I don’t know about you, but when this last long, cold winter was dragging me down, I dreamed about summer BBQs. Is there anything better than relaxing outside with friends and family and eating food hot off the grill paired with a crisp white wine or rosé?
Whether you’re kicking back on the grass of the Eastern Prom, a picnic table at Two Lights or in your own backyard, grilling’s not just for tailgating anymore — foodies have gotten into the game and there’s a scrumptious supply of accoutrements available to inspire and impress.
Smoking seafood, meats and/or veggies on the grill is a trendy BBQ technique these days. You can use a Fire & Flavor Cedar Paper (made of 100% western red cedar, $9.99 for 4 single-use papers) or a Cedar Plank to infuse your favorite foods with a subtle smoky flavor. Smoking boxes (for as little as $9.99) can be filled with chips of mesquite, hickory, cherry, maple or apple woods to flavor whatever food you’re grilling. Finish the grilled foods with infused salts from SaltWorks to make your food pop.
Great twists on grilling include many options of pizza grilling pans, reversible rib and roasting racks (one side holds a whole roast or chicken, turned the other way it holds individual ribs), and even an “instant marinater” for a last minute BBQ gathering on the quick (Vacu Vin Innovations, $39.99). You pump out the air to create a vacuum and permeate your food with marinade in minutes instead of hours.
My favorites this year are inventive tools for the grill to take care of delicate (or small) foods without losing them to the coals. Kodar makes a Fish Basket ($14.99) to grill whole fish beautifully without crumbling to bits, and the Porcelain Grill Topper ($15.99) acts like a sauté pan for the grill — because you don’t want your veggies to fall through the cracks (literally and figuratively).
Eternally popular items are the various corn accessory options. Talisman Designs makes a Butter Girl (there is also a Butter Boy, $6.99 each), an apparatus that holds a stick of butter vertically. The top flips to reveal a cob-shaped surface to neatly butter your ears. It even saves the butter for next time so you don’t throw away a half stick covered in corn silk. There’s also the Corn Zipper, from Kuhn-Rikon ($13.99) which, as the name implies, you run down the length of a raw cob to quickly remove all the kernels for corn salsa, roasted corn, etc.
Too bad no one’s developed a graceful way to keep the corn kernels out of your teeth. I’ll keep you posted on that.
Leslie Khorsandi is the buyer for LeRoux Kitchen, with stores in Portland, Portsmouth and Martha’s Vineyard. Her parents owned a restaurant for 35 years and she came away with the perfect combination of eating to live (from her mom) and living to eat (that would be dad).