Happy Independence Day!

We’ve never been big long-weekend vacationers or partiers. A couple of relaxing days is good enough. Now that we have a grill, we can take part in that American tradition of having a barbecue (or, technically, a cookout).

July 4th is a more pure grilling holiday than Memorial Day. No slight sense of cognitive dissonance over whether cooking up hamburgers is quite an appropriate way to remember the fallen; no distant sense of guilt at the fact that I can’t begin to imagine giving what they gave. July 4th is a birthday party.

Food is one of our hobbies, I guess you could say, so while we’ll throw hamburgers or hotdogs (giant Black Bear all-beef deli-style franks, from Shop Rite—I bring them home from every visit to New Jersey), we also get fancy, or try to copy restaurant dishes that you just can’t make at home without that hint of flame.

So for a quick holiday post, I’m sharing some photos of our more involved grilled dinners since we bought our grill in the spring. It’s a big one, and yet I’ve frequently filled up the cooking space, including with lots of vegetables.

So, homemade tacos with flank steak, shrimp, and chicken thighs, plus a bunch of garnishes and sides:

Stuffed squid, grilled squid, and grilled albacore tuna plus some vegetables, and tuna and scallop tartare. The stuffed squid is my attempt at recreating a dinner we had in Croatia (the stuffing is a risotto-like rice filling with chicken broth, lemon juice, fresh herbs, and an egg to bind it).

Cevapi, another dish we had in Croatia (iconic and popular all over the Balkans). They’re small skinless sausages made of beef or a mix of beef and lamb, finely ground and with a little baking soda in the mix which gives the meat a “bouncy” texture. The vegetable dish, chard and spinach with potatoes, is also something we had in Croatia.

Classic crab cakes, which I’ve made before, but my first time cooking them on the grill.

Vietnamese grilled pork noodle bowl, a mainstay at Vietnamese restaurants. This is one of my favorite restaurant dishes to make at home (believe it or not, I have more trouble getting the noodles just right than the pork!).

And finally our typical mix of grilled vegetables, which, as I noted, can fill up the cooking space rather easily!

I had only really imagined typical grilled foods when we bought the grill—steaks, sausages, burgers, hot dogs, chicken leg quarters. Its versatility has become more apparent to me as I’ve used it more, and it’s a lot easier and quicker to throw something on the grill, to me, than trying to get that kind of result in the oven.

What do you make with your grill, if you have one, beyond the standard cookout fare?

Related Reading:

Kitchen Contentment

To Grill a Steak

Plant-Based Patties, Italian Peasant Style

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