Grilling and Summer How-Tos

Learn how to cut perfect cubes, wedges and sticks safely and easily.

Planning a fire-free camping trip? Here are a few of our favorite no-cook meals.

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

Use Food Network Kitchen's internal-temperature chart to serve perfectly cooked meat every time.

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

Use our internal-temperature chart to serve perfectly cooked chicken, turkey, beef, lamb and pork.

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.

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.