Bare grills meet Bear Grylls
When Bear Grylls is taping his TV show "Running Wild," he and his celebrity co-adventurers have to prepare a cook-what-you-can-find meal under the most rugged circumstances. You can bet they hope they won't have to grill up and devour a hairy spider, like Bear does on a YouTube video he shot in 2010. (He's terrorized Julia Roberts, Roger Federer, Zac Efron - even President Barack Obama went along, and that episode's been viewed over 1 billion times!)
But for you backyard chefs, the scariest thing about your bare grills isn't what you're cooking, but your cooking technique! Grilling meat at high temperatures can produce cancer-causing chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HCAs), and dripping fat and juices that cause smoky flare-ups deposit toxic polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on the food.
Luckily, to avoid these health hazards you don't have to replicate Roger Federer's "Running Wild" dinner of a half-gnawed, frozen fish carcass retrieved from an icy pond. To reduce grilling risks:
1. Trim the fat and remove poultry skin to reduce smoky fires; don't char meat.
2. Use a gas grill for temperature control, keeping temps below 325 F.
3. To further reduce HCAs and PAHs:
Good: If you're rushed, marinating meats for 15 minutes in olive oil and vinegar will do the trick.
Better: Marinate meats for at least 60 minutes in an acidic mixture of wine or beer, vinegar and/or orange or pineapple juice. One study found that a six-hour soak in red wine slashed production of two carcinogenic chemicals by 40 and 80 percent.
Best: Grill marinated salmon.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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