Grilling advice for BBQ beginners and outdoor chefs

Grilling is an art, and it’s easy to ruin a piece of meat on the flames, you may be seeking a little help from the right recipe apps to help cook up some mouthwatering feasts and avert a barbecue disaster.

That might lead you to Grill-It!, a $1 (Rs 64) recipe app available for iOS and Android phones. The app has a list of food that you can cook on the grill, ranging from classic beef burgers to unusual seafood dishes.

The recipes are sorted in categories like pork, burgers, seafood and vegetables. You can search for recipes and mark your favourites. New recipes can be sent to your phone automatically. Each recipe has colour photos to inspire you to grilling greatness, and the instructions are written clearly.

Grilling: A Bon Appétit Manual is one alternative to Grill-It!, though it’s available only for iOS devices. It has 100 recipes, along with demonstration videos and tips for good grilling. The recipes are perhaps more sophisticated than those in Grill-It!, with the kind of dishes you could find in a restaurant. The app might strike some people as just a smart cookbook, but it is fun to use and free.

For budding barbecue chefs looking for expert tips, the Weber Grills app is also a good option. From the same company that sells grills worldwide, Weber’s app contains a varied selection of recipes, plus a long list of tips and tricks to help master setting up your grill and cooking on it. The tips include good knife habits, as well as hints on how to tell if your food is perfectly done.

There are videos and shopping lists so you know exactly what to buy. The app is generally easy to use, if a little gaudy looking and laden with advertising for Weber’s many different grilling products. I didn’t encounter any issues using it, but some reviewers complain the app is sluggish and that the recipe-of-the-week feature isn’t working. The app is free on iOS and Android.

If you’re a barbecue expert, the Pit Pal app, available on iOS and Android, is definitely worth trying. Think of Pit Pal as a kind of logbook; it’s an attempt to insert some structure into the art of cooking on a grill or in a smoker.

The app lets you make detailed notes about your grill setup, which dishes you’re cooking, temperatures, cooking times and so on. You can even append photos to your notes so that next time you cook a dish.

The app also connects to some third-party wireless grill temperature sensors, for an accurate indication of how fast your food is cooking in real time. Barbecue perfectionists may love this app and it is free, though for access to all the features, including temperature charts and graphs and unlimited logging, you pay $2 (Rs 128) for an upgrade.

Getting the cooking time right is critical to avoiding underdone steaks or food that’s turned to carbon. The Omaha Steaks Steak Time app is a great help here. The app has smart timers: You enter the type and thickness of meat you’re cooking, and the app recommends a cooking time and starts a timer for you. You can run multiple timers at once if you’re cooking several things.

Steak Time includes cooking tips and a reasonably big recipe archive - which is aimed at promoting and selling Omaha Steaks’ own products. If you don’t mind this, the app is visually friendly, useful and free on iOS. There’s also a free Android version, via Amazon, but it hasn’t been upgraded in some time and may be buggy on more modern Android devices.