C4
EAT, DRINK & EXPLORE
East Oregonian
Saturday, July 27, 2019
THE TOP 9 GRILLING MISTAKES
AND HOW TO FIX THEM
AP Photo/Mary Altaff er
Steaks cook on a grill in New York. If you are cooking food by the direct method (hamburgers, hot dogs, boneless chicken breasts, small steaks, vegetables, etc.), fl ip only once halfway
through the cooking time.
By ELIZABETH
KARMEL
Associated Press
I love to grill, and barbe-
cue, and I have devoted my
career to outdoor cooking
for more than two decades.
In that time I’ve seen a lot
of mistakes, and people tend
to make them over and over.
So I put together a list of the
biggest grilling don’ts and
how to avoid them. Print
this list and refer it the next
time you get ready to grill!
NEVER OIL
THE GRILL
Many people oil the
cooking grates — big blun-
der! Follow my mantra: “Oil
the food, not the grates!” If
you brush oil on hot cooking
grates (and a lit grill), you
run the risk of a big fl are-up.
The oil that you have
brushed on will instantly
burn, leaving a sticky res-
idue that will “glue” your
food to the grates, making
it stick, break apart and dry
out—like dehydrating food.
If you oil the food, it will
stay juicy, promote caramel-
ization — those great grill
marks — and help to pre-
vent “stickage.”
DON’T PUT FOOD
ON A COLD GRILL
Always preheat a gas
grill with all burners on
high or wait until charcoal
briquettes are covered with
a white-gray ash. Preheat-
ing also burns off residue
and makes it easier to clean
the grill. Contrary to pop-
ular belief, you don’t ever
need to cook on a grill that is
hotter than 550° F. The hot-
ter the grill, the more likely
you will burn the outside of
the food before the inside is
cooked.
clean platter for your cooked
food, too.
DON’T SAUCE
TOO SOON
CLEAN THAT
DIRTY GRILL
An outdoor grill is like a
cast-iron skillet. It gets bet-
ter and better the more you
use it, but you do need to
clean it every time you use it.
Clean the grill grates twice
every cookout with a stiff
metal bristle grill cleaning
brush — before and after
you cook. If you do this, it
will never be a big job to
clean your grill. If you don’t
have a grill cleaning brush,
crumble a ball of heavy-
duty aluminum foil and hold
it in a pair of 12-inch lock-
ing chef tongs to use to clean
the grill.
KNOW THE
DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN
DIRECT AND
INDIRECT HEAT
The most frequent mis-
take is to choose the wrong
cooking method. To be a
good griller, you must know
the difference between
direct, indirect or combo
grilling and when to use
them. Direct grilling means
that the food is set directly
over the heat source — sim-
ilar to broiling in your oven.
Indirect grilling means that
the heat is on either side of
the food and the burners are
turned off under the food —
similar to roasting and bak-
ing in your oven. Combo
grilling means that you sear
the food over direct heat
(i.e., to sear a tenderloin, or
large steak) before moving it
to indirect heat to fi nish the
cooking process. Remember
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
A man grills hamburgers and hot dogs in Arlington, Va.
this general rule of thumb:
If the food takes less than
20 minutes to cook, use the
direct method. If the food
takes more than 20 min-
utes to cook, use the indirect
method.
THE RIGHT WAY
TO DEAL WITH
FLARE-UPS
Never use a water bot-
tle to extinguish a fl are-up.
Spraying water on a hot fi re
can produce steam vapors
which may cause severe
burns. The water can also
crack the porcelain-enamel
fi nish, resulting in dam-
age to your grill. Fire loves
oxygen, so cook with the
lid down and don’t peek.
Repeatedly lifting the lid to
“peek” and check the food
while it’s cooking lengthens
cooking time. If you have
a full-on fi re, turn all the
burners off, remove the food
and extinguish the fl ames
with kosher salt or baking
soda. In a worst-case sce-
nario, use a fi re extinguisher
but know that it will ruin
your grill.
AVOID FREQUENT
FLIPPING
If you are cooking food
by the direct method (ham-
burgers, hot dogs, bone-
less chicken breasts, small
steaks, vegetables, etc), fl ip
only once halfway through
the cooking time. All pro-
tein will stick to the grates
as soon as it makes contact
with the hot grill grates.
As it cooks, it will natu-
rally release itself, and that
is when you can turn it over
with a pair of tongs. Just
remember to oil the food,
not the grates.
DODGE CROSS-
CONTAMINATION
One of the most common
mistakes backyard cooks
make is using the same tongs
for raw and cooked foods.
This creates cross-con-
tamination and can result
in food-borne illness. It’s
easy to fi x this problem. I
have been color-coding my
12-inch locking chef tongs
with red and green duct tape
for as long as I have been
grilling. The different colors
help me to remember which
pair of tongs I used for raw
food (red), like chicken, and
which are safe to use for the
cooked food (green). And
remember to use a separate
If I had a dime for every
time I saw someone pour
thick sweet barbecue sauce
on bone-in-chicken pieces
or a whole rack of ribs while
they were raw, I would be
a very wealthy griller! All
barbecue sauces have a lot
of sugar in them, and sugar
burns very quickly, almost
always burning the out-
side of the food before the
inside cooks. Generally I
only brush food with sauce
during the fi nal 10-15 min-
utes of cooking time. With
ribs that cook 2-3 hours, I
will brush with a diluted
sauce (half beer and half
sauce) for the fi nal 30 min-
utes of cooking time.
RESIST TESTING
FOR DONENESS
BY CUTTING
Cutting your food to test
for doneness is another com-
mon way people bungle their
food. When you cut any pro-
tein, you are letting the pre-
cious juices escape and if
the food is undercooked, the
area where it was cut will be
over-cooked when you put
it back on the grill. Use an
instant-read meat thermom-
eter to test for doneness, and
always let your food rest for
at least 5 minutes before cut-
ting into it.
———
Elizabeth Karmel is grill-
ing, barbecue and southern
foods expert, a media per-
sonality and the author of
four cookbooks, including
the newly released “Steak
and Cake.”
Paradise Lodge is wilderness bliss on the Rogue River in Southwest Oregon
By JAMIE HALE
The Oregonian
MEDFORD — Whether
you hike in, raft down the
river or show up on jet boat,
Paradise Lodge is always a
welcome sight.
Perched above the rolling
Rogue River, deep within
the Wild Rogue Wilder-
ness, the historic lodge can
be accessed only by dirt
trail or water, making it a
remote and beautiful get-
away in the thick of one of
Oregon’s most scenic natu-
ral areas.
The isolation is a stark
departure from our modern,
connected world — there’s
no cell service or internet
at the lodge — but that’s all
part of the appeal.
“I think it’s the remote-
ness, you know? We’re out
in the middle of nowhere,”
manager William Benavente
said about why people come
to Paradise. “It forces peo-
ple to talk again.”
With cozy shared areas
and family-style dinners,
the lodge encourages guests
to interact with each other.
But surrounded by miles
upon miles of wilderness,
it’s also an easy place to get
away on your own.
Paradise offers no short-
age of activities. There’s a
disc golf course, volleyball
net, board games and books
on lodge grounds, as well as
fi shing in the river and hik-
ing on the 40-mile Rogue
River Trail, which runs
through the backyard. It’s
welcome news for the active
among us, but there’s also
something to be said about
taking it easy.
“People are always ask-
ing us what they can do when
they get here,” Benavente
said. “We say, ‘relax.’”
The 85-acre property was
fi rst homesteaded around
1903 and began operating as
a lodge in the 1950s. Today
the lodge, can accommodate
about 50 guests, with guest
rooms in several buildings.
They charge $175 or $165 per
person (rafters get a break),
which includes all the meals
during your stay.
The lodge is continually
updated, piece by piece, over
time, Benavente said. Over
the last two years, owners
have replaced all the din-
ing room tables and re-pan-
eled some of the walls. On
Photo contributed by Paradise Lodge
Perched above the rolling Rogue River, deep within the Wild Rogue Wilderness, the historic
Paradise Lodge can be accessed only by dirt trail or water, making it a remote and beautiful
getaway in the thick of one of Oregon’s most scenic natural areas.
our last visit this spring, they
were working on changing
out all the guest room lamps.
The rooms and bathrooms
are modern, but they retain
that rustic lodge aesthetic,
giving the whole place a
timeless feeling.
Over the years, Paradise
Lodge has hosted a steady
stream of customers. Most
guests are rafters, Benavente
said, with the rest riding a
jet boat in, courtesy of Jer-
ry’s Rogue Jets, or hiking in
along the Rogue River Trail.
There have also been some
well-known names.
Faded photos line the
wood-paneled walls of the
dining room, showing many
of the notable guests over the
years. There’s Laura Bush,
who stayed at the lodge on a
rafting trip down the Rogue
River in 2009, the same year
Elijah Wood stopped by. On
one wall there’s a big movie
poster from “The River
Wild,” which starred Meryl
Streep, Kevin Bacon and
John C. Reilly. When the
cast and crew fi lmed on the
river in 1993, they bunked
up at Paradise.
The Paradise Lodge is
one of several lodges on this
stretch of the Rogue River.
The Black Bar Lodge, Clay
Hill Lodge, Half Moon Bar
Lodge and Marial Lodge
are all found in the wilder-
ness area nearby (making up
a nice lodge-to-lodge hiking
tour), with several others far-
ther upriver and downriver.
Benavente said that while
there’s defi nitely some com-
petition among all the lodges,
there’s also a strong feeling of
community among those liv-
ing and operating on the wild
and scenic Rogue.
In recent years, that com-
munity has been united by the
growing and persistent threat
of wildfi re. Though the Wild
Rogue Wilderness has been
spared, fi res have burned
in nearby forests, pouring
smoke into the canyon.
In 2013, when the Big
Windy Complex fi re burned
for weeks in July, August
and September, the Paradise
Lodge lost a full season of
business, closing for almost
40 days during what’s typi-
cally the busiest time of year.
“I don’t think we’ve
ever recovered from that,”
Benavente said.
But despite the threat of
fi re and smoke, crowds con-
tinue to show up at Paradise,
drawn by the beautiful natu-
ral setting and alluring sense
of remoteness. Staying at
the lodge forces you to dis-
connect from the world and
reconnect with nature and the
people around you.
In other words, it’s a get-
away where you really can
get away.