With summer just around the corner, it’s time to take out the grill and prepare your cooking skills for the BBQ season! Everyone enjoys a quality grill and using the right recipe goes a long way towards your guests’ enjoyment.
The simplest recipes are often the best… Classic grills including burgers, sausages and vegetables are best when prepared with the right seasonings and preparation techniques!
Here are our TOP 5 favourite BBQ recipes!
BBQ Potatoes in a Foil Parcel
There are many ways to BBQ potatoes – but our favourite marries simplicity with flexibility!
- Chop potatoes to taste (either quarters or slices works best);
- Lay out a sheet of tinfoil – for size, keep in mind you’ll need a big enough piece to fold over once and then fold the edges over to form a seal;
- Coat the tinfoil with olive oil;
- Lay out the sliced potatoes evenly on one half of the tinfoil;
- Season to taste (we suggest salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika – but feel free to experiment!);
- Fold the tinfoil over, and then fold the open edges over to form a seal;
- Grill over medium heat for at least 10 minutes per side, flip over every 2-4 minutes, until the potatoes are soft.
Classic Burger Patties
Sure, you can squash some ground beef together and form a basic pattie – but for truly delicious burgers, you need a bit of extra love in there! That’s where this recipe comes in to add some “oomph” to your patties…
For approximately one pound of ground beef, mix in the following by hand:
- One large egg;
- Approximately 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs (seasoned or not);
- Salt & pepper to taste;
- Garlic powder to taste;
- Crushed red pepper to taste.
Once you’ve achieved a texture you feel is perfect, form your patties and lay them out for grilling. Remember to form the patties slightly thinner than your desired final result. They sometimes “bunch up” on the grill, giving a smaller, thicker result.
Don’t forget: it’s recommended to cook ground beef (and ground meat in general) fully. Your patties should be cooked all the way through to the center for safe enjoyment.
The “Perfect Trick” for Cooking Sausages
There’s nothing better than a fat, juicy Italian-style sausage for dinner! Straight from the grill and eaten with vegetables and those potatoes from the recipe above, you can’t go wrong… Unless you burn or undercook them, that is!
Sausages are among the most difficult meats to grill because of their size. You need to cook them all the way through – but that can be tough without burning them. You also want to keep the juices in there for flavour and texture – but if you’re cooking them too quickly, they often burst, and the juices escape!
Here is our perfect sausage-cooking technique, from experience:
- Pre-heat the grill to about 450°F;
- Turn one side OFF and the other side to medium-high heat;
- Sear the sausages for 1-2 minutes per side on the HOT side of the grill. This forms a thin cooked layer on the outside to help keep the juices in;
- Move the sausages over to the COOL side of the grill and let them slow cook for approximately 15 minutes per side. The residual heat from the HOT side of the grill will cook your sausages evenly all the way through.
Vegetable Grilling
A good BBQ party wouldn’t be complete without throwing a few veggies into the mix! Depending on which vegetables you’re cooking, there are many ways to give them the perfect taste and texture.
- Carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, etc: using the technique above, throw some vegetables into that foil parcel along with your potatoes! This will give more flavour to the potatoes AND save you some work;
- Asparagus: season with salt, pepper, olive oil and parmesan. Place perpendicular to the grill and cook on medium-high heat for 5-10 minutes until char marks appear;
- Peppers: peppers can be grilled whole or in slices. For slices, try skewering them with onions for better, more even results;
- Mushrooms: Portobello mushrooms are a BBQ classic! Treat them like burger patties, grilling for 5-10 minutes per side for a vegetarian alternative to hamburgers.
- Corn: corn should be grilled until char marks begin to appear.