CHICKEN: Choose some thicker boneless skinless chicken breasts or regular chicken breasts on the bone. Marinate with your favorite marinade for at least one hour.

Place the chicken on the cool side of the grill, with the thicker side facing the coals. Cover the chicken with a disposable aluminum roasting pan: cook 6-9 minutes. Flip the chicken so thinner sides face the coals and continue grilling, covered, 6 to 9 minutes. Finish cooking the chicken over higher heat coals until dark grill marks appear, 1-2 minutes on each side. If you did not marinate prior to grilling then this when you can add some bbq sauce  to each side and still cook 1-2 minutes on each side.

1. Don’t cook cold meat
If you’re only going to change one thing about your BBQ habits, make sure you always bring your meat back to room temperature before cooking. The biggest struggle with cooking on the BBQ is to get the heat from the outside of your steak into the middle without burning the surface to a cinder. The warmer things are in the middle before it goes onto the fire, the easier it is to win the battle.

2. Preheat properly
If you’re going to get a good crust on your food and that lovely BBQ flavor, you need your BBQ to be hot before you start cooking. This also helps if you’ve been a bit slack in the cleaning department.

3. Don’t poke & prod
It takes time for your caramelized BBQ crust to develop and this won’t happen if you’re continually flipping your steaks or burgers. Only turn once or twice. And definitely don’t squash everything down as this forces the juices to run out and leaves you with sad dry meat. Sausages are also best left alone – piercing the skins dries them out.

4. Don’t fuel the fire with fat
Some people pour the marinade over the meat on the grill and wonder why the flames flare up and turn everything to charcoal. Make sure the meat is well drained of excess marinade. For fatty meat like chops it’s best to trim before you start.

5. Remember food hygiene
It’s funny how the outdoors can make some people forget the basics. Always put your cooked food on a clean plate or chopping board and never add marinade that was used for raw meat to cooked meat. Simple.

6. Rest
I recently saw a website comparing meat that had been barbequed and then rested for varying amounts of time. The ‘unrested’ sample had juices running out everywhere whereas the sample that had sat for a while before being cut looked lovely and juicy on the inside without any juices on the plate. It’s all about letting the muscle fibers relax and take back the juices after the intensity of the heat.

7. Clean your BBQ
It is easy to be completely guilty of being lazy when it comes to cleaning and your poor BBQ shows the results with rusted out grill bars and a very crusted grill. Some subscribe to the theory that if you just left the BBQ to burn off any food scraps for a few minutes after cooking then you don’t need to clean. Wishful thinking.