The secret to successful grilling is not to overcook your meat.  Unfortunately, I learned that lesson growing up when my mom - who really had the best intentions - horribly overcooked pork, chicken and steaks on the grill. Now, I’m a “red meat” guy, and I love my steaks and chops to be juicy and tender - you don’t get that when you leave the food on the grill too long.

My secret is the RediCheck Remote Cooking Thermometer with Taste Settings. First thing’s first - because it’s a remote thermometer, there’s no need to obsessively open the grill lid and let all of the heat escape while you check to see if your food is done. I won’t preach time savings (because there’s no way to actually quantify what 3 minutes over the lifetime of the batteries means for you, your food, or your personal life), but I will preach convenience - it has some presets that monitor the temperature of your food and alerts you to when your sweet meats are done cookin’.  As a bonus, if you’re in to smoking meats, there’s a 24 hour timer. This is HUGE here in the midwest, where we love to smoke pork.  And other meats.

Finally, for the ultimate in awkward dad-gear, the RediCheck Remote Cooking Thermometer has a belt clip so you can look, uh, “sylish” as you grill.

My grill laid dormant until this weekend, when the temperatures were finally warm enough to take off the cover and fire it up for the first time in 2009.  You can imagine my surprise when I realized that I had not exactly cleaned it as thoroughly as I thought when I put it out of commission for the winter.  Sure, I had a grill brush, but apparently didn’t put enough elbow grease in to the cleaning before I sent my propane baby into hibernation.

I did what any self-respecting grillmeister would do - surf the internet and try to find an easier way to clean. After all, you’ve got to work smarter, not harder!

Enter the ultimate grilling companion, the Grill Daddy Pro Grill Brush, which has a bevy of really awesome features to make cleaning tough, charred-on foods and grease a breeze. You can tell the Grill Daddy means business when you pick it up - it weighs in at a hefty 2 pounds and is solidly constructed with stainless-steel bristles.

Perhaps one of the best features of the brush is the long handle, which really helps protect your hands from the heat.  Oh, and the price - at under $25, it’s a no-brainer.  You need this.

Ah, summer. With the heat and humidity on the rise, that can only mean one thing: Bar-B-Q. And if you use a Weber kettle as your primary outdoor cooking source, you’ll need a device that can prepare white-hot charcoal for your primal backyard rituals.

First, let me start out by making something abundantly clear: not all charcoal chimneys are created equal. On the cheaper end, perhaps you’ve tried an old coffee can that a friend rigged, or the $6 chimney you found at your local mega-super-deluxe-mart. Throw those away. Now. Because nothing quite compares to the Weber Charcoal Chimney Starter.

For best results…
First, loosely stuff the bottom of the chimney with newspaper. It’s important to note that you shouldn’t pack in the newspaper too tightly — you’ll end up having to re-stoke the chimney with more newspaper later. Trust me: in this application, less is actually more.

Next, pour your charcoal in the chimney. For best results, stay away from the match light stuff — you won’t need it and your food will taste a lot better without all that lighter fluid and carcinogenic chemicals trying to work their way into your grilled items.

After about 5 - 10 minutes, you should see flames bursting out of the top of the chimney. This is good. Very, very good.

Once your coals have turned white, you’re ready to rock. I can’t emphasize this enough: B E C A R E F U L. You saw white-hot coals and flames in the chimney, remember? To ensure your safety, wear a flame-resistant oven mitt and carefully shake the coals on the lower grate of the Weber kettle. You can always re-arrange the coals to your liking later.