Choose your method
"There are two main approaches: cooking with smoke, or indirect barbecuing and grilling," Myhrvold tells Wired. Smoking is right for tough meats such as ribs, which take six hours, and brisket.
Gases in smoke, mainly nitric oxide, bond to the myoglobin in the meat. "Let's grill -- it's better for tender meat."
Prepare your BBQ
It doesn't matter if your grill is gas- or charcoal-fuelled, he says, because smoke doesn't, contrary to belief, add flavour. "Carbon is carbon. As it burns, it imparts no flavour of its own to what is being grilled." So, you should clean your grill. "Those who think a lot of flavour builds up there? That's crap."
Maximising the infrared
"Intense radiant heat, not hot air, cooks steak," he says. "Infrared heat rays travel straight until absorbed by a dark surface or reflected by something shiny." Myhrvold found that heat is more even across a grill with vertical, reflective sides. If yours is black, use foil.
If curved, "add some square air-con duct."
Prepare the meat carefully "Flavour comes from two things. The first is the Maillard reaction, a reducing reaction between an amino acid and a sugar."
This happens when water is removed from meat. At 150°C, meat browns. (If it's alkaline, it's sooner.) "There are treatments you can do: kung pao chicken or stir-fried beef are examples."
Fat is your friend
The flavour really comes from pyrolisation (burning) of fat. "Fat dropping off meat causes flame flare-ups. By catalysing chemical reactions, the heat forges these charred juices. These new molecules coat the food with the grilling flavour." Cook lean cuts with fat trimmings. For veg, use olive oil or beef fat.
Flip fast, flip often
"There's some advantage to flipping steak almost constantly -- even every 15 seconds. You're trying to take a super-intense heat and moderate it," says Myhrvold. Same for sausages, but not burgers, as they may come apart. "In that case, discretion is the better part of valour and you should flip less."
You can also hear Nathan Myhrvold on The Wired.co.uk Podcast episode 22.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
