Thursday, September 02, 2010

Easy Grilled Veggies

Labor Day weekend; the turning point to the end of summer; summer toys start to get put away while temperatures start to fall  and we prepare for falling leaves. 

The last month or so I have pulled out an old college memory  -  how I learned to grill whitefish -   and am working it into a way to easily grill veggies (with minimal  mess). There are things about this that still need to be perfected, but I will give you the pictorial overview with a few written instructions below, if you find variations that work better - I'd love to hear. 

One last thing before I start, this is my favorite way to make fajita's for a crowd. You can make everything individually and everyone can pick what they want to put in their custom fajita. I didn't do fajita tonight. I have been out of town for 13 days and just used veggies from my garden to make a simple veggie dinner.

 

 

 

 
So here we go.



You will need:
 - parchment  paper, 
 - aluminum foil, butter (or, in my case, vegan butter or olive oil),
 - some spices. I like (no, LOVE) Traders Joes 21 Seasoning.  It has no salt in it and no preservatives.  


1. Chop your veggies.  (However you want; I'm not a control freak.... most of the time - if you can handle a knife, you can chop your veggies however you want.) Just keep in mind the thicker the slice the longer it will take to grill.

2. Prepare your first 'bag' by placing a sheet of aluminum foil down first, then place a sheet of parchment paper on top.  The parchment paper is going to be enclosed by the aluminum foil when this is complete.


broccoli, butter and seasoning
green peppers, onions, olive oil and seasoning
sweet potatoes with cinnamon, butter and a little bit of sugar





fold parchment paper around your veggies



fold aluminum foil around parchment paper





close ends and you have a bag!

place on grill and flip about every 4 minutes

So far I have found that sweet potatoes take the longest to grill - about 20-25 minutes if the grill is pre-heated.
Everything else seems to take about 15 minutes, but carefully check (without burning yourself) before removing from the grill. Each grill can be a little different.


Note: I boiled the corn tonight - that I haven't experimented with the bag concept for corn on the cob....yet.