Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

The trickiest part of live-fire cooking and charcoal-grilling is heat source management. Things can go south pretty quickly for inexperienced or inattentive cooks working over a ripping hot grill. But with the right setup, grilling doesn’t have to be stressful. One of the best ways to set up your grill to give you more control over how fast or slow things cook is to use a two-zone system.The concept is simple: Position hot coals on just one side of the grill—rather than spreading the lit charcoal over the entire coal grate—which creates two relatively distinct zones of heat. The area of the grill directly over the glowing coals becomes a zone of intense, direct, radiant heat, while the other side becomes a zone of gentle, indirect, convective heat. By using this setup, you have all the power of a ripping hot cast iron pan and the gentle precision of a low oven, on your grill.Two-zone grilling isn’t just about power or precision: it’s about making grilling easier. It’s as useful for grilling burgers as it is for grilling more delicate items like whole fish; it’s even useful if you’re just grilling up a few hot dogs and warming up buns. Here’s everything you need to know about how to level up your grill game with the two-zone method.

The Complete Guide to Two-Zone Grilling