Direct Grilling is cooking food directly over glowing coals or a fire. In general, direct grilling involves small or thin pieces of meat (like steaks, chicken breasts, and fish fillets) cooked quickly and directly over a hot fire. Most grilling is done at 400° to 650° F.
Modified Direct Grilling is a variation of direct grilling done on a grill with a very deep firebox so that the grate rests relatively high above the coals. This enables you to grill large cuts of meat, like pork shoulders and even whole pigs, without burning them.
Indirect Grilling is a hybrid process that bridges the techniques of grilling and barbecuing. In indirect grilling, the grill is set up in such a way that the fire is on one side or opposite sides of the grill and the food is cooked away from it, over the unlit portion. The virtue of this method is that it turns your grill into a sort of outdoor oven. Indirect grilling enables you to cook through a large piece of meat, like a whole chicken or pork shoulder, without burning the exterior. It also allows you to smoke the food by adding wood chips or chunks to the fire. With indirect grilling, you don’t need to turn the food. Indirect grilling is generally done at a medium temperature, 325° to 350° F. It’s always done with the grill covered.
Barbecuing as practiced in Texas and the American South, is a low-heat, indirect method that uses lots of wood smoke to cook and flavor the food. This is considered “true” bbq. The traditional cooker is a horizontal barrel smoker, or pit, which has a firebox at one end and a cooking or smoking chamber at the other. The food cooks at a low (225° to 250°F) to medium-low (300°F) temperature and slowly (as long as 18 hours for a brisket), with a generous amount of wood smoke. The resulting food has an intense smoky flavor and is generally tender enough to pull apart with your fingers.
Smoking is a variation on true barbecue. Smoking can be done in a horizontal barrel smoker or in a vertical water smoker. There are two types of smoking: hot smoking and cold smoking. Hot smoking, really another name for barbecuing, is generally done at 225° to 250°F. In cold smoking, the food is located so far away from the fire that it smokes without cooking. It is used to make Scottish- or Norwegian-style salmon and sometimes beef jerky.
Rotisserie Grilling (Spit Roasting) is cooking meats on a slowly rotating spit. When cooking larger pieces of meat ( a whole pig, for example) the fire may be under the food. More often, it’s next to the food, as you’d find on your average backyard grill with a rotisserie. The slow turning bastes the meat internally and externally, making rotisserie grilling ideal for roasts and chickens.
Roasting in the Embers is perhaps, the oldest method of grilling. The food (often a tuber, like a yam or potato) is cooked right in the coals. You scrape off the burnt exterior to reveal the soft, smoky flesh inside.