🎉 Memorial Day Burger Cookout

Entertaining  Updated July 2026

Memorial Day is the season opener, and that changes what can go wrong. The food is the easy part — the thing that actually derails a late-May cookout is the equipment, which has been sitting untouched since last September. This guide is about waking the grill up, cooking for cooler weather, and shopping for what's genuinely in season yet.

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The problem with the first cookout is the grill, not the food

Nearly every Memorial Day disaster story is a hardware story: the tank that turned out to be empty, the igniter that clicks and clicks, the grates welded shut with last year's carbon. None of that is a cooking problem, and none of it can be solved at 2pm with twelve people in the yard. Do the grill inspection the weekend before, not the morning of, so there's still time for a trip to the store.

Waking up a gas grill

Work through it in this order:

• Check the fuel first. Lift the tank — a full 20 lb propane tank weighs around 37 lb, an empty one about 17. If you can't tell, assume it needs filling, and keep a spare tank so the answer stops mattering.
• Inspect the hose and connection for cracks or perishing, then brush soapy water over the connection with the tank open and the burners off. Bubbles mean a leak — stop and replace the hose or regulator.
• Look inside the burner tubes. Spiders genuinely nest in them over winter, and a blocked venturi gives you a weak yellow flame or none at all. A bottle brush and a good look up each tube fixes it.
• Test the igniter before the day. Igniter batteries die quietly over a winter.
• Burn it off and scrape it. Run the grill on high with the lid down for 15 minutes, then scrape the grates while they're hot. Everything left from last season turns to ash and brushes away.
• Empty the grease tray. A season-old grease tray is the most common cause of a flare-up that ruins the first round of burgers — see how to prevent grill flare-ups.

Waking up a charcoal grill

Less to go wrong, but one thing that matters: clear out the old ash completely. Ash left in the bottom blocks the lower vents, and a charcoal grill that can't pull air runs cool and sulky — which you'll then blame on the coals. Check the vents actually swing freely, wire-brush the grate, and make sure you have more charcoal than you think plus a chimney starter. Buy the charcoal early; it's the one item that sells out locally on the Friday before.

Late May is not July — cook for the weather you have

This is the quiet difference between the season opener and a peak-summer cookout. Cool ambient air and, more importantly, wind pull heat off a grill fast: preheating takes noticeably longer than it will in August, a gas grill can struggle to hold its top-end temperature, and charcoal burns through quicker. Give yourself a longer preheat, keep the lid down between flips instead of standing over an open grill, and site the grill out of direct wind if you can. Judge the burgers on a thermometer reading of 160°F (71°C) rather than on the timings you remember from last summer.

The other half of unpredictable late-May weather is rain. Have a cast iron skillet or griddle ready indoors as a genuine plan B — see Griddle vs Grill for Burgers — because a smash burger cooked inside beats a grilled burger cooked in a downpour.

Shop for what's actually in season in May

The default cookout spread — sweetcorn, big ripe tomatoes, watermelon — is a July spread. In most of the country those are still weeks away in late May, and building the menu around them means paying a premium for underripe produce. Late spring gives you asparagus, spring onions, radishes, new potatoes, tender lettuces, herbs and the first strawberries. Grilled asparagus and a potato salad suit the weather better anyway, and a crisp lettuce is exactly what a burger wants.

Keep the first one small

Memorial Day gatherings tend to be smaller and more family-sized than the 4th of July, and that's an advantage: treat it as a rehearsal. Cook one patty style properly rather than running three — a Classic Cheeseburger covers almost everyone, with a BBQ Burger as the single bolder option — and use the day to find out what your grill does now, before the big one in July.

The rest is standard party logistics

Shopping quantities, prep timing, the topping bar, what to do with cooked burgers while the next batch cooks — none of that is Memorial Day specific, and it's all laid out in the Burger Party Checklist. For exact quantities at your guest count, run the numbers through the Burger Party Calculator.