Step 3: Time to grill. Tips for cooking your meat, fish or veggies to perfection

Let's get to the most important part: the actual grilling. Is everything ready? Have you cleaned the cooking grid and rubbed it with a potato to create a natural, non-stick coating? Go through your menu again and plan the course of events in your mind – what things would you like to serve together? Remember: perfect timing is everything. Don’t forget to check our timeline again so you can be sure you are on cue and that your salads are right on time with your grilled meat, fish or veggies.

Expectations rise with the temperature of the grill! If you want to feel like a BBQ pro, follow our tips and tricks for perfect grilling.

It’s crucial to ensure that the grill is properly hot before you put anything on it. Do the water drop test: if it hisses, you can start. It sounds obvious but start with the large pieces because they need a longer cooking time. A meat thermometer is a great help, especially for larger pieces of meat.

Our top tip is never to stab the meat with a carving fork, as the juices will leak out. To keep meat at its juiciest, use a flat spatula to move or turn the meat.

The holy grail of grilling a steak is to get those mouthwatering branding stripes that make a steak look so good and taste even better. To do this, you need a really hot grill. The steaks must sizzle when you put them on the grill. If you want fence branding, turn the steaks 90 degrees after a couple of minutes. Once the branding is there, you can turn down the heat on your gas grill or move the steaks to the part of your charcoal grill that is not so hot. Depending on the thickness of the slices, the other side usually needs only a quarter or a third of the time of the first side. How long you leave them on the grill depends on how rare you like your steaks.

Many swear by cooking the ribs in the oven before grilling them to make the meat even more tender – so do we. This helps the meat fall off the bone once the grilling is done. Cook your marinated ribs in the oven at 120 degrees Celsius for at least an hour, depending on the size.

After removing from the oven, add a glaze to your ribs – whisk equal parts maple syrup and Worcestershire sauce and brush the ribs with it before grilling.

Finish oven-cooked ribs on a hot grill using direct heat. This will take around 15 minutes, depending on the size of the ribs and how you like them done: still tender and pink inside or cooked fully through. If you use a meat thermometer, the core temperature should be 65° C for rare and 85° C for well done.