Grilling Without A Grill

April 2005

Grilling Without A Grill

By Donna BerryContributing Editor

Propane tanks? Gas lines? Charcoal briquettes? Even George Foreman? What ever happened to the days of blazing hardwood in an open pit?

Grilling, in all its many forms, is one of America's favorite outdoor pastimes, right up there with baseball and in-line skating. However, with so many grilling options, "grilling can mean something different to everyone," says Andrew Bosch, senior creative flavorist, Kraft Food Ingredients Corporation (KFIC), Memphis, TN. "And furthermore, the flavors associated with the different grilling processes are as different as the grills themselves. For example, foods prepared on a gas grill tend to have a roasted, brown, savory flavor profile. When the same food is prepared over hot charcoals, the cooked food has some bite, a bit of astringency. We understand the various grilling processes from a technical and culinary perspective and have been able to create flavors with notes of grilled, charred and wood-roasted."

The grill is gone The commercial food-manufacturing environment presents significant challenges to installing any type of assembly-grilling operation. So, to offer consumers convenience foods in flavors identifiable with grill-cooking styles, ingredient suppliers have developed grill flavorants that not only broaden the type and variety of grilled foods a manufacturer can offer, but provide a cost-effective alternative to the capital equipment investment. They also reduce time, labor and raw material costs. "The flavors simplify the manufacturing process by replicating flavors associated with actual cooking processes," Bosch says.

Jeff Rozum, technology development manager, Red Arrow Products Company LLC, Manitowoc, WI, explains the general theory: "In grilling, the fat or the juices from the food drip down onto the heat source. They are vaporized by the heat and drift back up to the food, giving it that specific grilled flavor."

Grill flavorants are made by simulating this process, trapping the specific essences into an ingredient that can be used in place of the labor-intensive, and highly inconsistent grilling process.

Indirect, direct grilling Before a product developer sets out to flavor foods to mimic preparation on a grill, it is necessary to identify the target sensory experience. Is the food to have a charred surface? Should there be grill lines? Should there be subtle source wood notes? How about tones of barbecue?

For starters, grilling uses two basic methods -- direct and indirect. Most people think grilling is the type categorized as direct ... but again, that's most people, not everyone. Grilling tastes are very subjective and personal.

Direct grilling means that the food rests on the grill's grate directly over the full force of the heat source, which can be charcoal, wood or gas. (Sorry George, your electric cooker is not really a grill.) Grilling over such direct, intense heat sears the food, coating its exterior with a succulent brown crust loaded with flavor. The primary difficulty with direct grilling is that the process must be monitored closely to prevent the food from burning. Thus, besides being labor-intensive at the commercial level, direct grilling is a nightmare for quality control, as consistently producing food with the same level of grilling is virtually impossible.

Indirect grilling involves placing the food off to the side of the grilling source, usually over a drip pan. This much-slower cooking process ensures more-thorough cooking, which is important with meat, fish and poultry.

For the most part, indirect grilling resembles oven roasting. It is also more controllable than direct grilling and renders itself to a conveyor cooking operation. Once cooking nears completion, directly grilling the food for the final few minutes will supply that desirable charred flavor. At this point, once again, quality control can become a nightmare. However, for most consumers, it is the flavor and texture developed through direct grilling that is the sole purpose of grilling food.

Over the woods Grilling over wood or charcoal is perhaps the most-authentic form of grilling, as well as the most labor intensive and the most interactive, as a wood or charcoal fire generates a live flame that even the best griller cannot always control. Most grillers agree, though, that charcoal and wood grilling produces some of the most highly flavored foods. Thus, suppliers have designed many grill flavorants in the marketplace to simulate wood or charcoal grilling.

Another term associated with outdoor cooking is barbecue. Barbecuing is often used interchangeably with grilling; however, they are not the same. Barbecuing is, in fact, an indirect-grilling process that is intended to slowly cook large cuts of meat for a long period of time, over low heat and with lots of hot smoke. Most of the smoky flavor developed during the barbecuing process comes from smoldering wood.

Hardwood chips sourced from specific trees are often added to the barbecuing or grilling process to bring in characteristic flavors. Grill flavorants can also mimic these flavor profiles allowing products designed for specific applications. For example, apple-hardwood flavor is associated with poultry, while cherry wood complements game birds. Hickory and mesquite flavors give authentic barbecue notes in pork and red meat, respectively. Wood from maple trees complements ham and pork, while wood from alder trees adds a nice, delicate flavor to grilled seafood.

"Wood-fire grill flavorants provide balanced, restaurant-style flavors reminiscent of open-fire grilling over specific wood chips," says Bosch.

Where there's smoke, there's flavor In general, grilling produces one of a number of smoky flavor profiles, varying by grilling process and heat source. Covering the grill traps the smoke, increasing the smoky flavor in food. Including a grilling or barbecue process in the manufacture of convenience foods, such as precooked chicken breasts or barbecue pulled pork, is difficult, but imagine the greater challenge -- environmentally and logistically -- of smoking such foods.

The technique of smoking differs from barbecuing, a process that relies heavily on smoke flavors, because it uses an even lower heat to slow down the cooking process. In smokehouses, food cooks for hours and becomes infused with hot, aromatic smoke. This, of course, is a highly inefficient process, yet consumers crave the end result. Fortunately, ingredient suppliers have eliminated the logistical barriers to smoking foods.

"We use an environmentally friendly manufacturing process that condenses and filters natural wood-smoke vapor," says Adam Anderson, technical director, North America, Mastertaste Inc., Teterboro, NJ. "The resulting liquid is aged and further processed to produce a range of high-quality Zesti-Smoke® flavors."

Besides the obvious advantage using smoke flavor has over sending product through a traditional high-cost, time-consuming smokehouse process, other advantages include better control of smoke flavor in the product; flexibility in increasing or decreasing smoke flavor; varying the flavor by using smoke flavorants made with different wood chips; and even controlling product color through smoke-flavor management.

The company produces smoke flavor in three primary flavors -- mixed hardwood, hickory and mesquite -- in three base forms -- aqueous, oil-based and powder. "Further processing yields a range of smoke products in a variety of strengths," says Anderson. "For example, we have an emulsified smoke flavor that is water soluble and is excellent for drenching applications. And our brine-soluble smoke flavor can be used in brine solutions or via direct addition to products.

Smoke flavors have an added bonus according to Anderson. He notes the company's product also acts as "an antimicrobial agent, helping preserve food and extend shelf life," says Anderson.

Smoke flavor is an important part of many of the grill flavorants available to food manufacturers. "Grill flavorants are heat-processed oils that provide the flavor you get when a food is cooked over hot coals," says Rozum. "The flavors we make simulate this process, where we heat oils under controlled conditions and capture the grilled essence back in a base-oil form. Depending on the concentration of the grill flavor, usage levels can be from 0.05% to 0.50%.

"Red Arrow's Off the Grill(TM) Flavors were developed to impart the rich flavors associated with grilling. Utilizing grill flavors is a great way to provide a grill flavor without actually having to use a grilling process," adds Rozum. "The grilling process requires a level of dry heat to develop the flavor, thus leading to yield loss. Grill flavors provide the taste without the yield loss."

Bosch notes that "KFI's liquid Grill Flavors® add a variety of authentic grill-cooked flavor characteristics without adding additional carbohydrates to meat and poultry applications." Typical usage levels are less than 0.4%. He notes that the products are versatile enough to be used in any number of manufacturing processes, such as batter/breading, vacuum-tumbling, injection, baking, retort and freezing.

An array of grill flavors to choose from exists, with the various options imparting the tastes associated with particular grilling methods. "By focusing on specific types of grilled tastes, these flavors provide more-authentic grilled notes to products that are cooked by conventional/indoor methods," says Rozum.

For example, "'backyard grill' suggests grill flavor with some roasting flavor, with savory and brown notes, from grilling with the lid closed," says Bosch. "'Chargrill' implies that the food was cooked over charcoal briquettes, which often produces an ashy character with a astringent bite."

Rozum adds that "grill flavors can be added to a wide variety of foods, from meats to vegetables to snacks. One application for meats is cook-in-bag, where a grill flavor is wanted, but the cook-cycle does not allow it. By adding the grill flavor to a marinade or tumble system, the grill flavor can be achieved in any cooking method. Vegetables can be highlighted with a grill flavor to give depth to foodservice and ready-made items. Seasoning blends can benefit from dry grill flavors to provide grilled notes to chips or other snacks."

Drawing the line In the commercial manufacture of fully cooked, ready-to-eat foods marketed as "just off the grill," grill lines can give the foods a "grilled" appearance, says Rozum. "One method for doing this procedure is with a hot iron that stamps or rolls over the food to give a grill line," he explains. "Manufacturers can also apply grill lines using a browning agent that is sprayed onto the food."

On the foodservice side, some operations do not render themselves suitable for grilling options, like using wood chips or smoking. The J. R. Simplot Company, Boise, ID, makes it possible for all foodservice operations to offer customers the trendy, grilled-flavor profile.

"RoastWorks® is the first line of individually quick frozen (IQF) fruit and vegetables that are flame-roasted and preseasoned, offering foodservice operators scratch-made quality with little preparation, less labor and no waste," says Alan Kahn, senior director of marketing at Simplot.

These products can be "served as side dishes, or used as ingredients to create signature dishes," says Kahn. "We've eliminated most of the work and have provided chefs with an instant upgrade. For example, pork chops with applesauce is now grilled pork chop with roasted Fuji apple slices."

At home or in the back kitchen of even the finest restaurants, cooks are looking for ways to simplify things. Taking the grill out of grilling is one solution.

Donna Berry, president of Chicago-based Dairy & Food Communications, Inc., a network of professionals in business-to-business technical and trade communications, has been writing about product development and marketing for 11 years. Prior to that, she worked for Kraft Foods in the natural-cheese division. She has a B.S. in Food Science from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She can be reached at [email protected].

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