My neighbor Marcus got a kettle grill about six weeks ago. He'd told me about it the week before — put it on layaway, apparently, which tells you how seriously he was taking this. He came over one Saturday with his hand out and a look on his face that meant he wanted me to say something useful.

So I told him the one thing I think actually matters when you're starting out: leave it alone.

He didn't understand what I meant, which is fair. It sounds like advice you'd give to someone who worries too much. But I meant it literally. Put the food on the grate, close the lid, and go sit somewhere.

He looked at me like I'd told him to leave a baby unattended.

The thing about Marcus is that I've watched him grill from my back porch a few times since he got that grill. He's got energy, that's for sure. He's over there with his tongs and his spatula, turning things every ninety seconds. His arm barely has time to bend before he's back at the grill flipping something. Chicken thighs, burgers, pork chops — they all get treated the same way, like something that might escape if he's not watching.

The results look fine from a distance. I haven't eaten his food, so I can't say. But I've seen the color of those chicken thighs when he pulls them off, and they're pale where they should be dark. The crust you're looking for — that dry, slightly crackled surface that happens when protein hits heat and stays there — that's not forming because the food never stays in one place long enough.

I went over last week when he was grilling burgers. I asked him to just try one thing. Put a patty on the grate, and don't touch it for four minutes. Four minutes. He could time it on his phone.

He said, "What if it burns?"

I said, "Then you'll know your heat's too high. But it won't."

So he set a patty down, closed the lid — which was already an improvement, because he normally leaves the lid propped — and we went and stood by his fence. He kept looking over his shoulder. At about two minutes he took a step toward the grill. I said, "Marcus." He stopped.

At four minutes, he went and lifted the lid. The bottom of that burger had a color I don't think he'd seen on one of his own burgers before. Dark brown, almost dry at the edges, with the grate marks pressed clean into the surface. He flipped it and his eyebrows went up.

I told him he could do another three minutes now. He did. When he pressed it lightly with the spatula, just a small press, you could feel it was firm but not dried out. He pulled it off and we split it.

He didn't say anything for a minute. Then he said, "I've been grilling wrong the whole time."

I told him it wasn't wrong, it's just what people do when they're new to it. Flipping keeps you engaged. It feels like you're doing something. The hard part is understanding that the grill is already doing something — it's building heat at the contact point, breaking down the proteins on that surface, making flavor — and every time you move the food away, you interrupt that. You have to start over. You spend the whole cook starting over.

When meat sits on a hot grate and stays there, the crust builds. That's where most of the flavor is. It's also what makes the food come off cleanly — when the crust forms, the meat releases from the grate on its own. If you're fighting to get a spatula under something, that's the grill telling you it's not ready yet.

Marcus asked me how long things should go before flipping. I gave him some rough numbers: burgers, four to five minutes per side if the fire's medium-high. Chicken thighs, eight minutes per side minimum, probably more. Steaks, depends on thickness. The point isn't the exact time — it's the principle. Go by what you see, not by the urge. When the sides of a burger start to turn gray about halfway up, it's time to flip. Not before.

The hardest part to explain was the lid. Marcus kept his open most of the time, which meant the heat was escaping constantly. He was grilling with a half-strength fire. With the lid closed and a two-zone setup — coals on one side, nothing on the other — you get convective heat circulating around the food, like an oven. That's how you cook thick things through without burning the outside. But you can only do it if the lid's closed.

He went in after a while and came back with a beer for each of us. He said he'd never had anyone actually explain that to him. Just watched videos online, and the videos always make it look like the grilling is the dramatic part — the flames, the sizzle, the constant motion.

I told him the dramatic part is setting the fire up right. After that, your job is basically to stay out of the way.

He's been grilling differently since. I can tell from the yard — he's sitting more. Fewer trips to the grill. I caught his eye one evening from across the fence and he held up a thumb. Something had come out right.

That's mostly all you can do for someone who's learning. Give them one thing. Tell them why. Let them discover that it works.

The rest, the grill teaches.