Traci Cumbay

Article / Updated 02-01-2024

Mistakes are bound to happen as you explore barbecue cooking, but they are a part of the BBQ adventure. Here are five rookie mistakes to avoid: Being in a hurry. If you want fast, cook a grilled cheese. If you want barbecue, chill out. Slow is the essence of barbecue. Cooking at low temperatures for a goodly amount of time is what makes barbecue barbecue and makes the meat melt in your mouth. Before you cook, put some thought into how much time you're going to need, how you want to season or sauce your product, and the sides you want to serve with it. Good planning makes you less likely to get distracted when your meat needs you most. Taking meat from fridge to fire. Putting meat onto the grate right from the refrigerator adds a lot of cold air to your smoker, and that's likely to lead to condensation of creosote from the charcoal. The creosote floats up via the smoke and onto your meat, adding an undesirable flavor and texture. So let your meat sit at room temperature for about an hour before cooking. Most recipes count on your doing so and advise cooking times that are based on the meat starting at about room temperature. Letting meat rest at room temperature for more than an hour is a bad idea. When it gets too warm, it also becomes susceptible to bacteria. Adding sauce too early. Two mainstays of barbecue sauces, sugar and tomatoes, have low heat tolerance and cook faster than meat. Apply these types of sauces too early and you'll end up with a burnt, black, crackling coating before the meat is done. So wait until the meat is almost finished cooking before you add a sweet sauce with tomatoes. A minute or two on each side of the meat over a low to moderate flame is all the time the sauce needs to add taste and texture. Poking holes into the meat. Don't use a fork to move the meat. You want to keep the precious juices inside the meat, so use tongs. Stab it, and you provide a sure route for the juices to ooze out, taking with them any hope you had for great barbecue. Forgetting rest time: Slice into meat before giving it a chance to rest, and you lose almost half the juices. Meat juices go where the heat is lowest, so give them a chance at your cutting board and they run for it. Allow the meat to rest after you take it off the heat: The juices will be reabsorbed by the proteins that set them free in the first place. Cut into a well-rested piece of meat, and you find tender juiciness rather than a puddle around your desiccated pork chop.

Article / Updated 04-25-2023

Whether you call it barbecue, BBQ, or just 'cue, enhance the flavor of your oh-so-tender meats by mixing up a flavor-packed marinade, rub, or sauce. Although each seasoning method is used differently, they all give zing to any meat you grill or barbecue. Seasoning with dry rubs A rub is a dry marinade that you sprinkle or pat onto meat before you cook it. Rubs can contain just about anything, and they usually include some salt and sugar. You leave them on for a few minutes before you cook or as long as overnight. As meat cooks, the heat pulls open its pores, and the flavors of the rub seep right in. Rubs help produce bark, a crisp and flavorful crust that also helps hold in meat's moisture. Marinating: The power and the glory Marinade, a light liquid that you soak meat in before you cook it, does as much good for the texture of meat as it does for the flavor. Most marinades are made up of an acid (vinegar, lemon juice, or some such) and an oil. The acid helps break down the fibers to tenderize the meat, and oil helps hold the acid against the meat so it can do the most good. The rest is flavor — whatever combination of seasonings you like. Marinades tend to work fast, propelling a lot of flavor and good tenderizing effect into meat. They can be vehicles for intense tastes or subtle ones. The big finish: Sauces You can call pretty much anything liquid a sauce, and depending on who or where you are, your definition of true barbecue sauce may be very different. Different kinds of sauces are appropriate at different stages of the cooking process. You don't put a sugary sauce on food before it has been cooked through, for example, because the sugar burns easily.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-27-2016

Boost the flavor of your barbecued meats by knowing how to use sauces, rubs, and marinades. But before you barbecue (or BBQ), familiarize yourself with safety tips to avoid accidents and know how to buy the most flavorful meat for your meal. And if you're new to barbecuing, smoking, or grilling, avoid some common rookie mistakes that can ruin your best efforts.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-27-2016

As a business manager, you must be prepared to make tough decisions and set positive examples for your employees every day. No matter what size team you manage, you must keep calm; be methodical when resolving problems and managing employee issues; connect proactively with other leaders in your organization; and rely on your employees to help you get the job done. Along the way, you should demonstrate key leadership qualities in everything you do.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Safety is paramount whenever you barbecue. Every year a surprising number of good times around the barbecue grill end up as scary times because of accidental burns or fires. Follow these tips for keeping your cooking on track. Keep your grill, smoker, or chimney starter at least 10 feet away from your house, trees, and anything else that may catch fire. Avoid loose-fitting clothing. You don't need to wear tight shirts and pants, but loose clothing is much more likely to catch fire than fitted clothing. Keep a fire extinguisher within reach, or have a hose at the ready for addressing any accidental or out-of-control fires. If you plan to cook on a wooden deck, thoroughly wet down the area before you start. Make sure the young'uns keep their distance. Delineate the "no-kid zone" by making a chalk line about a 10-foot radius from the grill or smoker. Don't use lighter fluid. Lighter fluid isn't ideal for barbecue flavor in the first place, and it's downright dangerous if you try to add it to already hot charcoal. It can catch fire, and that fire leads right back to the bottle in your hands. Don't improvise lighter fluid. The stuff is nasty to begin with, but trying another flammable in its place when you're in a pinch is incredibly dangerous. Be careful with alcohol. Yes, alcohol and outside cooking are no strangers — in many eyes, they're inseparable — but that delicious whiskey you're sipping is flammable. Keep that in mind. *Be good to your grates. Clean grates don't catch fire. Gunked-up, grease-ified grates do.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

When you're buying meat for the barbecue, remember that if you start with good raw material then you're more likely to get a great finished product. Here are some tips for choosing wisely at the butcher counter: More fat means more flavor. A well-marbled piece of meat is going to fare better on your grill or smoker than a leaner cut. And, especially for slow cooking, the "luxury cuts" like filet are exactly wrong. You want the cuts that come from the working areas of the animal and have more fat stores. Fresher is better. Poke the meat you're considering (if it's wrapped, that is). You want it to feel firm and to bounce back after you move your finger away. If it doesn't, it's probably been on the shelf for too long. Liquid is a bad sign. The red juices you see pooling in a package of meat mean that the meat got too warm. It won't taste as good or be as tender as meat that has been properly refrigerated.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

How you build relationships and interact with staff and managers from other groups greatly affects the cooperation you get from them when you need it. Effective communication plays a large part in developing an assertive, respectful approach to working relationships. Build strong interdepartmental communication with these strategies: Make sharing information a normal practice. If you have information that someone may need, take the initiative and pass it on. When you're a good information source, people find you a valuable manager to work with. Listen and find out about other groups' needs. Be attentive to others' concerns instead of focusing solely on your own. Talk about the greater good when working on issues. The greater good is the organization, project goals, and customer needs. When the greater good becomes the focus, the discussion moves away from "your way versus my way" to what we need to accomplish together to make something happen that benefits us all. Bring closure to discussions. Listen actively to clarify points. Ask about next steps. Recap action items, and even write them up and distribute the notes so that everyone remembers what was agreed to. This way, you prevent misunderstandings and rehashing of old issues. Show gratitude. Showing sincere appreciation and recognition can go a long way in building bridges of understanding and cooperation. Resolve problems with peers person to person. When concerns arise, as they often do when you're coordinating and working on issues with other managers, take the initiative to go to the other manager and start the dialogue. When you go to other leaders directly to constructively settle differences and solve problems, you build credibility and command respect — key ingredients for eliciting cooperation from others.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

As a manager dealing with employee discipline, your primary concern is correcting unacceptable performance. You always want to help your good workers become even better, but your first concern has to be to identify employees who aren't working up to standard and to correct their shortcomings on the job. The following disciplinary steps are listed in order of least to most severe. Always use the least severe step that results in the behavior you want. If that step doesn't do the trick, move down the list to the next step. Verbal counseling A typical manager verbally counsels a variety of employees in any given day. Verbal counseling can range from a simple, spontaneous correction performed in the hallway ("Marge, you need to let me know when our clients call with a service problem.") to a more formal, sit-down meeting in your office ("Sam, I'm concerned that you don't understand the importance of checking the correct address prior to shipping orders. Let's discuss what steps you can take to correct this problem and your plan to implement them."). Note: You usually don't document verbal counseling in your employees' files. Written counseling Written counseling formalizes the counseling process by documenting your employee's performance shortcomings in a memo. Written counseling is presented to the employee in one-on-one sessions in the supervisor's office. After the employee has an opportunity to read the document, verbal discussions regarding the employee's plan to improve performance ensue. This documentation becomes a part of your employee's personnel file. Negative performance evaluation If verbal and written counseling fail to improve your employee's performance, the situation warrants a negative performance evaluation. Because performance evaluations are generally given only annually in many organizations, if at all, they're not usually useful for dealing with acute situations. Demotion Repeated negative performance evaluations or particularly serious performance shortcomings may warrant demoting your employee to a lower rung on the organizational ladder. Often, but not always, the pay of demoted employees is also reduced at the same time, making for a very unhappy employee. Before you resort to demotion, first try to find a position at an equivalent level that the employee can handle. This step may help improve your employee's motivation and self-confidence and result in a "win" for both the employee and the organization. Termination When all else fails, termination is the ultimate form of discipline for employees who are performing unsatisfactorily. In these days of wrongful termination lawsuits and high-dollar judgments, you must document employees' performance shortcomings well and support them with the facts.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Disagreements and differences are inevitable within a work team or organization. As a manager, your challenge is to lead team members by modeling and helping them learn new behaviors that resolve conflicts and maintain respectful working relationships in the process. Some great benefits can emerge from conflicts: creativity, richer solutions, and stronger teamwork, for example. To reap benefits that stem from workplace conflict, don your leadership hat and put these constructive behaviors into practice: Stay in control. Venting your frustration, spewing your anger, or throwing sarcastic barbs shows only that you're out of control and prevents you from inviting the cooperation of others. Be direct, factual, and sincere. You have to express your concern or problem clearly and constructively so that others understand where you're coming from. Get to the point, state the facts as you know them, and speak with candor and respect. Go to the source. A conflict is best resolved by addressing it face-to-face with the other party. Telling a third party or communicating by e-mail cannot replace the person-to-person conversation that's required for conflict resolution to work. Get into problem-solving. So you have a conflict with another team member. Big deal! And you've worked out a solution with the other team member? Oh, now, that is the big deal. That a difference or disagreement exists between two or more people isn't newsworthy. The actions that are taken to hammer out a solution are worth others' attention. Actively listen. Active listening is about showing that you care and working to understand what someone else truly means. When you become a great listener, you become a great communicator. Assume that the other person means well. When you assume that the other person means well, you don't have to worry that someone's out to get you. You're free to deal with the actions and issues at hand.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

When you know which aspects of a project you want to delegate, you must determine to whom you will delegate. Which person will be good for which assignment? Here are some important questions to ask before initiating a delegating effort: Where does the assignment best fit functionally within your group? Who has capacity in terms of time and workload? Who has the interest? Who has the skill and experience level best for the job? Whose capabilities do you need to expand to fill coverage gaps in the group's day-to-day operations? Who is in need of new or different challenges? To whom do you want to give an opportunity for growth? Notice that one of the factors not listed is "Who has the best track record?" Sometimes managers have a tendency to delegate mostly to their reliable performers. As a result, they don't distribute the workload evenly among all the staff in the group. This practice has an effect of punishing the good employees. It may create resentment among the star employees who wonder why they have to carry the workload for others in the group, as well as among other employees who feel passed over for the most challenging and growth-oriented work. Push yourself as a manager to develop and challenge everyone in your group.