Troubleshooting

Pick the outcome, then the food. Where two diagnoses fit one food they are genuinely different problems — burnt-and-raw is a geometry problem on a steak and a food-safety one on a chicken thigh, and they are not answered in the same register.

• The sauce or glaze burnt black

  The meat is fine and the outside is black and bitter. This is almost always a timing decision rather than a heat one, and it is decided by what the sauce is made of.

  2 distinguishable causes · 7 foods

• Flatbreads scorched, or dried to leather

  A few millimetres of dough has no interior to buy you time. These go from raw to done to ruined faster than anything else on the grate, and the two ways they fail are opposites.

  2 distinguishable causes · 3 foods

• Layered vegetables falling apart on the grate

  A leek, a fennel wedge, a chicory half or a cauliflower steak arrives on the plate as a heap rather than a piece. This is decided by where the knife went, before anything reached the fire.

  2 distinguishable causes · 7 foods

• Dense whole vegetables never getting tender

  A whole root, bulb or tuber goes black on the outside and stays hard in the centre. The usual answer is not a longer cook or a lower fire — it is that this food does not belong over the flames at all.

  2 distinguishable causes · 7 foods

• Chicken skin is rubbery

  Skin that is soft, pale and unpleasant to eat, on chicken that is otherwise cooked properly. Almost always a rendering problem rather than a doneness problem, which is why cooking it longer usually makes it worse.

  3 distinguishable causes · 10 foods

• The charcoal keeps going out

  A fire that lights and then fades. Nearly always an air supply problem, and the instinctive fix — adding more fuel — often makes it worse.

  3 distinguishable causes · 57 cm charcoal kettle

• The smoker is producing thick white smoke

  Dense white or grey smoke pouring from the cooker, usually accompanied by food that tastes bitter or ashy. A combustion problem, not a wood-species problem — which is why changing wood does not fix it.

  3 distinguishable causes · 5 foods · Offset smoker, 57 cm charcoal kettle

• I can smell gas at the barbecueSafety first

  A smell of gas around a bottled-gas barbecue. This is not a cooking problem and it is not diagnosed by cooking. It is treated as an immediate hazard first, and everything else afterwards.

  3 distinguishable causes · Three-burner hooded gas grill

• The charcoal grill will not get hot enough

  The fire is lit and the cooker is running well below the temperature the cook needs, so food takes far longer than any published time and never browns properly.

  3 distinguishable causes · 57 cm charcoal kettle

• Flare-upsSafety first

  Fat and juices reach the fire and ignite, throwing flame up around the food and blackening the outside long before the inside is done.

  2 distinguishable causes · 29 foods

• Ribs came out dry

  The ribs are cooked through and eating dry or tough, which are two different failures with two different fixes.

  2 distinguishable causes · 4 foods

• Steak burnt outside and underdone inside

  The crust is past where anybody wants it and the centre has not arrived, which is a geometry problem rather than a skill problem.

  2 distinguishable causes · 16 foods

• Food sticking to the grate

  Food tears when it is turned, leaving skin or flesh welded to the bars.

  2 distinguishable causes · 57 foods

• The smoker is running too hotSafety first

  Chamber temperature has climbed above the target band and closing things down is not bringing it back quickly.

  2 distinguishable causes · 5 foods · Offset smoker

• The gas grill heats unevenlySafety first

  Food on one part of the grate cooks noticeably faster than the same food elsewhere, so a single batch finishes at several different times.

  3 distinguishable causes · Three-burner hooded gas grill

• Chicken is coloured outside and still pink at the boneSafety first

  The outside is coloured and the thickest part is not there yet — the one problem on this list where the answer is a thermometer rather than a technique.

  2 distinguishable causes · 11 foods

• The meat came out dry

  Cooked through and eating dry, which has four separate causes with four different answers — and the commonest one is not overcooking at all.

  4 distinguishable causes · 34 foods

• The meat came out tough

  Tough has two opposite causes on two different kinds of cut, and the remedies contradict each other — which is why one-line advice about it is wrong about half the time.

  3 distinguishable causes · 18 foods

• Burgers or sausages charred outside and raw insideSafety first

  The outside is charred and the middle is not cooked, which on a minced product is a food-safety problem rather than a cooking-quality one.

  2 distinguishable causes · 4 foods

• The gas barbecue will not lightSafety first

  The burner will not catch, which is either an ignition fault or a gas-delivery fault — and one match settles which.

  3 distinguishable causes · Three-burner hooded gas grill

• Vegetables charred outside and hard in the middle

  The cut faces have blackened while the middle is still firm, usually because the piece is thicker than the heat can reach through before the surface gives out.

  2 distinguishable causes · 19 foods

• Vegetables falling through the grate

  Thin or round vegetables end up in the coals. This is a geometry problem rather than a cooking one, and no adjustment to heat or timing fixes it.

  2 distinguishable causes · 11 foods

• Vegetables went soggy instead of browning

  The vegetable released its water and then cooked in it. Nothing browns until the surface is dry, so the result is limp and pale rather than marked.

  2 distinguishable causes · 6 foods

• Fish falling apart on the grill

  The fillet came apart when it was moved. Large-flaked lean fish is structurally unable to survive being turned on bars, and that is a property of the fish rather than a lapse of technique.

  2 distinguishable causes · 6 foods

• Prawns, scallops, squid, lobster or octopus came out rubbery

  Overcooked by a margin measured in tens of seconds. These are the narrowest cooking windows in the catalogue, and the two families get there by different mechanisms.

  3 distinguishable causes · 10 foods

• Some mussels or oysters did not openSafety first

  A shell that stays shut after cooking is the one troubleshooting case in BBQHQ with a regulator's instruction attached, and the instruction is to throw it away. The Food Standards Agency names clams, mussels and oysters together, so the same advice applies to all of them and not to mussels alone.

  1 distinguishable causes · 2 foods

• Halloumi or paneer stuck, melted or would not brown

  Grilling cheese either welds itself to the bars or disappears between them. Which one happens depends on whether the cheese was ever grillable in the first place.

  2 distinguishable causes · 4 foods

• Tofu stuck, crumbled or never browned

  Almost every tofu failure on a grill traces back to water at the surface, and to whether the tofu was firm enough to be there at all.

  3 distinguishable causes · 3 foods

• Grilled fruit scorched or collapsed

  Fruit fails in two directions: sugar blackens before the fruit warms through, or the fruit was too ripe to hold together at all.

  2 distinguishable causes · 8 foods

• The fish came out dry

  Fish holds far less connective tissue than meat and has almost no margin past done. On tuna the margin is smaller still, because the point most people want is before the point the guidance describes.

  2 distinguishable causes · 6 foods

• Pizza base burnt before the top was cooked

  The underside of the pizza is black or bitter while the cheese on top has barely melted.

  3 distinguishable causes · 3 foods