When you’ve got the grill lit up for your meat, cook your vegetables on it as well instead of heating up the stove. Grilling vegetables can be as simple as you’d like or you can get a little fancy. You can grill a variety of vegetables including bell peppers (whatever color you fancy), yellow and green summer squash, onions, corn on the cob, mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoes, green onions–pretty much anything. If you can roast it, you can grill it. Just oil them first and season with various herbs or just simple salt and pepper.
Simplest Grilled Vegetables
Slice the vegetables so you have pieces big enough to handle. For a smaller eggplant, zucchini or yellow squash, I slice them lengthwise. For asparagus, just trim the thicker ends off. For onions, I slice across so I have rings. Coat the vegetables with a bit of oil, then salt and pepper them. This works great for any vegetable that is large enough to cut into manageable pieces like this.
Lay them on the grill across the grates so they don’t fall through. Cook, turning halfway through.
The time will vary depending on how hot your grill is and how thick the vegetables are. Experiment a bit. Generally 5-10 minutes works well for us for software vegetables like squash, eggplant and onions.
The onions will fall apart as they cook unless you’re more coordinated than I am! You could put them on burgers after they’re cooked or just serve them as a side dish. They are amazingly good just done in this simplest method. People who don’t think they like eggplant will eat it up! I like to use the smaller Japanese or Chinese eggplants for grilling but if you have a larger one, just slice it in rounds.
You can also husk corn and grill it. Again, rub a little oil into it and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then grill for 10-15 minutes, turning so it gets evenly roasted.
Grilling Vegetables on Skewers
Grilling vegetables on skewers works great for those that are a bit smaller, like mushrooms and cherry tomatoes. You can also cut eggplant, onions and zucchini in chunks rather than slices if you’re doing skewers. Use metal or wooden skewers (or even stalks of rosemary!). If you use wooden ones, soak them in water for half an hour while you are prepping the vegetables.
It looks pretty and is fun to serve kabobs with meat and vegetables interchanged. Just make sure you cut the meat and vegetables into pieces that will all cook about the same time. Alternately, you can create skewers of meat only and others with just vegetables. For the ones pictured to the left, I had skewers of marinated chicken, skewers of pineapple chunks and just laid the green onions directly on the grill.
You can also pull the veggies off the skewers to serve, as I’ve done with the squash, red and green peppers, and red onions to the right.
You can marinate the vegetables in a simple vinaigrette or play with seasoning them with various herbs.
i love anything grilled. i want to try this
List of favorites = nearly all vegetables! 🙂
However, if I have to pick one, I’ll go with the asparagus that still grows wild near where we live in Central IL.
Unbeatable!
I purchased a grilling rack that you can either use for skewers, fish or veggies. I chop up zucchini, asparagus, onion, & green peppers. toss them lightly with olive oil, salt/pepper. Grill them until they have nice grill marks on them. I put them in a nice bowl. In another bowl, I whisk vinegar, olive oil, a tiny bit of dijon mustard and about a palm full of parmesan cheese and toss into the grilled veggies…yum!