Broil means cooking by direct, radiant heat, most often from an element above the food inside an oven. Grill means cooking over direct heat, typically outdoors on a rack over flames or coals. Picture broiling as flipping the oven upside down, and grilling as standing at the barbecue.
The core difference
Broil is heat applied from above, usually inside an oven, while grill is cooking over direct heat, typically outdoors.
- broil — to cook by direct, radiant heat, or to expose something to great heat: She broiled the salmon fillets until the tops were lightly charred.
- grill — to cook food over direct heat, typically outdoors: He grilled chicken and vegetables for the whole family.
- grill — a rack of metal bars used for cooking food over direct heat: We fired up the grill for burgers on Saturday afternoon.
How to tell them apart
The easiest way to remember the difference is direction: broiling sends heat down onto the food from above, while grilling puts the food above the heat source. That is why broiling almost always happens inside an oven under an overhead element, whereas grilling is strongly associated with outdoor cooking over a fire.
The mix-up shows up most often in recipes, where an instruction to broil something can leave cooks searching an oven for a setting that is not obviously labelled, especially outside places where the word is standard kitchen vocabulary. Grill also has a completely unrelated sense: to question someone intensively, as when a detective grills a suspect for hours.
