What's Infrared Grilling?
Normal strategies like charcoal or gas create heat that warms the air round the food and the warm air cooks the food. This works well, we’ve all have many good tasting steaks cooked this way.
The difficulty is the warm air dries out the food and finally the food can be overcooked on the outside and raw on the inside.
The drippings from the meat can also cause fire flare-ups that will cook the food unevenly.
Later, clean up can be an issue (if cleaned up at all). The fat from the meat can adhere to the grates and as the grill sometimes doesn’t get much over 500 degrees, the fat never burns off the grates, causing sticking next time you use the grill.
At last the traditional cooking strategy takes a far higher amount of application to defeat and maintain, not to mention the additional effort for clean up.
Infrared griddles eliminate all these issues. Infrared heat is a higher part of the range. It’s a higher degree heat that penetrates the meat and heats uniformly. There are no hot or cold spots or even flare-ups.
But all tech stuff apart, infrared heat simply cooks a juicier, better tasting piece of meat and cooks it quicker than a traditional grill. Because it cooks quicker, its also less expensive to operate as it uses 30% less propane.
Some models can be hooked up to natural gas. Check the specs prior to purchasing.
Until just recently infrared technology was only used in expensive cafes. That’s the reason why you marched out of Ruth’s Chris or Mortons, thinking how good you steak was.
The patent for this technology recently expired and now companies like Charbroil are producing quality shopper models that use this same infrared technology.
Click to see specific Infrared Grill Reviews.
What is the cooking temperature?
Infrared griddles cook at about 700 degrees. The extreme heat allows for an ideal sear on the exterior of the meat while the infrared technology keeps the interior tender and delicious.
This actually means you burgers or steaks will not shrink or curl. You get to enjoy the flavour instead of it dripping out into the grill.
What about clean up?
Clean up, you mean you're essentially intended to clean a grill????? OK, anyone who has ever feared cleaning and washing a grill with the trusty grill brush will appreciate my attempt at humor here!
In fact, the infrared will do almost all of the work for you. It heats up high enough to burn up anything that sticks to the grates. It works kind of like the cleaning cycle on you inside range.
To scrub, simply heat to griddle for a few minutes and anything that was left will turn to ash. One or two swipes with the griddle brush and you’re done. Periodically, just empty the bottom of the griddle and you’ll have a perfectly clean grill.
Concerns
Realize it does take a little longer for an infrared griddle to heat up. Most gas grills take about 5 minutes or so. The infrared will take roughly 10-12. This is just because you’re cooking at 700 degrees vs 400 degree.
It can take a few times to learn how to cook on infrared. Since you’ve always used charcoal or gas, the inclination is to leave the meat on the griddle as long. Remember, infrared cooks much quicker and it will take you a number of times to adjust to the smaller cooking times. But this isn’t major and now you know this you’ll probably get it right the first time you grill.
Mark Adams is an avid griller and user of several grills. To read his specific product reviews to to Char Broil Urban Gas Grill Review and his Char Broil Quantum Grill Review