Monday, June 23, 2008

Adventures in Grilling - Part One

Where two suburban dwellers attempt to master the art of grilling with charcoal. Today's episode, the first foray...

We decided to grill something simple for our first attempt, and settled on turkey burgers and grilled corn. I used the "Quick Turkey Burger" recipe from America's Best New Recipes. It called for mixing the turkey meat with ricotta cheese, and spices.

I tried doing the Bobby Flay method of grilled corn preparation, where you pull back the husks, clean out the silks, and then place the husks back on the corn, but my husks didn't want to go onto the corn, and I was reminded again why Bobby Flay gets on my nerves.

So, I stuck with the old standby method of grilling the corn wrapped in aluminum foil with butter, salt, and pepper.

Corn!




Grilling Implements of Destruction:



After the food was prepped, it was time to light the grill. We used the cowboy hardwood charcoal from Trader Joe's and a chimney. I think we were a little impatient/too excited to grill because we didn't wait until they were hot enough before we poured them into the grill. So, we ended up adding some of the easy light/less awesome charcoal we had gotten with the grills to help kick up the heat after an hour of waiting for the grill to be hot.

First attempt at lighting the charcoal:


Food ready for the grill:


Cooking the food was no problem at all, and soon we were ready to feast on the burgers and corn we'd prepared as our first meal from the grill! I decided I wanted to try the corn mexican style, and used this recipefrom Tyler Florence for the corn toppings.

Toppings for corn:


It took a little longer than expected, but we were soon ready to try our first meal from the grill!

First Grilled Meal (I realize this food is not very appealing in photographs, but it was definitely yummy )


Stay tuned this summer as we attempt to prepare more food on the grill in our Adventures in Grilling!

2 comments:

Meghan said...

I am SO happy you attempted grilling... congrats... You did good...also when things don't work, you've got the tools and the ideas to make it happen anyway!

:)

The husks things take a bit to master.. but I've found that they dont have to be perfectly wrapped...but they do have to be there for about 30 minutes.

KUDOS dahling.

Anonymous said...

I think those Turkey burgers look fantastic!! Your photo did them just right. Great first attempt, no mistakes and you were able to eat all of it! Four stars in my book....