How Grilling Can Help You Survive Thanksgiving
The Bolshoi Theater choreographer was still puzzling over how to calculate the cooking time for Thanksgiving meals. Your oven and stovetop are the main stage, where every performer, from the main dancers (your turkey) to the corps (your sides), is eager to dance into the frame. So let’s shake things up a little and take some of the cooking to a different place—on the grill.
Of course, if it’s snowing or raining, you might not particularly want to spend time standing around the barbecue, but it’s a safe and fun way to get away from the heat of the kitchen and free up space for the things you really need. it is needed like your pies.
Don’t be intimidated by your grill. I know it looks different, but it’s still just a heat source and you can control it as such. I once baked a three-layer cake for 50 people on a cheap grill bought at the grocery store, so don’t worry. (I will not answer additional questions). Some grills, like mine, even have a side burner that can be used like a regular burner on the stove. Here are some ways to use your barbecue grill to get rid of some holiday food.
Main event
Hear me out: Grilled turkey is a refreshing option for Thanksgiving. Just imagine: grill marks, meat cooked yourself. Even in grilling, there are many variations. You can add a few minutes of hot smoke at various points to get a nice light smokiness, or completely smoke the entire bird with cold smoke. I can find no reason in theoretical physics why a beer can turkey wouldn’t work if you had the right tall boy. If you have a rotisserie, a grilled bird will be the perfect juicy dish to bring to the table.
Side show
Of course, you can grill vegetable side dishes. Grilled Brussels sprouts will be delicious with a slight char. Broccoli is easy to cook, and you can certainly go from whipped or mashed potatoes to grilled potatoes, even sweet potatoes. Slice the sweet potatoes into thick slices, toss them with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, then grill them to perfection. Boil the new potatoes inside, even in the microwave, and then grill them. You can put almost anything in a foil bag and grill it, be it mushrooms with butter and garlic or asparagus with sea salt and lemon juice.
Like a dish warmer
If you’ve made entire casseroles in advance, be it mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, vegetables, or trays of stuffing, you can literally take the entire baking sheet (oven-safe) and place it directly on the grill to reheat. Large foil pans are ideal for this, which you can buy in the store at this time of year, so it shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary.
For this to work, you need to use indirect heat and turn the grill into an oven. Turn on one burner but leave the others off. On a charcoal grill, move all the hot coals to one side. Place the pans on the opposite side of the grill from the heat and close the lid. This will prevent the bottom of the pans from burning. Leave the pans in long enough for them to warm up and then remove them. The only thing a grill can’t do is crisp up your food.
Just remember, if this is part of the plan, make sure you have enough charcoal or propane for the day, as well as a good pair of boots so you don’t slip and fall walking back and forth to the grill.