Once you’ve got your cooker, fuel, and wood, it’s time to get all your other tools in order for barbecue cooking. There really isn’t a need for any gimmicky tools, barbecue cooking is pretty basic and straightforward. Prep the meat, place it in the smoker, and wait it out. You may already have a lot of the tools you need in the kitchen. Here are the tools I like to have around and a little description of how and why.
Aluminum foil pans are a barbecue man’s best friend. The large ones work well when seasoning big cuts of meat. They contain the whole messy process and can be reused quite a few times. You can even use them on the grill and then toss them when the time comes. The old ones work well for ash and grease disposal, too. I keep large and medium pans around all the time and I find a good deal on them at a warehouse club.
You’ll need to stir the hot coals at some point before, during, or after the cooking, so make sure you have some sort of a tool for this. A fireplace poker, small shovel, or garden tool all work well.
The BBQ Guru is a temperature-control device that retrofits to any charcoal or wood cooker. It’s really a pretty amazing little device that has a controller and a little fan that blows air on your fire as needed to keep the cooking temperature at your desired level. It makes just about any cooker automated so you can leave it unattended for hours while you sleep, shop, or work. My suggestion is to learn how to control your cooker on your own first, but once you know how to do it this device is a really great assistant.
Wooden cooking planks are a great way to create an indirect cooking setup on any grill, but they also add nice wood flavor and a flashy presentation at the table. The wood of choice is usually alder, but you’ll also find cedar readily available, and even more exotic choices if you do a little searching. They’re most commonly used for cooking salmon, and great for all kinds of seafood, but also for vegetables and even pork and beef. Just be sure to soak the plank in water for an hour before using.
I like lightweight polypropylene cutting boards for ease of cleanup, but wood and bamboo work just as well. I keep a couple small ones around for small projects and a big one for carving. There are also disposable cutting boards available that work very well for barbecue. Make a mess and throw it away. Look for those online.
It’s always a good idea to have a fire extinguisher on hand when you’re cooking with fire! Make sure it’s an all-purpose model and that it’s fully charged. This might be a good time to check that one in the kitchen, too.
Of course these are only for the charcoal users. If you’re using briquettes, I’d strongly recommend a charcoal chimney. It looks kind of like a giant steel beer mug and it works really well. You load it with briquettes and crumple a couple sheets of newspaper in the bottom. Light it and come back in ten minutes to a flaming mug of charcoal. Just dump it into the firebox and you’re ready to go. For most smokers you’ll need to have a bed of additional charcoal, but it will quickly be lit by the hot coals from your chimney. You can use a chimney with lump charcoal as well, but it’s not the best way. The lump lights so easily that you can just slip a couple paraffin/sawdust firestarter cubes into the pile, light them, and in ten minutes your pile will be burning in place. These paraffin starters are available in many shapes and should be easy to find at the grocery or hardware store. Please avoid using lighter fluid if you can. The flavor from the fluid carries over to the food and it’s not pleasant.
You’ll need a long-handled grill brush to clean the cooking grid. These are readily available in all shapes and sizes. My favorite is a tool called the Billy Bar. It’s more of a scraper than a brush, but it does a great job and it doubles as an ash tool (see instructions).
These are perforated pans made for small items that will fall through the grates—like shrimp or cut vegetables—as well as big items that are hard to move around—like a pizza or a tender pork shoulder. They’re often made of porcelain-coated steel and are easy to clean up. They come in many shapes and sizes. I like to have small and large sizes around and I use them often.
You’re going to have to handle something hot during the barbecue process, even if it’s just the food, so you’ll want to have some heavy-duty heatproof gloves. I like the big silicone mittens. I can grab anything with them and they clean up pretty well. Some cooks like big welding gloves, but I find they get pretty messy. Pick your favorites and keep them nearby, ready to go.
Barbecue doesn’t require great knives, with the exception of the brisket slicer. And even for the brisket, a kitchen-grade knife like Forschner or Dexter-Russell will do fine. Just take care of them and keep them sharp and they will serve you well. For slicing that brisket, I like a 12-inch Granton-edge slicer and I rarely use it for anything else. When it’s time to slice the brisket, nothing else will work and I want this one waiting and ready in tip-top shape. I also use a 7-inch boning knife a lot, mostly for trimming the meat before cooking, and a 10-inch chef’s knife is always around in my kitchen. You may like different sizes; get what’s comfortable and what you feel safe using. As with any other tool, you may want to upgrade to higher-quality knives. In general, German knives are a little heavier than their Japanese counterparts, so go to a store and try them out to see what fits your hand and budget the best. For my hand, the Shun Ken Onion knives are a great fit.
I like to have a box of latex gloves around, too. They’re great for keeping your hands clean when you’re cleaning up the cooker or loading the charcoal. And of course they’re great when you’re handling the meat and rubbing it down. They come in different sizes and are available at warehouse clubs, restaurant supply stores, or the pharmacy. Some folks have an allergy to latex; they make nitrile and vinyl gloves that are very similar and solve that problem.
Sometimes it’s best to inject the meat with a brine before cooking, so I like to keep a few of the cheap plastic food injectors around. There are fancy stainless-steel versions too, but they cost more and seem to have the same life expectancy as the plastic ones. If you’re injecting a lot of meat at one time, look for a brine pump. It’s a bigger commercial version and will last a long time.
A rib rack is an important tool for the home barbecue cook. The main function of a rib rack is to make more room in the cooker, and since ribs take up a lot of grill space that’s a good thing. There’s no need to use it if there’s room to lay the ribs flat, but if you need to stand them up it’ll be a great help. Keep in mind that ribs in a rack will need to be rotated and flipped so they’ll cook evenly. Look for one that’s tall and has wide slots. The bigger the better; just make sure it fits in your cooker.
I like to keep a few big sheet pans around for transferring the food in and out of the house. A jelly-roll pan is fine, but you might check out a warehouse club or restaurant supply store for some sheet pans that are a little more heavy duty.
Big fancy metal skewers are great for kebobs, and lately I’ve been using a stainless-steel flexible skewer called the firewire, but I also use the little bamboo skewers a lot. Not only for serving as kebobs but also for cooking small things like shrimp and meatballs. It makes it easier to flip a bunch of them quickly, and you can remove the skewers before serving.
A smoker box is a small metal box with holes in it that’s made to hold wood chips. These are mostly used in gas grills to get the wood chips down by the fire. Look for a lot of holes so the flames and heat can get in.
In old-school barbecue technique, the pitmasters used a mop sauce, which was a basting liquid typically made from beer, broth, vinegar, and aromatics to keep the meat moist during cooking. They’d apply this with a cotton mop, made in a small version for cooking, or with a big paintbrush. But most of the modern cookers keep the lid sealed pretty tight, creating a moist cooking environment. In most cases it’s better to leave the lid closed than to open it and baste the food. But it’s hard to teach an old hog new tricks, so sometimes I’ll fill a spray bottle with apple juice spiked with a little whiskey to spritz the food when the lid is open.
If you’re storing your charcoal outside, a big plastic garbage can with a tight lid works well for storage. For wood chunks try plastic shoe boxes with the type of the wood written on them in marker.
The thermometer is one of the essential tools for cooking good barbecue. You’ll need a couple different types for different uses. First you’ll need one for checking the temperature in the cooker. This is often a stem thermometer that goes through the wall of the cooker. These are stationary and usually placed well above the food, where it’s often 25 to 50 degrees hotter. Many cookers come with these already installed. If not you can use a remote instant-read thermometer, which has a readout base that stays outside with a cable and probe that go inside the cooker. These are nice because you can check the temperature near the grate, which is where the meat is cooking.
The other important thermometer is for checking the temperature of the food. The remote thermometer described above works well for this, too, and they even have units with dual probes to check the cooker temperature and the meat at the same time. Some models even take it a step further with a wireless readout unit that you can take in the house with you. Or you can go the simple route and get a handheld instant-read thermometer. I like these because you can check the meat in different places or check multiple pieces of meat very quickly. The absolute best in this category is the Superfast Thermapen by Thermoworks. Highly recommended.
Big tongs to move big pieces of meat are going to be necessary. I always have a few pairs around—long and short. The long ones are nice to reach out over the fire, but sometimes you need the leverage of a couple pairs of short tongs to grab a heavy piece of meat. When cooking fish, you might want a big spatula. Then there’s an interesting hook tool called the Pig Tail Food Flipper that can move some pretty big hunks of meat, but you could do it all with just tongs if you need to.
There are many versions of this handy tool. The one that holds a beer can works well and when you’re done, you just toss the can. And there are some very complicated models that have a reservoir for liquid and a drip tray and even a top plug. I’m sure these work fine, but my favorite is the plain wire Christmas tree–looking stand. I use that in a disposable round cake pan and I feel like the liquid flavors the whole chicken instead of just the inside.
You’re going to be handling large cuts of meat and you’re going to need to wrap it and cover it, both hot off the grill and when storing in the refrigerator. Be sure to have a good supply of wide heavy-duty aluminum foil around at all times.
I always keep the gallon size around for marinating and storing leftovers. A hint is to buy the freezer bags, because they’re heavier duty and less likely to leak.