MY TIPS FOR BIG-CROWD GRILLING
(NONE OF THEM ARE THAT TRICKY)
• A good instant-read thermometer will save you a lot of trouble.
• Season meats with far more kosher salt than you think necessary.
• Build hot and warm zones under your grill and learn to use them.
• Vegetables, acidity and bright flavours are a barbecue host’s most underrated friends.
• A cooler of beer, wine and nonalcoholic drinks make a backyard party 300 per cent more fun!
FRIENDS OF MY PARENTS threw a pig roast when I was a kid. It was the exact opposite of fancy: a barrel barbecue, leashless, flappy-tongued dogs and a cooler full of frost-rimed stubby beer bottles. I remember piling a flimsy cardboard plate far higher than I had any business piling it — “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, kid” — and the unmistakable smell of charcoal briquettes in my hair and clothes as I drifted off on the car ride home. Yet what’s stuck with me most of all, even all these years later, is the look people had when that dinner was ready: overjoyed and feral and more grateful than I knew was possible. There was strange power, I realized, in grilling for a crowd. Pretty much everything I know about backyard barbecue parties I learned on that single summer’s day.
And I guess I’ve been trying to create that same feeling ever since I moved out on my own. I’ve always been the guy who invites everyone over. And I’ve been known to shovel a three-foot-deep path through the snow from the patio steps to the barbecue.
The sudden quiet as the patio door slips shut; the crackle and smell of charcoal embers; the close conversations with the few early outdoor joiners, tongs and (unstubby) beers in hand. Summer, winter, or anytime in between, it’s a matter of minutes until the party relocates to the grill.