I love to grill, and barbecue, and I have devoted my career to outdoor cooking for more than two decades. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of mistakes, and people tend to make them over and over. So I put together a list of the biggest grilling don’ts and how to avoid them. Print this list and refer to it the next time you get ready to grill!

Never oil the grill

Many people oil the cooking grates — big blunder! Follow my mantra: “Oil the food, not the grates!” If you brush oil on hot cooking grates (and a lit grill), you run the risk of a big flare-up. The oil that you have brushed on will instantly burn, leaving a sticky residue that will “glue” your food to the grates, making it stick, break apart and dry out_like dehydrating food. If you oil the food, it will stay juicy and promote caramelization_those great grill marks! And help to prevent “stickage.”

Don’t put food on a cold grill

Always preheat a gas grill with all burners on high, or wait until charcoal briquettes are covered with a white-gray ash. Preheating also burns off residue and makes it easier to clean the grill. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t ever need to cook on a grill that is hotter than 550 F. The hotter the grill, the more likely you will burn the outside of the food before the inside is cooked.

Clean that dirty grill

An outdoor grill is like a cast-iron skillet. It gets better and better the more you use it, but you do need to clean it every time you use it. Clean the grill grates twice every cookout with a stiff, metal-bristle grill cleaning brush — before and after you cook. If you do this, it will never be a big job to clean your grill. If you don’t have a grill cleaning brush, crumble a ball of heavy-duty aluminum foil and hold it in a pair of 12-inch locking chef tongs to use to clean the grill.

Know the difference between direct and indirect heat

The most frequent mistake is to choose the wrong cooking method. To be a good griller, you must know the difference between direct, indirect or combo grilling and when to use them. Direct grilling means that the food is set directly over the heat source — similar to broiling in your oven. Indirect grilling means the heat is on either side of the food and the burners are turned off under the food — similar to roasting and baking in your oven. Combo grilling means that you sear the food over direct heat (i.e., to sear a tenderloin, or large steak) before moving it to indirect heat to finish the cooking process. Remember this general rule of thumb: If the food takes less than 20 minutes to cook, use the DIRECT METHOD. If the food takes more than 20 minutes to cook, use the INDIRECT METHOD.

The right way to deal with flare-ups

Never use a water bottle to extinguish a flare-up. Spraying water on a hot fire can produce steam vapors which may cause severe burns. The water can also crack the porcelain-enamel finish, resulting in damage to your grill. Fire loves oxygen, so cook with the lid down and don’t peek. Repeatedly lifting the lid to “peek” and check the food while it’s cooking lengthens cooking time. If you have a full-on fire, turn all the burners off, remove the food and extinguish the flames with kosher salt or baking soda. In a worst-case scenario, use a fire extinguisher, but know that it will ruin your grill.

Avoid frequent flipping

If you are cooking food by the direct method (hamburgers, hot dogs, boneless chicken breasts, small steaks, vegetables, etc.), flip only once halfway through the cooking time. All protein will stick to the grates as soon as it makes contact with the hot grill grates. As it cooks, it will naturally release itself, and that is when you can turn it over with a pair of tongs. Just remember to oil the food, not the grates!

Dodge cross-contamination

One of the most common mistakes backyard cooks make is using the same tongs for raw and cooked foods. This creates cross-contamination and can result in food-borne illness. It’s easy to fix this problem. I have been color-coding my 12-inch locking chef tongs with red and green duct tape for as long as I have been grilling. The different colors help me to remember which pair of tongs I used for raw food (red), like chicken, and which are safe to use for the cooked food (green). And remember to use a separate clean platter for your cooked food, too.

Don’t sauce too soon

If I had a dime for every time I saw someone pour thick sweet barbecue sauce on bone-in-chicken pieces or a whole rack of ribs while they were raw, I would be a very wealthy griller! All barbecue sauces have a lot of sugar in them and sugar burns quickly, almost always burning the outside of the food before the inside cooks. Generally I only brush food with sauce during the final 10-15 minutes of cooking time. With ribs that cook 2-3 hours, I will brush with a diluted sauce (1/2 beer and 1/2 sauce) for the final 30 minutes of cooking time.

Resist testing for doneness by cutting

Cutting your food to test for doneness is another common way people bungle their food. When you cut any protein, you are letting the precious juices escape, and if the food is under-cooked, the area where it was cut will be over-cooked when you put it back on the grill. Use an instant-read meat thermometer to test for doneness, and always let your food rest for at least 5 minutes before cutting into it.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Elizabeth Karmel is grilling, barbecue and Southern foods expert, a media personality and the author of four cookbooks, including “ Steak and Cake .”

COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — On the eighth annual “World Bee Day,” the bees did not seem bothered.

They should be.

Bees and other pollinators have been on the decline for years, and experts blame a combination of factors: insecticides, parasites, disease, climate change and lack of a diverse food supply. A significant part of the human diet comes from plants pollinated by bees — not just honeybees, but hundreds of species of lesser-known wild bees, many of which are endangered.

In 2018, the U.N. General Assembly sponsored the first “World Bee Day” to bring attention to the bees’ plight. Steps as small as planting a pollinator garden or buying raw honey from local farmers were encouraged.

May 20 was chosen for “World Bee Day” to coincide with the birthday of Anton Janša, an 18th century pioneer in modern beekeeping techniques in his native Slovenia.

In Germany, where bees contribute 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in economic benefits, they’re key to pollinating the iconic yellow rapeseed fields that dominate the countryside in the spring.

On Tuesday, around 400,000 bees in urban rooftop hives in the western city of Cologne — where the yellow fields flower — were busy at work making honey.

They seemed oblivious to the threats that endanger their survival. Scientists and bee experts like Matthias Roth, chairman of the Cologne Beekeepers Association, hope World Bee Day can raise awareness.

For Roth, it’s crucial to protect both honey bees — like the ones in his rooftop hives — and wild species. His organization has set up nesting boxes in the hopes of helping solitary bees, which don’t form hives, but Roth fears that it’s not enough.

“We must take care of nature,” Roth said Tuesday. “We have become far removed from nature, especially in cities, and we must take care of wild bees in particular.”

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Fanny Brodersen reported from Berlin, and Michael Probst from Wehrheim, Germany. Kerstin Sopke and Stefanie Dazio contributed to this report from Berlin.

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s still just 21 in dog years.

But the Westminster Kennel Club is gearing up for its 150th annual dog show next year and announced plans Tuesday for the milestone event, expected to draw about 3,000 champion dogs.

It’s slated to start Jan. 31 with agility and other canine sports, including the relay-race-style flyball tournament introduced last year, at the Javits Center convention venue in Manhattan.

The traditional breed-by-breed judging happens Feb. 2 and 3, with first-round competition during the days at the Javits Center.

The show moves in the evenings to nearby Madison Square Garden. U.S. dogdom’s most storied best in show trophy will be awarded late on Feb. 3 by David Fitzpatrick, who handled two of his Pekingese to Westminster wins in 2012 and 2021.

The Westminster show began in 1877 and has been held every year since. In 2020, it happened about a month before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. New York shutdowns began soon after.

The show regularly draws protests from animal welfare activists who consider dog breeding wrongheaded and insensitive to shelter animals that need homes. Westminster says it celebrates all dogs while promoting the preservation of “purpose-bred” canines, with their varying traits, capabilities and histories.