Veggie Burgers

This will be the first of many nights grilling veggie burgers on the Coleman...as long as this experience goes smoothly. 

Friday night, veggie burger night. How hard could veggie burgers be? Heat grill, remove from box and bag, heat until hot. Those are easily, famous last words.Let's hope not. Big D and I eat veggie burgers every Friday, and it would be really nice no to have to microwave them anymore.

I think one key move is to get the buns and all the extras ready before you do anything else. Let's face it, veggie burgers aren't hard to prepare. All you gotta do is heat them up. No worries about how well done they are because there's no meat. No nasty bacteria to worry about. Another thing that's nice about veggie burgers? No shrinkage...on the grill. I hate it when that happens!

So I got the fries in the oven and the buns all prepared. What am I forgetting. Holy cow! I can't forget the cheese! Everything was ready.

I got the grill fired up whilst making the other preparations, so it was ready to go. i figured, since veggie burgers cook pretty quickly i would keep them a little closer to the center and away from the burners.

 After a couple of minutes I flipped em...kind of. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Crap! These things better not fall apart!

I let them go on the other side, but this time for a little longer. Flip? Here we go. Hey! No problem WTF?! Why didn't this side stick? Oh look, delicious grilled crust. This side got cooked better. I see how it works. I probably didn't let the first side cook long enough. No problemo.

A few more minutes and both sides were done.

The outcome? Delicious! You can't really mess up a veggie burger, and they tasted way better than when microwaved.

Note: I bought some cooking spray made especially for grilling, so I am going to try that out this week and see how it goes. Because even though I think I know what went wrong, it's a pain in the booty to wash stuck on veggie burger from the grill grates.

2 successful dishes...maybe I am starting to get a hang of this. Hmm. I guess time will tell!

Grilled, Marinated Eggplant

Not being deterred from my experience earlier in the week, I decided it was too nice to let Thursday evening go to waste by cooking inside, so it was time to fire up the grill. With my new, nonstick grill sheet in hand and a huge eggplant in the queue I thought it would be the perfect marriage. So I peeled and sliced the eggplant and marinated in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper, threw it all together in a baggie, shook it up and let it marinate in the fridge for half an hour or so.

I've never grilled eggplant before, but I've heard good things, it seems like a natural choice since eggplant is firm, not too juicy, and absorbs flavors pretty easily.

I fired up the grill to get everything preheated accordingly, got out my grill sheet, put the eggplant on a plate, grabbed the tongs and spatula and started the cooking. Of course, learning from my previous experience, I turned the heat on low before putting the eggplant on the grill. I didn't need my food to come off extra crispy!

I was pleased, the eggplant fit on my grill sheet perfectly.

5 minutes on one side, and flip to cook for another 5 minutes.

After the eggplant was done I put it back on the plate, brushed with a little bit of the marinade and topped with some freshly chopped basil from my basil plant. 

I think you'll see that it looked delicious. And let me tell you, it tasted just as good! Success!  Hopefully this is the first of many more yummy grilled meals to come!

 

Outcome = delicious

Lessons learned:

1) eggplant will sweat a little bit when it's marinated, there's no need to have it swimming in the marinade when you first put it together

2) Put the thicker pieces closer to the burners and the thinner pieces further away.

Views from my patio. How could anyone resist grilling on such a beautiful evening?

The Maiden Voyage

Ok, so I was really stoked when I got the grill. More than stoked. I was ecstatic. July was over so I felt like a lot of the summer had been wasted with no grilling. Boo. So I still had a small problem. I love me some charcoal grilled salmon. A friend of mine recommended trying a cedar plank. Problem solved. Not the same thing, but a decent alternative. So I've got my cedar and I've got my coho, and I've got what sounds like a good recipe. I put my plank in water before I left for work so it would be nice and saturated for cooking.


Things I already know for BBQing:
be safe: keep anything flammable - fire outside the grill is bad
Use hot pads and metal cooking utensils (or silicon) - plastic melts kids
Wash anything that raw meat has touched-meat juice carries bad bacteria 
be prepared - have everything ready before you put anything on the grill because you gotta be attentive to the food.

So I was ready. I seasoned the fish, had my cedar plank soaked, the basting sauce was ready.
Time to fire up the grill! Push of a button and we're off. (I followed all the directions for turning on the grill the first time, no worries)

So, I put the plank on the grill, put the salmon on the plank and closed the lid. Woo! The recipe said the grill should be around 350 degrees. The grill thermometer looked a little low so I turned up the flame a little bit. BIIIIIIIIG MISTAKE! A couple minuted later there was smoke. Not steam. Smoke. I opened up the lid. Oh look, my plank is on fire! And not just a little bit on the corners, it was on FIRE!.

I didn't panic. First i turned off the grill. Ok, so it totally sucks that to turn off the grill you have to the turn the nob toward high to get to the off position. Nice to fuel the fire, literally. Then I blew on it. Yeah, that didn't work so much. Close the lid and contain the fire. Maybe the CO2 (that's right, I am getting sciencey) will put it out. Stupid vents!So I turned to my boyfriend. "Uh honey, the wood is on fire, what do I do? Should I pour water on it?"  Crap! I don't want to ruin the fish, but the cedar is on fire so that could ruin it too. Poop. Ok, get some water. Open the lid. Yup, still on fire. Pour slowly, avoid the salmon at all costs. Drip, drip, one side out! Sweet! Small trickle, other side out! Sweet! That's all I needed to put out the fire? Awesome! The fish still looks ok...but not cooked. Damn!

Luckily none of the neighbors say the fire, so the grill hasn't been confiscated! ;)

So, I took the plank off, oiled the grill, turned it back on, and threw the fish on. Ok, so I need to interrupt the story here and say that by this time it was dark. I got started a little late. I thought I would be able to beat the sun, but I didn't, especially with the little fire incident. So I let the fish cook for what I thought would be a sufficient amount of time, scraped it off the grill (no joke. Thankfully only the skin was sacrificed.) and then took it inside. We gave it one look, still not cooked. Oh lord. My boyfriend just looked at me like, ok, what do you do now (that's right, he has no idea how to cook). Last resort. I crank up the toaster oven, put some foil on the baking sheet and throw the fish in. If this doesn't work nothing will, and I'm screwed. I pulled the 3-times cooked fish out 10 minuted later and...voila! Perfectly cooked. No really. It was nice a tender. Yay! Even better, it didn't taste like smoke, but it did taste like cedar. Nice!

So, my first time out using the gas grill, not so much successful, but dinner got cook, and I am not giving up, just taking notes. Here are my lessons learned:

My grill cooks hot.
When grilling on a plank keep the heat low and let it cook longer.
Maybe try putting foil on the ends of the plank to protect it.
May try getting a non-stick grill sheet when grilling directly on the grill (got one yesterday)
II am told putting salmon in foil packets helps seal in flavors, and keeps it from sticking to the grill (duh!), maybe I'll try that next time.
Basting sauce on salmon results in in added flavor. try marinating or the foil technique next time.

So the final results:
grilling = disaster
food = delicious (because can you really go wrong with salmon? I think not.)

Enjoy these pictures of the aftermath:

Charred cedar plank. There was fire here.

Yup, that salmon skin is really stuck on there. Nothing a little steel wool and elbow grease can't take care of.

In the beginning

This spring I moved to a new place. It was definitely and upgrade from the hole i had been living in. There was only one problem. No charcoal grills allowed. The old people (I live in a condo complex that's filled with retired people) say that it's a fire hazard. I love charcoal grill in the summer. Grilled salmon. Yum. Anyways, so I decided I had to bite the bullet and get a gas grill. But what to get? I don't have much room and there's only 2 of us. I considered the options then decided...then changed my mind and considered again. I finally decided on the Coleman RoadTrip grill. It's big enough for what I need but folds away for easy storage.

Hooray! My grill is here and ready to go. Let the fun and eating) begin!

The Coleman