Barbeque vs. Grilling vs. Smoking | What Are the Differences?

The best part about barbeque, grilling and cooking can be done in a single grill one after the other. Of course you need to clean the grill because you don’t want the flavors of different dishes get mixed up.

What is grilling, barbeque and smoking?

Grilling essentially means cooking over a hot fire and this cooking process is fast. On the other hand barbecue is low and slow and in smoking you use the smoke to cook which is also low and slow. The latter two are the best for cooking, fish, meat and poultry on the other hand in grilling you can cook vegetables, fruit and other variety of food.
On the other hand smoking and barbequing is all about meat. The low temperature, and long time taken for cooking helps to turn the big tough cuts of meat tenderly melt and you can enjoy their full flavors completely. Whatever out of the three methods you want to all you need is a grill. The grill of course should be according to the portions that you need to cook. You can use gas or charcoal you can perform all the three styles of barbequing, smoking and grilling.

What is grilling?

If you want to cook food fast on a hot fire fueled by charcoal or gas. If you are using the term hot and fast in terms of grilling then it means cooking at a temperature of 350 degree F or more for less than an hour.

grilling
For items like steaks and chops, the temperature should be around 450 to 500 degree F for less than one hour.

What is barbequing?

Grilling is about cooking fast small portions of meat and on the other hand you deal with large cuts of meat.

barbequing

These could be beef briskets pork shoulders, rib roasts, slabs of ribs, whole turkey etc. in order to cook these large cuts the temperature should be very slow between 190 and 300 degree F. such cooking takes a long time and the challenge is to keep the temperature constant throughout the cooking process.

What is smoking?

You can consider that smoking is the extreme version of barbequing. In this process you are essentially cooking the food with the smoke from smoldering chunks or chips of mesquite, hickory, cherry, apple or any other wood. These woods lend an interesting flavor to the chunks of meat that you are cooking. For smoking you will need a temperature even lower than barbequing. This is because you need to ensure that the meat is infused with the smoky flavor and cooks it all the way through.

smoking

So all these three methods of cooking can be performed on the same grill and you can enjoy the summer with garden parties and even cooking simply for your family.