Alder, apple, cherry, and pecan are all good choices for smoking chicken. Our Cooking Basics article, Get Smokin' , provides more wood and meat pairings and more tips for smoking food. Take a peek at our barbequing articles for even more recipes, meal ideas and cooking advice. A. Cooking directly over the heat source is known as grilling. The food is cooked for mere minutes on a hot grill, and the lid is rarely if ever closed.
Indirect heat is used for larger pieces of meat, such as thick steaks, roasts, and whole fish.
The lid is closed, and the cooking times are somewhat longer. On a gas grill this generally means firing up the two outside burners, and cooking the meat over the middle, unlit burner. When using charcoals, the coals are pushed to the sides of the grill, leaving a place in the middle to cook. Traditional barbeque is a form of indirect heat using very low temperatures over long periods of time. Much more information on this topic is available in Hints and Tips for Successful Grilling .