Not Your Usual Grilling Fare
Summer is finally starting to reach its end (can you believe September is only a couple weeks away?), so now is the time to make the most out of what’s left of the hot weather. One way to do that is to fire up your grill, but not for the usual burgers and hot dogs. The Sacramento Bee’s Gina Kim offers some wonderful alternatives to liven up your Summer grilling.
The key to picking foods that will do well on the grill is to focus on those that will benefit from “the smoky caramelization that happens only on the outdoor grill.”
Grilling adds a smoky flavor to eggs, scrambled on a grill-heated griddle. It keeps zucchini, brushed with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper before being placed directly on the rack, from getting too mushy. And it brings out the natural sugars in a head of radicchio, cut lengthwise and basted with olive oil before being put straight on the grill.
Grilling has become so popular that grills can be found in 81 percent of US households and usage of grills climbed in the past 20 years, “with more than 31 percent of American households firing up their grills at least once in a two-week period last year, according to a report by the market researcher NPD Group.” And the grilling class at the Culinary Institute of America is one of the most popular classes offered.
Keep an eye out for an upcoming episode of Real Simple on PBS (the show is named after the magazine), where Sara Quessenberry, the recipe editor for the magazine, will “show viewers how to cook an entire meal on the grill, from celery and asparagus to pineapples and peaches.”
[Photo from the Sacramento Bee]
