Grilling and Summer How-Tos

Whether you're using gas or charcoal, creating a hotter zone and a cooler zone is the key to perfectly grilled food.

Our step-by-step guide covers everything you need to know about cleaning and maintaining your gas or charcoal grill.

Try a new cookout dish: Food Network Magazine created dozens of fun and easy foil packs.

Heading to the supermarket with a shopping list is one thing, but leaving with what you need is another entirely. Yes, they stock charcoal; but should you buy briquettes or hardwood? Your buddy loves shrimp; do you get large or jumbo? For every summer essential, there seems to be a confusing variation — cilantro or parsley, whipping cream or heavy cream. Here, a cheat sheet to a half dozen shopping conundrums. Remember it the next time you hit the store and you'll come out a winner.

These are the grilling tools worth "flipping" out over.

Practically any food eaten outdoors in the company of another could qualify as a picnic — "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and Thou" being among the simplest and best menus still in use more than a thousand years after a poet first suggested it. But once the guest list numbers above three, a few more dishes are in order and a little strategizing pays off. To help plan your next outing, we've assembled a list of totable foods that are easy to eat sprawled out in the sun, plus some handy gear for serving it.

Nothing’s sweeter than a berry fresh from the garden.

Hold onto those eggshells. You don’t have to waste money on expensive fertilizers with these effective homemade solutions.

This guide will allow you to enjoy your favorite vegetables year after year.

Making a whole brisket is a labor of love. Here’s what to know about buying, butchering and smoking it to perfection.

Keep these fixes in mind for a successful garden bloom.

Get your garden started on the right foot.

This cool-season crop is easy to grow at home, as long as you have patience.

Don’t let your harvest go to waste.

You can even plant the knob you bought at the supermarket and enjoy home-grown ginger all year long.