Alana Kysar’s huli-huli chicken. Andrew Purcell for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

Welcome to our August grilling challenge, a special pop-up newsletter with our friends at New York Times Cooking.

Every Tuesday this month, we’ll be bringing you the best gear, fantastic recipes, and tips and tricks from Wirecutter and NYT Cooking experts to help you become a grill master.

There’s truly no better time to grill than August. Summer vegetables are as big as they get, evening pool dip season is in full swing, and it’s far too hot—and the freedom of summer evenings far too fleeting—to be turning on your stove inside when you could be out hanging with the fireflies.

Whether you’re firing up your grill for the first time all year or have been flipping burgers since Memorial Day, there are a few easy ways to improve your grilling game, and a lot of it starts with making sure you have the right gear.

Let’s get into it.

The best grills and accessories

If you don’t already have a grill, your challenge this week is simple: Get a grill.

Michael Murtaugh

Grilling is a lot more pleasant—and your results are more professional—if you have a set of grill tools that work well. Wirecutter’s grilling experts and NYT Cooking founding editor Sam Sifton once spent four days cooking more than 100 burgers, 20 chickens, and 10 pounds of vegetables on nine different grills to find the very best tools.

All the gear we recommend to start grilling like a pro, from brushes to tongs to chimney starters→

More MVPs

“This steamy grill brush makes me excited to clean my grill” Many people neglect getting their grill grates as clean as they should be. This brush offers a uniquely easy way to do it.

The best charcoal The right charcoal can make your grilling experience more consistent, produce better tasting food, and leave less clean up.

A flexible fish spatula can do it all A thin-but-sturdy one on a grill can make flipping burgers, fish, and other delicate proteins much more painless. Especially if there’s sticking.

Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell.

It’s all in the details

Not exactly a novel observation, but it’s nonetheless true when it comes to taking a basic grilling recipe from good to great. Clever techniques and smart ingredients make our NYT Cooking grilling recipes for turkey burgers and the humble hot dog shine without any extra work. And feel free to get creative—try the steak’s sauce on grilled chicken breasts or shrimp; apply our hot dog trick to corn on the cob.

This Dijonnaise chicken (above) is a super smart recipe from Ali Slagle: The mayonnaise insulates and prevents the chicken from sticking to the grill, and the mustard tenderizes and caramelizes. (You can see this same mayonnaise-as-insulation technique at work in Kenji López-Alt’s mayo-marinated chicken with chimichurri.) Save leftovers for superb sandwiches and salads.

Read on for more basics to grill—and zhuzh up—this week.

A great recipe meets you where you are, and this one leans into the fact that it’s just plain fun to poke at things on the grill. Huli means “turn” in Hawaiian, and you’ll want to turn this chicken often to keep the salty-sweet glaze from burning.

Andrew Purcell for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. Huli Huli Chicken Recipe from Alana Kysar Adapted by Margaux Laskey 45 minutes, plus 8 hours’ marinating Makes 4 to 6 servings

Place your hot dogs parallel to the grill gates, not perpendicular. This not only keeps them from rolling around, but exposes more of the dog to the heat for superior browning.

Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Grilled Hot Dogs By Ali Slagle 35 minutes Makes As many as you like

The difference between a dry turkey burger and one that’s moist, tender, and flavorful? Grated onion. That mayonnaise-as-insulation trick shows up here, too, so your burgers are even further insured from chalkiness.

Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Grilled Turkey Burgers By Ali Slagle 40 minutes Makes 4 servings

A sauce that works as both marinade and finishing element is a sauce that’s working smarter and harder. Sauce rof is a classic Senegalese relish of onion, parsley, scallions, and chile that adds a bright sparkle to charred meats. And the tangy, sweet-spicy gochujang sauce on the burgers is all-purpose: Use it as marinade, dressing, dip.

Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. Grilled Steak With Sauce Rof By Yewande Komolafe 45 minutes Makes 4 servings

Joe Lingeman for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. Gochujang Burger With Spicy Slaw By Rick A. Martínez 45 minutes Makes 4 servings

Give your grilled vegetables the star treatment with a milky orb of burrata (or a soft scoop of ricotta) and a sweet-sour vinaigrette. The trick here is to drizzle that vinaigrette on the veggies as soon as they hit the platter so they soak up the lip-smacking mix of wine vinegar, honey, and chile.

Andrew Purcell for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Carrie Purcell. Sweet-and-Spicy Grilled Vegetables With Burrata By Melissa Clark 45 minutes Makes 6 to 8 servings

Connie Park

A surefire way to instantly increase your confidence at the grill is to use a great meat thermometer.

“It’s such a bummer when you accidentally overcook an expensive cut of meat,” says Wirecutter senior staff writer and kitchen expert Michael Sullivan. “A thermometer takes the guesswork out of the whole thing.”

We’ve tested 37 over the years, and the ones we use exclusively in the Wirecutter test kitchen are fast, accurate, durable, well designed, and easy to read.

They’re also on sale through Friday just for y’all.

More on our favorite meat thermometer, including how to snag it on sale →

Sign up for the Cooking newsletter New recipes, easy dinner ideas and smart kitchen tips from Melissa Clark, Sam Sifton and our New York Times Cooking editors. Get it in your inbox

Thanks for reading. We’ll see you next week for our ultimate barbecue guide.

You can reach the Wirecutter Newsletters team at newsletters@wirecutter.com. We can’t always respond, but we do love to hear from you.

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