By Alex Van Buren | Food & Wine
It can be so easy to forget to toss vegetables on the barbie alongside the shrimp. (And burgers. And dogs.) Let’s face it: Beyond potato salad, a lot of us do not consume the veggies we should come summertime. We reached out to Amanda Cohen, chef and owner of vegetable-focused restaurant Dirt Candy in New York City. Here are her top tips—including an extraordinary-sounding grilled salad—for getting all the colors of the rainbow into your diet this season.
Double-grate your grill
Cohen uses a double grate system, so the grates themselves crisscross and veggies are less likely to fall through the cracks. “Unless the vegetables are cut in really big pieces,” she says, “the smaller the pieces, the more veggies are likely to shrink.” You might be able to create a hack using a heatproof cooling rack or oven rack, depending on the size and type of grill you have. In a pinch, you could use agrilling basket, but Cohen likes those less because you can’t get as many different types of textures, and “it hinders charring.”
Grill your salad
“My go-to #1 grilled veggie is greens: Spinach, kale, any soft green like arugula, even herbs,” says Cohen. (Mind blown? Ours, too.) “Putting a big bunch of greens mixed with herbs on the grill mixed with olive oil and salt is delicious. All I do is we toss them in oil, and as they slowly shrink, I turn them a lot, and that big pile will get small very fast.” She loves that some parts get crispy, others are dried out, some are overcooked, and others are raw. “It’s all the different textures you want in one vegetable,” she insists. She grills her greens fast over high heat, turning them frequently, and will add fresh, salty and acidic notes such as basil, Pecorino, extra-virgin olive oil, and lemon zest just before serving. Expect a big, delicious mess of a salad.
Sturdier greens can work, too
As for Romaine, a more popular grilling option because it’s so sturdy, Cohen would cut a head in half, oil it a bit, put it on the grate, and “get that charred flavor, but don’t cook it too much: You still want that big crispy bite.”
Sometimes you’ll want to finish cooking in a pan
Cohen loves to cook Brussels sprouts, halving them and putting them face-down on the grill to get stripes on one side, but “because they’re tougher we’ll often [finish] them in the pan.” As is true of all vegetables, she gets the grill “as hot as possible, as long as you’re watching it and can turn things a lot.” As she explains, “You can’t overcook or undercook veggies. It’s not like with meat: ‘Aw, it’s still raw inside.’” She’ll finish sprouts in a hot pan with oil, maybe garlic towards the end of the cooking time, and perhaps a splash of water to help the sprouts cook through.
