Winter Grilling: How to Cook Outside When It Is Ten Degrees

A grill does not know it is January. It only knows you left the lid open.

Standing in the snow in a parka, flipping a steak, while your neighbors look on with concern. This is one of the great American sights. It also works surprisingly well if you adjust for the fact that cold air is doing its best to steal all your heat.

Set up before you light

Clear a path. Shovel the way to the grill. You will carry hot food along it, on ice, in the dark.
Keep it safe. Grills stay outside, well away from the house, the garage and anything that can burn. Never use a grill inside or in a closed space, not even a garage with the door partly open. Carbon monoxide does not care how cold it is.
Block the wind. Wind is the real enemy. Put the grill somewhere sheltered but open to the air.
Get a good thermometer. You will not trust your senses at ten degrees, and you should not.

Heat management

Give it more preheat time than you would in summer, often twice as long.
Plan on more fuel. A propane tank runs slower in deep cold, so keep a spare, and charcoal needs a bigger pile.
Keep the lid closed. Every peek costs you minutes. If you are looking, you are not cooking.
Cook thicker cuts. Thin things go cold on the walk back to the house.

The right menu

Winter is the season for things that hold heat and smell amazing: thick pork chops, sausages, a whole chicken, a big chuck roast over low heat. Bring a warm platter out with you, and a foil tent for the trip in. Your reward for this is a meal that tastes better than it has any right to.

Dress for the job

Layers that can get a little smoky. Boots with grip. Thin gloves under big ones, because you need fingers for the tongs. Long sleeves that are not fuzzy fleece near open flame. That is a lesson you only want to learn once.

Timing the table

The plan is simple: everything inside is hot and ready before the meat comes off. Rest it on a warm board indoors. Then eat like someone who went outside and fought for it.

There is a lot to like about being the person who grills in a snowstorm. We have a heavy hoodie for you and a tumbler that keeps coffee scalding on the rail beside the tongs.