Ashton Kutcher is on fire

Ashton Kutcher is known as an actor, celebrity Twitterer, Punk'd icon and sometime goofball. But barbecue grill master?

“I'm a student of the 'cue,” he says while acknowledging that he doesn't get to grill out much.

Kutcher, who stars as a super-spy alongside Katherine Heigl in the action comedy Killers (in theaters June 4), grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and his mom moved the family out to the country when he was 13. While living out on a gravel road, “I was raised on the grill,” Kutcher says. “I don't think in the summer we ever cooked inside.”

The greatest thing you could have as a kid was steak, he says, but his family also grilled up barbecue ribs and a secret recipe for turkey tenderloin.

“Oh, man, that and corn. There's nothing like grilled corn on the cob,” says Kutcher, 32. He playfully refuses to give away that long-standing Kutcher grilling secret — “That's a family recipe, man!” — but he can tell you this: “The mistake that most people make is assuming that grilling starts once you light the grill, which is so wrong. Grilling starts the day before, when you decide that you're going to grill tomorrow. That's when the marinating process begins, and anything that's going to be brilliant on a grill is going to be marinated.”

Like his character in Killers, Kutcher has made a life for himself and his wife, actress Demi Moore, in the Hollywood suburbs. But between his movies, his role as TV producer — the second season of ABC reality show True Beauty premieres May 31, and Numbnuts airs this summer on MTV — and talking social-media strategies with Bill Gates, he doesn't have that much time to enjoy cooking.

When his family gets a chance to escape to their place in Idaho, he'll grill for Moore and her daughters, Rumer, 21, Scout, 18, and Tallulah, 16. “The girls don't like a whole lot of red meat, but they'll eat a little bit of bird,” he says. “It's a grilling buffet.”

Kutcher prefers charcoal for grilling, and he has a tip for those who worry about food cooking evenly: Next time you grill, put the charcoals in a coffee can open at both ends, light them and let them get really hot, then pull the can out and let the coals spread out. “It heats the charcoal faster. You've always got some bricks that aren't heated. But if you use the coffee can, they all heat equally, and all your meat will cook evenly.”