5 Surprising Ways to Get Most Value Out of Your Grill
Many people associate grilling with tossing meat on an open flame. Roasting a big steak or a juicy hamburger over fire is an American tradition, after all.
But the grill is far more than just a place to cook meat. It can serve a number of purposes, especially if you have open space on the grill. After all, leaving open space on your grill is a waste of perfectly good heat.
All of these tricks have one key advantage in common: They keep you from heating up the house for extra additions to the meal. On a hot day, no one wants to warm up the kitchen, and doing so makes the heating and cooling work overtime. Save yourself that extra heat. Use your grill for more than just a meat cooker.
Here are five surprising uses for your grill that are perfect alongside your grilled entrees.
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Cook side dishes on the grill. There's nothing better than taking some fresh vegetables, putting a pat of butter and an ice cube and perhaps a bit of seasoning in with them, putting them on a pile on a sheet of aluminum foil, wrapping it up, and tossing it on the grill right beside your grilled burgers and steaks and chicken breasts.
The closed environment inside of the foil allows the cube and the butter to melt. The water steams the vegetables while the butter gently coats them, resulting in an absolutely delicious side course. There are few things better than sliced potatoes or fresh asparagus spears cooked this way.
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Bake bread on the grill while cooking other things low and slow. Take an old bread pan, thoroughly grease the inside of it, put some bread dough in there, and toss it on the grill right beside whatever you're cooking. A typical loaf of bread takes about 40 minutes or so on the grill, depending on the heat level -- just watch it until the top is solid and golden.
Because of the relatively long cook time, you won't want to do this next to fast-cooking items such as burgers or hot dogs, but if you're cooking something for a longer period, bread works wonderfully on the grill. Plus, the smoke of the grill adds just a touch of flavor to the crust that can't be matched by anything else.
Cook dry beans on the grill. All you need to do here is fill up a pan with water, dump in your dry beans and stick that pan directly on the grill. The heat will bring that water to a boil, and the beans will cook nicely in there. Once you're done grilling, just close the grill lid and let it retain as much heat in there as possible.
The beans may need a bit more cooking later, but this technique will do most of the cooking for you. It's a great way to get double duty out of the grill at lunchtime when you need some beans for supper. If you're cooking something low and slow, you might just find that the beans are done and ready to use with a side dish when the main course is done, making a pairing like black beans and barbecued ribs work out perfectly.
Grill some fruit? Absolutely! If you want a special, unusual treat, try slicing some pineapple into round discs and grilling it. It doesn't need too long on there -- just get some nice grill marks on each side of the pineapple rounds. You can do the exact same thing with slices of watermelon. Just toss them on the grill for a minute or two on each side. Slice open a peach or a pear and grill it. Many fruits work wonderfully with this.
What's surprising is that grilling brings out this extra level of rich sweetness in the fruit. You can eat the sweet fruit fresh off the grill if you prefer, but it's also delicious to immediately chill the fruit and use it for other things, like using grilled pineapple in a chilled fruit salad.
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Boil pasta on the grill. You can fill up a pan with water and cook pasta on the grill, too. Just raise the water to a boil, add the pasta, wait 10 minutes or so, depending on the pasta type, then remove the whole pan and serve the pasta.
The boiling water adds moisture to the cooking environment of the grill, making the main dish more succulent, and the pasta turns out perfectly, too. If you're doing something like grilling chicken breasts to slice over noodles or grilling fish to pair with pasta, this is perfect.
There's nothing like getting extra value out of your grill on a hot summer day.
Trent Hamm is the founder of The Simple Dollar, a website covering practical personal finance issues for everyone. He is the author of two books, "The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams" and "365 Ways to Live Cheap." He has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He currently lives in Iowa with his wife and three children.
