5 ways to be the star of your Labor Day cookout

If you’re barbecuing for Labor Day, it is really easy to make the whole event about the food — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But it also might be good to make it about a leisure world where you can devote an entire day to cooking the things you love on the grill as well as you can. In that way, grilling is a little like life: Take the time and do it right.

In speaking with culinary professionals on how they handle grilling in their own homes, a few common themes emerged.

Mostly, make certain to lighten up and have a little fun.

Chicken tip: Take your time and hurry up

Kevin Reading, who owns Abbott’s Grill in Milford, is a huge fan of frontloading the work, especially when it comes to cooking chicken.

The trick, he said, is to make the grill the finishing move and the cooking in the oven. Reading seasons his chicken in a mixing bowl with a simple mix including salt, pepper, garlic and coriander. Each of the chicken quarters gets coated in seasoning and thrown in the oven at 275 degrees for 50 minutes.

“You’re not scorching or hard cooking, you’re slowly cooking the bird,” he said. “The skin isn’t even getting crispy.”

This will seal the juice in and prevent you from finding a bloody mess in the joints. Whether you do this the day before of the morning of your barbecue, make sure to drain the fat off the chicken to prevent too much flaring up once it hits the grill.

The next trick is to do a little more cooking before adding the barbecue sauce. Reading makes his own Memphis style using seasonal fruits, but in the backyard, the easiest solution is to grab something you already like from the store and improve upon it with your spices of choice.

High heat and the sugar in the barbecue sauce don’t mix well, and there’s a good chance if you put the sauce on from the beginning, you’re going to be serving charred chicken.

Instead, start bone side down for five or so minutes, then flip it. Once you flip it, baste the bottom, flip it again for another minute or so and baste the top. Give the chicken one more flip and then get it off the heat.

When it comes to brats, more shopping, less grilling

Ian Mangin, chef at the Pickled Pig in Rehoboth Beach, said when he’s doing bratwurst on the grill, getting the best meat that's available is critical. He’s a fan of Hickman’s in Rehoboth, but whenever he’s in Dover he makes the trip to Haass’ Family Butcher Shop.

Once you find a brat you like (and there are excellent brands available in most grocery stores), it’s all about preparing it properly before it hits the grill. Mangin seasons the water with salt alone. You can season the water more heavily, but for him the idea is to let the meat shine on its own.

“You don’t want to put a ton of things on it and hide the good stuff you bought,” he said.

Place the brats in cool water and bring them slowly to a boil. Once you’ve got the boil going, leave them to simmer another 10-12 minutes. Mangin is a big fan of slicing one open to see if it’s pink. If it isn’t, set it aside until it’s time to grill.

Grill the brats for just five or so minutes a side, until the casing is golden. Serve it with onions and mustard, sauerkraut if you like, but, again, only a little.

It’s all about the meat.

Ribs are a big deal, make a big deal out of them

Smokin’ BBQ Grille owner Nick Schlegel started as a backyard griller, so he had a ton of tips and tricks for getting ribs right without smoking them (per se).

Once they hit the grill, ribs will take four-ish hours to cook. So if you’re using charcoal, make sure you get an early start. Peel the fat off the ribs using a paper towel for maximum grip, then thinly coat the ribs with yellow mustard. The mustard is more a “spice glue” than for flavor, so fancy mustards aren’t necessary. Schlegel’s basic rub is sugar, cumin, salt, pepper, old bay and garlic. Coat the ribs well, so you can’t see the mustard at all.

Ribs will burn over heat. If you’re using a charcoal grill, fill one half with charcoal and cook over the other half, for gas grills just light one side. For round charcoal grills, put a metal water bowl in the middle and surround it with charcoal then cook the ribs over the bowl. Place the ribs, bone down, on the grill. Don’t break out the aluminum foil just yet. Wait two hours, until you start to see the meat pull away from the bone near the top of the ribs.

Mix up some honey, liquid butter and brown sugar and coat the ribs with it, then wrap them in aluminum foil and throw them on for another hour-and-a-half. When they’re done, the ribs should be a little flexible and about half-an-inch of bone should be exposed near the top.

If you want to add barbecue sauce, either one that you made or one that you’ve purchased and improved upon, now’s the time. Toss the ribs back on the grill until the sauce sticks the way you want.

“Then, the best part,” Schlegel said, “Enjoy.”

With tuna steak, first, do no harm

Deanna Kilgore, who runs the Lewes Fishhouse, didn’t have to think twice about what seafood she prefers to grill, tuna steak.

For her, tuna is as simple and as tasty as you can get and if you want to have something special for the grill, Labor Day is the time to try it. It starts with making sure you get the right piece of fish. She said when it comes to shopping for tuna, looks matter.

“Find the reddest, prettiest, steak you can, that’s really the most important part,” she said.

There are plenty of rubs on the market and lots of recipe suggestions on the internet, but Kilgore relies exclusively on blackening seasoning from a jar off the shelf. The primary components are black pepper, paprika, garlic powder, oregano, cayenne, onion powder, thyme and basil.

Season both sides of the fish, let the coals get gray but hot (you want something in the 400 degree range), then toss the steak on briefly, one minute per side. It will be beautiful and pink in the middle. When asked how long to cook it if a person wanted it done all the way through, she said, longer a guess, but looked confused.

“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do that,” she said.

Have a little fun with your burger

Bobby Shockley, who runs the kitchen at The Abbey in Ocean City, cooks a lot of burgers at work.

At home, he lets himself go a little bit, seasoning the ground beef with onions, green peppers, Worcestershire sauce and season salt.

Pat the burgers out and stick them in the refrigerator for a few hours to set. Make sure the coals are white and cook the patties five minutes per side, throwing on white American cheese as the second side reaches completion.

For best results, Shockley said, have a beer nearby.