Delicious Outdoor Grilling Hacks & Recipes

Bring Your Cooking Outdoors This Summer

The weather has turned hot in Sonoma County and I can’t think of a better time to shift a lot of cooking to the outdoors, enjoying our wonderful evenings, and some outdoor cooking on your grill. If you are like a lot of us, when it comes to your outdoor grill you think of your favorite meat dish, but there is so much more that you can cook on your gas grill.

We want to help expand your grilling repertoire and share with you how your BBQ can cook many different types of food, maybe some you haven’t thought of before. Plus, there is something about cooking and eating outdoors that just makes food taste better.

Grilling Accessories Expand Your Grilling Capabilities

You can expand your grilling experience greatly with some handy accessories. It’s a common misconception that grilling is limited to only one type of cooking. The purchase of a few key accessories expands what you can cook on a grill many times over. Plus, trying new and innovative recipes makes cooking more enjoyable. Smoke boxes, griddles, grill baskets, and grill-friendly cooking dishes truly expand your cooking and grilling options.

Cast Iron Griddles:

A cast iron griddle is one of the best grilling accessories you can buy because it gives you another way to cook on your outdoor grill with more delicate foods while sealing in juices. a cast iron griddle has no handle and can cook everything from pancakes to fish.

Both Alfresco and Caliber Grills makes a wonderful griddle top that fits their gas grills and makes grilling your favorite foods so simple. Griddles can have you cooking breakfast, lunch, or dinner fare on your outdoor grill. Think of pancakes, eggs, bacon, smash burgers, grilled fruit, or fajitas!

Grill Baskets:

Grill baskets open up a whole new range of food that you will enjoy cooking on your grill. Fish, sliced vegetables, and more delicate foods lend themselves well to being cooked in a grill basket.

Alfresco grills makes a very versatile grilling basket that allows you to grill more delicate foods. This clever grilling accessory will allow you to sauté vegetables, small pieces of meat, and fish with ease. Grilling fruit brings out the best of their flavors and adds a caramel-like flavor to your finished fruit whether pineapple or peaches.

Grill-Friendly Frying Pan:

A grill-friendly frying pan opens up so many possibilities for any meal. Preparing omelets or flambéing bananas just became a possibility with a grill-friendly frying pan.  A grill-friendly frying pan has a metal handle and a cast iron frying pan is some of the best. We love making our yearly homemade spaghetti sauce on our outdoor grill, it takes that many hours to process and moves it outdoors where it won’t heat up the house on a hot summer day.

Smoker Box:

A smoker box turns your grill into an outdoor smoker without the need of purchasing another outdoor appliance.

Both Caliber Grills and Alfresco Grills make smoker boxes especially designed for their grills that turn these grills into smokers for meat or fish without buying another outdoor kitchen appliance. These smoker boxes are designed to hold wood chips and they sit on top of your gas grill imparting wonderful flavors into whatever food you are smoking.

So Many Delicious Grilling Possibilities

Expanding your horizons when it comes to what is possible to cook on your outdoor grill makes cooking more of an adventure and the options are endless. Do like they do in Ecuador, where barbecued ‘cuy’ or guinea pig is a local delicacy!

• Burgers: This is probably what all of us think of when we think of grilling that harkens from childhood memories of some great-tasting BBQ burgers. But grills have come a long way since the BBQ when we were kids and gas grills burgers so well. See our recipe for Smash Burger Tacos below.
• Fruit: Fresh fruit and grilling just go together. Everything from peaches to plums, watermelon to pears is amazingly prepared on a gas grill. See our Brandied Grilled Peach recipe below.
• Steak: Gas grills are great for searing meat and then bringing the temperature down to finish the cooking process and retain the juiciness. So many different cuts of meat can be grilled and it’s not just beef that grills well, try pork steak and see how tasty a meal it makes.
• Chicken: Whether you have a rotisserie or not chicken is delicious cooked on a grill. We love to marinate our chicken before grilling to impart some great flavors but try rubs too. Chicken is a great base for kebobs made with fresh vegetables and pineapple. Using a meat thermometer makes sure you are not overcooking your chicken. Think leftovers for Chicken Caesar Salad or fajitas!
• Vegetables: You haven’t tasted great corn on the cob till you have made grilled corn on the cob, it’s easy and tastes so good! Many different vegetables do very well grilling, such as asparagus, and roasted peppers, the options are endless.
• Pizza, Calzones & Focaccia: When you start using your grill as a pizza oven you probably won’t make pizza in your oven again, at least in the summer. The flavors that a grill brings out in pizza, calzone, and focaccia can’t be beat. We give you our recipe for 5-Minute Focaccia below.

Amazing Smash Burger Tacos Recipe

This recipe is a blend of traditional burgers and fajitas that we think will become one of your favorite grilled meals.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• Your choice of cheese slices or if you are more daring crumbled blue cheese
• 8 flour tortillas
• ½ teaspoon each garlic powder and onion powder or use Lipton Onion Soup Mix
• Lettuce, tomatoes, grilled red onions, peppers, or whatever toppings you love

Directions:

1. Season your beef and portion your beef into an ice cream scoop size
2. Heat up a large skillet or grill to high heat on your gas grill and heat up another pan on lower heat to the other side of your grill
3. Place the beef on the grill and top with a tortilla and smash it down gently, depending on the size of your grill and griddle you can usually do a couple at a time
4. Make sure the tortilla is pressing down on the grill so the beef patty is very thin and cook for about 3 minutes and then flip over
5. Transfer the smash burger taco to the other skillet and add your cheese till it melts
6. Remove from the heat and top with your favorite toppings and enjoy!

Brandied Grilled Peaches Recipe

This is one of our favorite summer desserts and you can substitute pears instead of peaches if you wish. The perfect finish to this dish is topping it with your favorite ice cream and enjoying every mouthful!

Ingredients:

• 4 ripe peaches or pears
• ¼ cup of your favorite brandy
• Orange zest
• 2 tablespoons sugar and you can substitute honey or maple syrup if you wish
• A scoop or two of your favorite ice cream

Directions:

1. Preheat your gas grill to high
2. Half and de-stone your peaches or slice your pears in half, place in a grill-friendly baking dish and drizzle with brandy, grate some orange zest over your fruit
3. Arrange your fruit so they are in a single layer cut side up and place the baking dish under the grill for 5-6 minutes or until the fruit is golden and the juices are bubbling
4. Serve with ice cream and enjoy!

5-Minute Focaccia Recipe

Yes, you are reading that right, 5-minutes from dough to oven! I couldn’t believe it when I tried this for the first time. Ok, it was sort of a desperation move, I was craving homemade focaccia but I just didn’t have the hours for two risings and all the fuss that day. I knew I had pizza dough from the store in the refrigerator.

Be sure to preheat your grill to 450 degrees and you will watch the focaccia as it bakes because everyone’s gas grill heats a little differently and the last thing you want is over-baked focaccia!

Ingredients:

• Store-bought pizza dough
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Sea salt flakes
• Italian herb blend or your choice of herbs; from rosemary to oregano, minced garlic to whatever your imagination dictates

Directions:

1. Preheat the grill to 450 degrees. Use an inexpensive oven thermometer to get the temperature approximately correct, BBQ’s do not heat as consistently as an oven, if its a little off, the focaccia will still taste amazing
2. Take your dough out of the refrigerator at least 5-10 minutes prior to making your focaccia
3. Dust your countertop with flour and place the pizza dough on the counter to rest for 5-10 minutes
4. A 9×13 in a grill-friendly baking pan works well for this recipe
5. Drizzle a generous amount of olive oil in the bottom of the baking dish and swish it around until the bottom is well covered
6. If you are using an Italian herb blend, which I like to blend into the pizza dough, this is the time to gently knead the herbs into the dough
7. Take your pizza dough and stretch it width-wise and then lengthwise, using your hands or a rolling pin. You want the dough to be about the size of the pan when finished and don’t overwork the dough
8. Once the dough is in the pan you will drizzle olive oil over the top of the pizza dough. I like to drizzle a little olive oil and then brush over the dough to distribute it well
9. Use your knuckle to make indentations in the dough top
10. Sprinkle the dough with your desired herbs and then dust with sea salt flakes
11. Put your baking dish with focaccia in the grill and watch it carefully, it should take between 15-20 minutes to have homemade focaccia
12. Take the focaccia out of the grill and let cool in the pan

I like to slice what we are going to use that meal and then put the leftover focaccia in a gallon plastic bag and put it in the refrigerator, it will keep for days. You can serve up your focaccia by reheating for 3-5 minutes by the slice in a 350-degree oven. This focaccia is also great for making sandwiches.

Enjoy cooking this summer on your outdoor gas grill. We love the creative and delicious meals we have cooked on ours over the years. Be sure to stop by Villa Terrazza to see what other outdoor appliances we can tempt you to use to expand your outdoor cooking possibilities!