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Grilling and smoking add real risk that a lot of backyard cooks underrate, mostly because outdoor cooking makes it harder to judge doneness by eye — a piece of chicken can look perfectly browned on a hot grill while still being unsafe in the middle. The numbers below come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the federal agency responsible for meat, poultry, and egg product safety, specifically its Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart and its Grilling Food Safely guidance.

The Core Rule: Color and Time Aren’t Reliable

FSIS is explicit that meat and poultry cooked on a grill tends to brown very quickly on the outside — sometimes well before the inside is actually safe — so a food thermometer, not a cut-and-check or a visual guess, is the only reliable way to confirm a safe internal temperature. USDA also advises against partially grilling meat or poultry with the intention of finishing it later, since that gives bacteria a window to multiply during the gap between the two cooking sessions.

Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures

• Steaks, chops, and roasts (beef, pork, lamb, veal): 145°F, then rest for at least 3 minutes before cutting or eating. The rest isn’t optional — USDA’s guidance treats it as part of the safety standard, not just a cooking tip, because the temperature needs those few minutes to hold and finish destroying pathogens at the surface.
• Ground meat (beef, pork, lamb, veal): 160°F. Grinding distributes any surface bacteria throughout the meat, which is why ground product needs a higher target than a whole steak or roast.
• Poultry, whole or ground, including chicken and turkey: 165°F, measured in the thickest part of the breast or thigh without touching bone.
• Fish: 145°F.
• Egg dishes: 160°F.
• Leftovers and reheated food: 165°F.

Always check the thickest part of the cut, and keep the thermometer probe away from bone or the pan/grate itself — both conduct heat differently than muscle and will throw off the reading.

Cross-Contamination on the Grill

FSIS recommends using two separate plates when you grill: one to carry raw meat or poultry out to the grill, and a different, clean one to bring cooked food back in. Putting a finished steak or chicken breast back on the same plate that held it raw undoes the cooking you just did. The same logic applies to cutting boards — keep one for raw meat and poultry and a separate one for produce, buns, or anything that won’t be cooked further.

Marinades and Basting

Any marinade that’s touched raw meat or poultry should never be brushed on food again once it’s cooking or finished, unless you boil the marinade first to kill off whatever it picked up from the raw meat. If you want sauce for serving, set some aside before the raw meat goes in, or make a fresh batch. Marinating should always happen in the refrigerator, not on the counter — USDA’s general food safety guidance treats the “danger zone” between roughly 40°F and 140°F as the range where bacteria multiply fastest, and a countertop easily sits in that range for hours.

The Danger Zone and the 2-Hour (1-Hour) Rule

FSIS defines the “danger zone” as the range between 40°F and 140°F, where bacteria can double in number in as little as 20 minutes under the right conditions. The general rule is not to leave perishable food, cooked or raw, sitting out in that range for more than 2 hours. At an outdoor cookout in summer weather, that window is cut in half: once the ambient temperature is above 90°F, FSIS’s guidance drops the safe limit to 1 hour. This matters for both ends of an outdoor cook — raw meat waiting to go on the grill should stay in a cooler or the fridge until it’s needed, not sitting on a counter or picnic table, and cooked food shouldn’t linger out in the heat either, particularly things like potato salad or anything with mayonnaise that outdoor cookouts tend to pair with grilled meat.

One More USDA Note

USDA also specifically advises against washing raw meat or poultry before cooking. It doesn’t reliably remove bacteria, and splashing water off raw meat can spread it around your sink and countertops instead — the heat of cooking is what actually neutralizes the risk, not rinsing.

Why This Matters More for Outdoor Cooking Specifically

Smoking and grilling both involve carryover variables — wind, ambient temperature, fuel type, lid position — that make it much easier to misjudge internal temperature than with an oven at a fixed, known setting. A brisket or pork butt can also sit in the temperature danger zone for a while during a long stall (see our separate article on the science of the stall) before climbing back up, which is one more reason a reliable instant-read or leave-in probe thermometer belongs in every outdoor cook’s kit, not just an optional extra.

Sources

• Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart — USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service
• Grilling Food Safely — USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service
• “Danger Zone” (40°F – 140°F) — USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service

Every outdoor cook eventually has to pick a fuel type, and each of the three main options — charcoal, gas, and wood pellets — does some things better than the others and nothing perfectly. This isn’t a “best grill” ranking; it’s a rundown of the real tradeoffs, drawing on the buying guides at Meathead’s AmazingRibs.com and Traeger’s own explanation of how pellet grills work.

Charcoal

Charcoal’s biggest advantage is heat. Piled deep and raised close to the cooking grate, lump or briquette charcoal can push past 800°F, which is what gets you a genuine steakhouse-style sear that most gas grills can’t match. AmazingRibs.com’s charcoal-vs-gas comparison also credits charcoal with a stronger, more complex smoke flavor, since it’s burning organic compounds like cellulose and lignin as it combusts, rather than the essentially flavorless combustion products gas produces on its own.

The tradeoffs are real, though. Charcoal takes longer to get going — a chimney starter full of briquettes needs 15-20 minutes before it’s ready to dump — and temperature control means learning to work vents and airflow rather than turning a dial. Once you’ve built a fire, you also can’t cool it down quickly the way you can with gas; you’re mostly managing oxygen, not heat output directly. Cleanup involves dealing with ash, though one-touch cleaning systems and removable ash pans on newer kettle grills have made this less of a chore than it used to be.

Gas

Gas grills win on convenience and control. They light in seconds and reach cooking temperature in 10-15 minutes, and adjustable burners let you dial heat up or down instantly and hold it steady — genuinely useful for anything where consistent, moderate heat matters more than a hard sear. Standard gas grills top out around 500°F, which is fine for most grilling but falls short of what charcoal can do for a crust on a thick steak; premium models with dedicated infrared sear burners can hit 900°F, but usually only across a small section of the cooking surface, not the whole grate.

Flavor is the honest downside. Combusted propane or natural gas on its own contributes essentially no flavor — what smoke you do get comes from drippings hitting the flavorizer bars or heat plates below the grate, which AmazingRibs.com describes as giving a mild flavor with “hints of bacon” at best, nothing close to what charcoal or wood produces. Gas also tends to cost more upfront given the extra hardware — burners, regulators, ignition systems — compared to a basic charcoal kettle.

Meathead’s own take, worth repeating because it’s a useful rule of thumb: he uses gas for chicken, fish, vegetables, pizza, and bread, and reserves charcoal for red meat and anything he’s smoking — leaning on each fuel for what it does best rather than picking one grill to do everything.

Wood Pellets

Pellet grills work differently from either of the above. According to Traeger’s own explanation of the mechanism, compressed hardwood pellets sit in a hopper and an auger — a rotating, corkscrew-shaped shaft — feeds them at a controlled rate into a firepot, where an electric igniter rod lights them. A fan circulates the heat and smoke around the cooking chamber, and a controller manages the auger feed rate to hold whatever temperature you’ve set, essentially turning the whole thing into a wood-fired convection oven you set and mostly leave alone.

That’s the appeal: real wood smoke flavor with digital, gas-grill-like temperature control, and a hopper that can run for eight-plus hours without you tending it. AmazingRibs.com classifies pellet burners primarily as smokers rather than grills, noting that “when it comes to searing the perfect steak, most are handicapped” — most pellet grills have a similar ceiling to standard gas grills, well short of what an open bed of charcoal can produce, so if hard searing matters to you, a pellet grill alone usually isn’t the answer. They also depend on electricity to run the auger and controller, which rules out use anywhere without a power source, and pellets themselves cost more per pound than briquette charcoal.

So Which One?

There’s no single right answer, and the guides above land on the same conclusion in different words: match the fuel to what you’re actually cooking most often. If searing and classic barbecue flavor matter most and you don’t mind managing a fire, charcoal is worth the extra effort. If weeknight convenience and precise temperature control matter more than maximum smoke flavor, gas earns its keep. If you want low-effort, all-day smoking with real wood flavor and don’t need to sear steaks on the same cooker, a pellet grill fills that niche well. Plenty of serious home cooks, Meathead included, end up owning more than one for exactly this reason.

Sources

• Charcoal Grill vs. Gas Grill Throwdown — Meathead’s AmazingRibs.com
• Grill-Smoker Combos Such As Kamados And Pellet Burners — Meathead’s AmazingRibs.com
• How Does a Pellet Grill Work? — Traeger

If you’ve ever smoked a pork butt or a brisket and watched the internal temperature climb steadily to around 150°F and then just stop moving for two or three hours, you’ve met “the stall.” It’s one of the most argued-about phenomena in barbecue, and for years it was blamed on everything from collagen breaking down to fat rendering. The explanation that actually holds up under testing comes from Meathead Goldwyn, founder of AmazingRibs.com, working with physicist Dr. Greg Blonder. Their findings are laid out on AmazingRibs.com in “What Causes The BBQ Stall: It’s Not What You Think.”

What’s Actually Happening

The stall is evaporative cooling, the same mechanism that cools your skin when sweat evaporates off it. As meat heats up in a smoker, moisture works its way to the surface and evaporates. Evaporation is an energy-consuming process — it pulls heat out of the meat to convert surface water into water vapor. At low cooking temperatures, typically in the 225-250°F range most low-and-slow barbecue is done at, the rate of heat being pulled out by evaporation can roughly match the rate of heat coming in from the smoker. When those two rates are close to equal, the internal temperature simply stops climbing until the surface finally dries out enough that evaporation slows down and the balance tips back in favor of heating.

Dr. Blonder tested this directly rather than just theorizing about it. He compared how a block of pure beef fat cooked (fat holds very little water, so there was no meaningful stall) against how a water-soaked sponge cooked (which stalled hard, since it was essentially all evaporable moisture). The pattern matched what happens with real meat closely enough to confirm evaporative cooling as the mechanism, not collagen conversion or rendering fat, both of which had been the popular explanations before his work.

When and Why It Varies

The stall typically starts somewhere around 150°F internal and its length depends on a handful of variables: the size and shape of the cut, how humid the air inside your cooker is, how much airflow is moving across the meat’s surface, and the cooking temperature itself. A big, moist cut like a whole packer brisket or an untrimmed pork butt will generally stall longer than a smaller, leaner one. Cooking at a higher temperature — say 275°F instead of 225°F — narrows the gap between heat coming in and heat leaving through evaporation, so the stall is shorter or sometimes barely noticeable.

Pushing Through It: The Texas Crutch

The practical fix, widely known as the “Texas crutch,” is to wrap the meat in aluminum foil (or butcher paper, which behaves a bit differently by letting some moisture and smoke through) once it hits somewhere around 150-160°F internal. Wrapping stops surface evaporation from cooling the meat, and it turns the cook into something closer to braising inside the foil, which speeds things up considerably — AmazingRibs.com estimates it can cut total stall-related time roughly in half. The tradeoff is that foil-wrapped meat also softens the bark that’s built up to that point, since it’s now sitting in its own steam; butcher paper is the common compromise pitmasters use to get some of the speed benefit while keeping more bark texture than foil allows.

If you wrap, the general advice is to keep going until the meat reaches your actual target internal temperature — commonly cited as around 203°F for brisket flat and pork butt, though “probe tender” (a thermometer sliding in with little resistance) matters more than hitting an exact number — before unwrapping. Unwrap too early and you’re back to surface evaporation slowing the last stretch of the cook down again.

Foil vs. Butcher Paper

The choice between foil and paper is really a choice about which side effect you’d rather live with. Foil is fully sealed, so it gives you the fastest push through the stall and the most moisture retention, but the bark sits in trapped steam and softens noticeably by the time you unwrap. Pink butcher paper is porous enough to let some moisture and smoke pass through, so it speeds up the cook less dramatically than foil but keeps the bark closer to how it was going in. This is the version Austin pitmaster Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue uses on his brisket — wrapping once the bark has set and the stall hits, in wide sheets of unlined pink butcher paper, a technique he’s described in detail in his own MasterClass instruction on wrapping brisket. Competition cooks who need maximum bark, like the foil-boat glazing step common in rib cooks, will sometimes skip a full wrap entirely and accept a longer stall in exchange for a firmer crust.

The Bottom Line

The stall isn’t a sign anything’s gone wrong with your cook, and it isn’t something you can season or rub your way around. It’s basic physics: wet surface plus low cooking temperature equals evaporative cooling that temporarily outpaces the heat coming from your fire. Understanding that is really the main benefit — it stops you from panicking and cranking your smoker’s temperature erratically, or assuming your thermometer is broken, when a brisket sits at 155°F for two hours. Either plan for the extra time, or wrap partway through if you want to speed things along.

Sources

• What Causes The BBQ Stall: It’s Not What You Think — Meathead’s AmazingRibs.com
• How to Wrap Smoked Brisket With Pitmaster Aaron Franklin — MasterClass

This recipe is taken directly from Weber’s official recipe library — the Beer Can Chicken recipe published on weber.com. It’s one of the most recognizable grilled chicken methods around, and Weber’s own version is a good baseline to learn the technique from before you start experimenting with your own rub.

The idea behind beer can chicken is simple: standing the bird upright on a partly-full can props it into a shape that lets hot air circulate evenly around the whole chicken, so the breast and legs finish at closer to the same time than they do lying flat. The beer itself contributes some steam and a little aromatic moisture, though its effect on flavor is smaller than the legend suggests — the rub and the indirect heat are doing most of the work.

Ingredients

For the rub

• 1 teaspoon mustard powder
• 1 teaspoon granulated onion
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For the chicken

• 1 whole chicken, about 4 pounds, giblets removed
• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
• 1 can (16 ounces) lager beer

Method

1. Combine all the rub ingredients in a small bowl.
2. Pat the chicken dry, coat it lightly with the vegetable oil, and season it all over — inside the cavity and outside the skin — with the rub.
3. Open the beer can and pour off (or drink) about half of it. Using a church-key style opener, punch two more holes in the top of the can so steam can escape freely as it heats.
4. Set the can on a stable, flat surface and lower the chicken down over it so the can sits inside the body cavity. The bird should balance on its two legs and the can like a tripod.
5. Set up your grill for indirect medium heat, 375-425°F, and carefully transfer the chicken-on-a-can to the indirect side of the cooking grate, keeping the can upright the whole time. Close the lid.
6. Grill with the lid closed until the internal temperature reaches 160-165°F in the thickest part of the thigh, not touching the bone. Weber’s recipe puts this at roughly 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes, but always go by temperature rather than the clock — go a few degrees past 165°F and it will still carry over to a safe finishing temperature as it rests (USDA guidance for whole poultry is a minimum of 165°F).
7. Using tongs to steady the bird and a wide spatula underneath, carefully transfer the chicken and can together to a platter. Let it rest 5-10 minutes before lifting the chicken off the can (carefully — the can and any remaining liquid inside will be very hot) and carving.

A Few Practical Notes

Balance is the part that trips people up the first time. If your grill grates are uneven or the can wobbles, it’s worth using a purpose-made vertical roaster stand instead of a bare can — same principle, sturdier base. Either way, move the bird as little as possible once it’s set up, and always lift with a spatula supporting the bottom rather than just tongs on the legs.

Because this is genuinely a whole roasted bird rather than a quick sear, a reliable instant-read or leave-in probe thermometer matters more than the clock. Pull the probe from the thigh, away from the bone, since bone conducts heat differently than muscle and will give you a falsely high reading if you touch it.

Does the Beer Actually Matter?

It’s worth being honest about what the beer is actually doing here, because it’s less than the name suggests. Meathead Goldwyn and physicist Dr. Greg Blonder looked into this directly for AmazingRibs.com in “Beer Can Chicken Recipe: There Are Better Ways To Cook Chicken.” Their analysis, backed by lab chemist Scott Bruslind of Analysis Laboratory, found that beer is roughly 92% flavorless water and about 5% flavorless alcohol, leaving only around 3.5% actual flavor compounds — something like a teaspoon of flavor per can. On top of that, the beer inside the can never gets close to boiling in their testing (they measured it peaking around 130°F, well under water’s 212°F boiling point), and rendering chicken fat drips down and seals the top of the can before much steam could escape anyway. In side-by-side tastings, neither Meathead nor Blonder could detect any beer flavor in the finished chicken.

None of that means the method is pointless — propping the bird upright really does help it cook more evenly and gives you crisper all-over skin than laying it flat, which is the actual benefit. It just means the can’s contents are doing far less work than the name implies, so don’t feel obligated to spring for a good beer, and don’t panic if you only have soda or water on hand as a substitute weight to prop the bird up.

Sources

• Beer Can Chicken — Weber official recipe library
• Beer Can Chicken Recipe: There Are Better Ways To Cook Chicken — Meathead’s AmazingRibs.com
• Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart — USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service

This recipe is adapted from pitmaster Malcom Reed‘s “Malcom Style Ribs,” published on his site HowToBBQRight.com. Reed is a competition barbecue cook and the founder of the Killer Hogs BBQ team and product line, and this is the method he uses for St. Louis cut spare ribs on his own drum smoker. The steps, temperatures and timings below follow his original recipe closely; where we’ve swapped a branded product for a generic option, we say so.

Spare ribs are meatier and fattier than baby backs, which makes them forgiving on a long, steady cook. Reed’s method holds a single temperature the whole way through, uses a foil wrap to lock in moisture partway through the cook, and finishes with a light glaze rather than a heavy sauce bath. It’s a solid, repeatable process for anyone working with a drum smoker, kettle, offset, or pellet grill.

What You’ll Need

• 2 slabs St. Louis cut spare ribs (ask your butcher to trim them St. Louis style if they’re not already, which just means the rib tips and sternum bone are removed for an even rectangle of ribs)
• An all-purpose seasoning rub (Reed uses his own Killer Hogs AP Seasoning — a coarse salt-and-pepper style blend works as a substitute)
• A second, sweeter barbecue rub for the main seasoning (Reed uses Killer Hogs The BBQ Rub, which is paprika- and brown-sugar-forward; any good commercial or homemade BBQ rub with sugar in it will work)
• 1 cup vinegar-based mop sauce, divided (Reed uses Killer Hogs Vinegar Sauce; a simple cider-vinegar-and-hot-sauce mop, or even apple juice cut with vinegar, is a reasonable stand-in)
• 1/2 cup barbecue sauce, for the glaze
• 1 chunk each of hickory and cherry wood
• 1/2 small onion
• Heavy-duty aluminum foil
• A spray bottle of water

Setting Up the Smoker

Reed cooks this on a drum smoker set up for indirect heat at a steady 275°F, with half the fire basket covered in foil so the ribs aren’t sitting directly over the coals. He adds the hickory and cherry chunks along with half a small onion to the hot coals before the ribs go on — the onion isn’t there to flavor the ribs directly, it’s a trick a lot of competition cooks use to add a little extra aromatic smoke early in the cook. As he notes in the original recipe, any smoker works for this method; the important part is holding 275°F for the entire cook rather than the lower 225°F many low-and-slow recipes call for. The higher temperature renders the fat faster and shortens the total cook time without drying the meat out, since spare ribs carry enough fat to handle it.

Ingredients

• 2 slabs St. Louis cut spare ribs
• All-purpose seasoning (AP rub)
• Sweet BBQ rub
• 1 cup vinegar sauce, divided (reserve 1/2 cup for the glaze)
• 1/2 cup barbecue sauce

Method

1. Remove the membrane (silver skin) and any excess loose fat from the back of each slab.
2. Season each slab with the AP seasoning and let it rest for 15 minutes so the salt starts to draw moisture to the surface.
3. Get the smoker running at a steady 275°F with indirect heat. Add the hickory chunk, cherry chunk, and onion half to the coals right before the ribs go on.
4. Season the ribs on all sides with the sweet BBQ rub and rest another 15 minutes.
5. Place the ribs on the grate and cook for 2 hours, rotating the rack every 30 minutes so both slabs get even time over the heat. Spritz each slab with water at every rotation to keep the surface from drying out and to help the rub set into a bark.
6. After 2 hours, once the ribs have taken on a dark mahogany color, pull them off. Lay out a sheet of foil, pour 1/4 cup of the vinegar sauce across it, and place a slab meat-side down on the sauce. Wrap tightly, sealing the ends but leaving yourself an easy way back in. Repeat for the second slab.
7. Return the wrapped ribs to the smoker, on the opposite side of the heat from where they started, for 1 hour, swapping their position after 30 minutes.
8. Open one wrap carefully and check for doneness: you’re looking for an internal temperature around 202°F and bones that have started to expose themselves at the ends. If it’s not there yet, reseal and give it more time. Once it’s ready, rest the ribs for 10-15 minutes.
9. Mix the remaining 1/2 cup vinegar sauce with the 1/2 cup barbecue sauce. Set each slab on an open sheet of foil (a “foil boat”), brush with the sauce mixture, dust with a little more BBQ rub, and put back on the smoker uncovered for 15 minutes to set the glaze.
10. Slice into individual ribs and serve.

Why This Method Works

The two-stage approach — bare on the smoker first, then wrapped in a vinegar-based liquid — is a version of what’s often called the “Texas crutch,” using foil to push through the evaporative-cooling plateau (the “stall”) that happens partway through a low-and-slow cook. Wrapping in a acidic, thin liquid rather than just foil alone also helps tenderize the meat a bit further and keeps the bark from turning to mush the way a heavier braise would. Finishing unwrapped for the last 15 minutes lets the glaze tack up instead of staying wet and sauce-heavy.

If you don’t want to buy the Killer Hogs product line specifically, the technique holds regardless of which rub or sauce you use — the key variables that matter are the 275°F cook temperature, the 2-hour bare / 1-hour wrapped timing, and pulling the ribs at around 202°F internal rather than going by time alone, since rib thickness varies enough between slabs that time-only recipes are unreliable.

Sources

• Malcom Style Ribs — HowToBBQRight.com (Malcom Reed)