Michael Symon Says These Are The Grilling Basics You Need To Know — Exclusive

Five years ago, the world was a very different place. Pandemic lockdowns were in full swing and both home cooks and celebrity chefs alike were adapting to restaurant shutdowns, food shortages, and being cooped up indoors. During this time, chef Michael Symon began filming live cooking shows in his home kitchen. That endeavor morphed into Food Network's "Symon's Dinners Cooking Out" and that show has now evolved into Symon's newest cookbook by the same name.

"Symon's Dinners Cooking Out" is out today and is the perfect cookbook to pick up right at the start of grilling season, as that's what it's entirely focused on: Symon's tips for using your grill to its full, unrealized potential, whether you're a total newbie or consider yourself an old pro. To learn more about the book, as well as get some top grilling tips for home cooks of all skill levels, Tasting Table recently caught up with Symon for an exclusive Q&A.

Your new cookbook really goes back to the first days of lockdown. How do you feel your approach to cooking and food has evolved since then?

The way that I think about food and cooking, that part really never changes. One of the things though, that I learned a lot about during that process [is] ... how to connect to the home cook, teaching the home cook how to think about food and to not panic if every ingredient that you see in a recipe isn't [available]. The show, "Symon's Dinners," which I've done eight seasons of, and the book, are about adjusting and showing people really solid technique and giving them the comfort of, "If I don't have X, then I could use Y."

For this book too, especially because based on the show, it was making people comfortable that, whatever you cook inside, you could cook outside. Whatever you cook outside, you could cook inside. A grill is basically a stovetop and an oven, and vice versa. For me, what's changed is how I go about the teaching process, not necessarily the ingredients or recipes themselves.

How do you take this content that you've originally created for social media and TV, and turn that into a book? What does that look like behind the scenes?

It's a lot of recipe testing. Every recipe that we do in any book — this is our ninth book — we test, minimally, three times. When I did my first book, we tested all the recipes in our restaurants, because that's where we always were, and it was convenient. What we learned over time is it's much better to test them in a home kitchen on home kitchen equipment.

I'll just be cooking and Tim, my culinary director, and Katie, my former culinary director of 25 years, will track and weigh every ingredient as we go. Then, we go through the process. When I'm cooking on TV, I'm just cooking ... and if you came to my house for dinner and you were sitting there, I'm just grabbing ingredients and cooking. When we're putting recipes in a book, they have to be a little bit more disciplined than that.

The biggest thing I'm always trying to do, whether it's a cookbook or show, is make people comfortable cooking. When you look at a recipe, what you really should be looking at is the technique on how they go about making the recipe. Don't let the ingredients drive the recipe. Let the technique drive the recipe, and then you could use any ingredient you want in that recipe.

[For example,] I always say, "Cook to a temp, not a time." In a recipe, you're saying "cook at 350 [degrees Fahrenheit] for a half an hour" because that's what it is. In the recipe, too, it'll say, "Cook to 160 [degrees Fahrenheit]" or whatever the temperature is. That's the most important part. Don't pull something out of an oven in 30 minutes if you need to cook it to 160 degrees and it's only 120 degrees. It's not done. Your stove might be different than my stove.

So, the thing that we've always tried to do is give people the power of the technique. If you learn a technique, you could do a hundred different dishes with the technique. If you learn a recipe, you could do the recipe. Use the book as a guide and the recipes as a guide to get you where you need to be, but ultimately it's the technique that is going to make you a good cook.

For those who don't grill that often, where should they start in the book? Are there any recipes or sections of the book that are going to be easiest or most accessible for them?

One of the things we do in the book is we show different methods of setting up your grill. We talk about the snake method, the indirect method. Study that first, because that's going to make you comfortable with how to build your fire or how to set your grill [up] to have the best success.

The other important thing is, when the lid is off your grill, your grill is a stovetop. When the lid is closed, your grill is an oven. If you remember those two things, which are very easy to remember, it will instantly make you more comfortable with your grill, because you drop the lid down and you just have to look at the temperature.

Most grills have temperature gauges on them, and when the gauge says "350," your grill's a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven. When you pull the lid up and on one side of the grill, say, it's on high or the flames are burning high, [and] on the other side, you don't have any coals or it's off, you could move back and forth off that flame just like you would a burner on a grill.

Once people understand that, when the lid's off, it's a stove top, when the lid's down, it's an oven, then you're in great shape.

In contrast, for those who know their way around the grill, are there any recipes or techniques in the book they should try? Any that will be particularly exciting for them?

There are some fun things that we do in [the cookbook] like setting your grill up as a smoker. I think for the more advanced outdoor enthusiasts or outdoor cook, they'd really enjoy [that]. We do a bundt cake in the grill. I think that'll push them a little bit.

For an advanced griller, the fire pit steak is really fun, because you're not cooking on a grill top. You're just throwing the whole ribeye into the coals. Whenever I do it, people are like, "What are you doing?" Then, it comes out great and it's really easy. I think for an advanced griller that's a lot of fun. The quick smoked duck breast is [also] really fun for the more advanced cook that wants to stretch themselves a bit.

The cookbook puts the charcoal grill front and center. Can these recipes be accurately replicated with a gas grill?

They can. A gas grill brings convenience. What a gas grill doesn't bring is flavor. I love charcoal and wood, because of the flavor that charcoal and wood bring to the party, but you could easily execute all the recipes on a gas grill also.

For those who maybe want to switch over to a charcoal grill, is there anything they should keep in mind if they're more accustomed to gas?

Just realize your food's going to taste a lot better!

The other thing is, in the earlier times, people were worried about starting the fire, but now, with [charcoal chimney starters], it's super-easy to do. They even have Weber setups that have a little propane starter, so you could put the coals in and you could use the starter to get the coals going.

Even Liz, [my wife] used to always say, "Could we just get a gas grill, too, so if you're gone and I want to have people over, I could just turn the grill on?" As soon as she [became] comfortable with it, she realized it's easier to start fires now than it was 20 years ago.

For the recipes in the book that replicate the smoking process, how should people expect them to differ from actually using a smoker in terms of taste, texture, and prep?

It's similar. A regular grill can always be used as a smoker, and that's why we show readers the snake method. The results will be the same. With a smoker, you're setting up your smoke box and it's a more indirect heat. The reason that we do the snake method in the grill is it's a slow cook and slightly indirect heat also.

For those newer to grilling, a key worry is drying out grilled chicken. If they're making one of the chicken recipes from the book, how can they avoid that?

Setting up your grill with two sections is very important. You have your hot side of the grill and your "off" side of the grill. Get the chicken on there, get the caramelization happening, and then move it over to the cool side of the grill and put the lid down. Now your grill's an oven. That will help quite a bit.

Also, don't be afraid of using a thermometer. People dry out their chicken because they overcook their chicken. Get the lid down and get a thermometer in your chicken. When your chicken reaches 160 degrees in the leg and thigh, pull it off the grill, let it rest and you're going to be good.

You also have a recipe for salmon that uses a cedar plank. For those who've never used one before, any tips or anything they need to watch out for?

First, soak your plank or else it's going to catch on fire. I know that sometimes seems like common sense, but that could be an issue. This [recipe], I do it all the time ... It's a super easy recipe to execute. You could certainly do it in your stove, too, if you don't want to do it on the grill, but the little bit of smokiness is obviously nice. But the first thing is, one, soak the plank so you don't have to worry about it catching on fire.

I like to cook salmon at around 350 degrees [Fahrenheit]. You could even go a little bit lower than that, if you want. Then, again, use a thermometer. In my recipes, we always put temperatures, because ultimately the internal temperature of whatever you're cooking is more important than anything else. We take our salmon to 125 [degrees Fahrenheit], which is a really nice medium-ish. If you're not using the thermometer, and you're looking at the salmon and the albumin starts coming out of the salmon, you've overcooked it. It's going to be dry. The easiest way to avoid that is always by checking the temp.

For your fire pit steak recipe that places the steak directly over the hot coals, is there anything that home cooks may get wrong? Anything they need to watch out for in terms of timing, temperature, or crowding?

No, it's pretty direct. You get the steak on there. You get the nice char. If you want to cook it more, you could pull it out of the coals, brush it off, and place it on indirect heat and close your lid to get it to the temperature that you want.

Are there any recipes that ended up in the book that maybe initially surprised you in terms of how well they worked out, or something you were trying for the first time?

Liz does a lot of the baking both on the shows and in our real life, so doing the desserts on the grill was, even though I knew in my mind it would work, it was still like, "Oh God, this is great."

I talked about the chocolate bundt cake earlier. That was something that really came out beautifully on the grill. Because we did it on a charcoal grill, it also had a little tick of smokiness to it, which was really nice with the chocolate. It just put it over [the edge].

Would you say that the bundt cake is your favorite dessert recipe in the book?

I love chocolate. I would say that is my favorite in the book. Liz's favorite is probably the strawberry pie.

Anything else readers should know about the new book?

I love this book. We've done nine books and your last one's always your favorite, but this book was really fun for us. We have really loved doing the show for eight seasons too ... I don't think I'm giving away too many secrets in the world of cooking television, but most people are on a set when they're doing their show. It's a set designed to suit the show, but because of the way this started and how we continue to do it, we were just walking into our backyard and cooking. It was a really fun show for us to do, which made it a very fun book.

The show started during, obviously, a tough time for a lot of people, and it helped us, and I think a lot of people, get through that time. I hate going backwards and talking about the pandemic, but I loved doing this book because, I love to cook outside and make people comfortable cooking outside. A lot of the recipes in the book were my grandfather's, her mom's, ones that we've cooked together. We included our son's donuts from his donut shop. It was a very personal book for us, and I hope it becomes that way to the people that use it, too. It's just really fun, delicious, everyday food.

You can purchase "Symon's Dinners Cooking Out" by Michael Symon and Douglas Trattner on Amazon.