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I’m supposed to do something with the lid?
- Keeping the grill lid closed holds in heat and helps cook larger cuts of protein more evenly.
- Leave the lid open for foods that cook fast over direct heat, like thin burgers, hot dogs, shrimp, vegetables, and buns, since they need close watching and can overcook or burn quickly.
- If a recipe doesn’t say what to do, decide based on cooking time and setup: open is usually fine for quick foods over the flame, while closed is the better choice for slower cooking or food set away from the heat.
I had a jaw-dropping moment recently while reading through Caroline Chambers’s upcoming cookbook What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make It Fast. In the introduction, she suggests that cooks learn a few unspoken recipe rules. One of them is about grilling recipes: “Unless the recipe specifies to grill with the lid open, assume you should close it,” she writes.
My mind was officially blown. It’s true that I don’t grill a ton. But I did go to culinary school and was a personal chef for years before becoming a recipe developer and food editor. I’m an experienced cook. And I always assumed the default was to keep the lid up and that a recipe would say to put the lid down if required, kind of like when cooking with a pot on the stove. If the recipe doesn’t specify to put a lid on it, you don’t.
I realized that I was grilling with the lid open way too often, probably to the detriment of my food. I reached out to Chambers and a couple of other grilling experts to learn more about when to close the lid and when to leave it open.
Meet Our Expert
- Caroline Chambers, author of What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make it Fast and creator of the What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking newsletter on Substack
- Noah Galuten, James Beard Award-winning author of Grill Time! Why You Should Be Grilling for Better, Healthier, Easier, and More Delicious Meals
- Ashley Lonsdale, chef-in-residence at ButcherBox, a home-delivery source for sustainable meat, poultry, and seafood
Why Close the Lid When Grilling
Closing the lid basically turns your grill into an oven, says Chambers. “It traps heat and lets it circulate around the food instead of just blasting it from below.” That means more even cooking, she says, especially for anything thick or that needs to cook through and not just char on the outside. “It also helps you use less gas and reach temperature faster, since you’re not losing all that heat into the open air.”
When to Close the Lid
Closing the lid is especially important for grilling over indirect heat, meaning that what you’re cooking isn’t right over the flame, says Ashley Lonsdale, chef-in-residence at ButcherBox. “If I’m grilling over indirect heat, I’ll likely want to trap the heat and maintain it for longer periods.” She also prefers a closed lid for thicker proteins. “Items that take 10 to 15 minutes or more to cook, like big steaks or a pork tenderloin, will benefit from the heat stability of a closed lid.” Note that these two use cases often overlap, since thicker items are typically cooked over indirect heat.
When food is off to the side of the flame and cooking more slowly, the lid is doing a lot of work, says Chambers. “It’s what turns your grill into a piping hot oven and gets that hot air moving around a chicken thigh or a rack of ribs so it cooks through evenly instead of just crisping on one side.”
When to Keep the Lid Open
The experts agree that it’s smart to keep the lid open for anything thin and quick-cooking like burger recipes, hot dogs, and most veggies. “These are on and off the grill fast enough that you’re not relying on that oven-like heat circulation to cook them through,” says Chambers.
When it comes to steak, Noah Galuten, author of Grill Time!, typically opts to cook with the grill open. (He also notes that in his recipes, closing the lid is not the default.) “The best way to cook most steaks is to flip it frequently, allow it to rest each side, developing a crust and perfectly cooked interior. If you cook a steak with the lid closed, you are essentially baking the top half while the bottom half grills.” The same goes for burgers, unless they’re especially thick, he says. “If you cooked it with a closed lid, the burger would often be drastically overcooked.”
Lonsdale also likes the lid open for quick-cooking seafood like skewered shrimp and scallops that require direct heat. “The lid open means I can keep an eye on them,” she says.
Finally, a word to the wise from Chambers: “Always grill bread, such as buns, with the lid open. Those suckers catch on fire quickly if not closely attended!”
How to Check on Food With the Lid Closed
One of the reasons that I tend to grill with the lid open is that I want to keep an eye on my food! If you’re cooking with the lid closed, peeking is acceptable, says Chambers, but it’s important to resist the urge to lift the lid every 30 seconds. “Every time you do, you’re letting all that heat escape and adding cook time.” When you do open the lid, try to re-close it as fast as possible, she suggests. “The grill’s temperature can drop hundreds of degrees in a matter of seconds—and this is when issues like burning the outside of your meat before it cooks through can happen.”
Using a recipe that gives you a time window can be especially helpful in this scenario, says Lonsdale. “That way, you don’t feel like you’re grilling blind. But peeking in moderation is entirely acceptable. It’s always better for the food to take longer to cook than to burn.”
Tips for Deciding Between an Open and Closed Lid
If the recipe you’re cooking from doesn’t specify, and you’re not ready to take the chance on assuming a closed-lid default, consider the speed an item will cook and whether you’re cooking over direct heat or indirect heat, suggests Lonsdale. “For a quick-cooking food over direct heat, open is probably fine. For anything that takes more than 10-15 minutes to cook and/or uses indirect heat, closing the lid is probably the best practice.”
It also depends on the type of grill you’re using, says Galuten. “On weaker, cheaper gas grills without a ton of power, grilling with the lid closed will keep the heat up and allow some real color on whatever you are grilling.” And he reiterates that if you’ve got the lid closed, keep it there as much as possible. “As they say in BBQ: ‘If you’re looking, you ain’t cooking.’”
Read the original article on Real Simple
