Delicious Grilled Vegetables, Every Time

page 3 of 6 | PREV 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6  NEXT 

Use both moist heat and dry heat to cook your vegetables. On the up side, the dry heat of grilling adds great flavor, on the down side, its way too easy to end up with overly blackened and dehydrated vegetables. In order to cook vegetables throughout, you may end up having to leave them on the grill until they are overdone on the outside. There is an easy solution, grill them long enough to have nice markings on both sides—then take them off the grill, place them in a bowl or pot and cover them tightly with plastic wrap so that no steam can escape, and leave them for 5-10 minutes. This way you create a warm moist heat environment that finishes cooking the vegetable through, without allowing them to get any browner or drier. Onions, fennel, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant are especially delicious when cooked in this manner.

Finally, cook more than you need. If you are going to go through the process of lighting the grill, you might as well cook more vegetables than you need for a single meal. Use them in omelets and sandwiches, to make pizza or grain and pasta salads. Perfectly grilled vegetables are a welcome addition to almost meal.

The following recipes were excerpted from The Complete Book of Vegetarian Grilling by Susan Geisopf-Hadler (Fair Winds Press, 2005). Ms. Geiskopf-Hadler is a long-time recipe developer and food writer and the author and coauthor of numerous books, including The Best 125 Meatless Pasta Dishes, A Cozy Book of Coffees and Cocoas, The Vegan Gourmet and The Complete Vegan Cookbook. She lives in Sacramento, California.