Green Options » grilling

All-Star Veggie Kabob Recipe

Derek Markham — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 03:38:42 +0000

Vegetarians are everywhere.

We show up at parties and cookouts, inspecting the grill and asking about ingredients. If you didn’t plan to feed us, we’re probably going home hungry. Savvy vegetarians will bring along some veggie burgers to grill, but only if you can scrape the grill clean…

Chances are, you’ve got a vegetarian on your invitation list. Or maybe a flexi-tarian who chooses veg over meat most of the time. If you plan ahead with a good vegetarian grilling recipe, you’ll be prepared to feed all of your guests.

Veggie kabobs are one of the easiest vegetarian recipes to make. Feel free to improvise with the veggies you have on hand. You really can’t go wrong.

All-Star Veggie Kabob Recipe:
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The Farmer and the Grill, A Great Guide to Grassfed Grilling

Beth Bader — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:33:39 +0000

Ah, grassfed beef. Suddenly, it’s THE thing to eat. You’ve heard all about the complex flavor and the bonus of being able to find sustainable and filet mignon on the same plate. The moment has come. You carefully create your marinade or even just a salt and herb rub so you don’t hide the flavor. You’ve grilled a few steaks, you have your timing down. The perfectly seared finished filet hits your plate. You take that much anticipated bite. And …

It is bone dry. Overcooked. Gray.

Well, this whole grassfed beef thing is lousy, you say. I can’t eat that! What happened?

Shannon Hayes, author of The Farmer and the Grill, has your answer. Her latest book provides all the information you need to grill grassfed meats and poultry and avoid such disappointment when you transition to more sustainable meats.

Joel Salatin writes the book’s introduction:

As a quintessential devotee of pastured livestock, I am keenly aware that the most environmentally-progressive meat and poultry in the world will not sell unless the eater has a favorable dining experience. At the end of the day, taste and eating pleasure trump altruism every time. Healing the planet and keeping cancer at bay just don’t compare to the visceral bond connecting nose, palate, and pocketbook.
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Firing Up the Grill for the Fourth? Think Honey.

Beth Bader — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:24:41 +0000

Image Courtesy of the National Honey Board

Just in time for the holiday, the Honey Board has a few recipes to recommend — for the grill. Honey is a pretty common ingredient for marinades and sauces. These recipes capture that sweet-spicy combination of flavors I personally love.

Before you go for the tongs, the Honey Board has a few pointers on why this food is sustainable AND an eco-friendly choice:

Honey is an all-natural food that leaves a small eco-footprint.
Purchasing local honey encourages growth of the local economy and reduces production waste.
Many farmers have hives on their land, in part because bees are responsible for one out of every three bites we consume.
If it weren’t for honey bees, we would suffer from a limited supply of oranges, apples, blueberries, cucumbers and strawberries.

Recipes for your holiday cook out include Grilled Tofu Kabobs with a Honey-Chipotle Glaze.

Seven Tips for Greening Your Barbecue This Summer

Sharon Troy — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:49:05 +0000

With Memorial Day Weekend just around the corner, millions of people will be firing up their grills to celebrate an American past time. Here are some quick tips to keeping your barbecue safe, waste-free, and fun!

1. What’s the greenest grilling option? Electric and propane grills are definitely better than charcoal. If that’s your only option though, try using cleaner burning, natural charcoals. A great list can be found here at GreenYour.com. If you’ve got your heart set on the flavor that comes from grilling over wood, Woodflame grills were the most eco-friendly option I could find.

2. Skip the meat. As if you didn’t need another reason to lower your meat intake, I also recently came across this health-related article on the 5 Worst Foods to Barbecue. (Hint, none of them are tofu.) You can replace the burgers and hot dogs with some vegetarian knock-offs (respectively, I recommend Amy’s burgers which come in a variety of flavors, and Lightlife Tofu Pups.) Or you could even try making your own ahead of time. I have to admit, I’ve never tried grilling my black bean or white bean burgers, but it’s worth a shot!

Farm Fresh: Grilled Baby Bok Choy

Jennie Love — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:00:19 +0000

Farm Fresh is a series of recipes
designed to showcase produce gathered
from local farms or grown in my own garden.

It’s only April but I’m already thinking about breaking out my grill. My grill is, well, not something to really write home about, or, for that matter, to write a blog post about. I got it for about five bucks from some big box store a few years ago. But, when there are fresh young vegetables to be cooked up, it’s my weapon of choice. Nothing beats grilled asparagus, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers. Nothing, that is, except for Grilled Baby Bok Choy.

Lighter Footstep: 5 Ways to Fire Up an Eco-Friendly Tailgate Party

Chris Baskind — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:00:40 +0000

Editor’s note: Football season is almost here, so Lighter Footstep’s Chris Baskind shares some tips for greening your tailgate party before the big game. Originally published on August 24, 2007.

Labor Day Weekend is just around the corner — and with it, the football and tailgating season in the United States.

It’s an annual ritual: head out to the game, break out the barbecue, and enjoy an afternoon with friends and family. There’s no need to skip the fun, even if you’re trying to live more lightly and be kinder to the Earth. With all the green options available to consumers these days, you can tailgate with the best of them and still leave behind a modest environmental footprint.

Just to make the point, we’ve rounded up a few ideas for an eco-friendly tailgating party. Because green’s got game.

The green barbecue

Your lowest-impact option for the tradition barbecue is propane. Sure, propane is a petroleum product — but it burns a lot cleaner than charcoal or wood fires. Propane also leaves behind less waste, and is particularly convenient when you’re cooking away from home.

If you’re going the charcoal route, consider Greenlink’s All Natural Briquettes. They’re made from environmentally friendly wood sources and renewable plant wastes such as coconut husks. Unlike conventional briquettes, Greenlink doesn’t use clay or anthracite fillers.

But skip the charcoal starter: it’s rich in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), which you don’t want in your food or in the air. Use an electric starter. If that’s not practical, a good-quality charcoal chimney will get those coals glowing in minutes using nothing more than a sheet or two of newspaper.

Earth-friendly eats

Maybe you’re easing back on your meat consumption for the sake of the environment. That doesn’t mean you’ll have to miss out on grilling at your tailgate party. Check out the Vegetarian Kitchen’s tasty suggestions for veggie barbecue.

Not ready to give up on burgers and hot dogs? If you’ve not tried Boca’s burger patties or one of the great vegetarian franks you’ll find in most grocery’s freezer sections, you’re in for a surprise. A tip: veggie hot dogs are better boiled than grilled. You can always steam them in foil when you’re ready to serve.

As for the rest of the meal: go with local, seasonal produce and plug in your favorite recipes. The great thing about tailgating season is that it coincides with the biggest selection of the year down at the farmer’s market. Bon Appetit!

Organic brew

Green beer isn’t just for St. Patrick’s Day. Of course, we’re talking organic — not color.

Organic beer has really taken off in the past few years. Even big players like Anheuser-Busch have gotten into the act, which means organic brew may very well be sold wherever you normally buy groceries. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or most local natural food stores also carry organic beer lines.

Wolaver’s is currently the largest national distributor of all-organic beers. Their Pale Ale is a good choice for warm-weather tailgating. It’s traditional to drink heavier brews once there’s a snap to the autumn air. In any case, it’s an excuse to sample Wolaver’s award-winning Brown Ale or Oatmeal Stout. You’ll find similar organic selections from Peak Brewing and Goose Island Beer Company.

Ditching the Disposables

It’s tempting to break out the paper plates and plastic cutlery when you’re eating away from home. They’re certainly convenient, but most dining disposables end up in the environment or clogging local landfills, rather than finding their way into the recycling stream.

It’s really not much of a hassle to bring some dishes from home. They needn’t be your everyday ware: picking up a set of lightweight plastic place settings is a great outdoor investment, and you can probably find them secondhand for next to nothing at a garage sale or thrift store. Carry them home for washing in a lock-top box.

If you really need disposables that won’t make a mess of Mother Nature, check out Cereplast’s line of compostable cutlery. They’re made from a bio-resin derived from corn and potato starch. For other ideas on cutting picnic waste, see our article on Dining Without Disposables.

A little entertainment

If you’re fit enough to roll with the Tour de France (and perhaps a bit crazy), you can always follow the big game on a bicycle-powered television set like these inventive fellows.

For the less obsessive, there’s the Eton FR300 Emergency Crank Radio. You’ll probably have a great-sounding car radio to turn up at the tailgate site, but the FR300 is ideal for catching the play-by-play in the stands. It can be crank-operated, which means no need for AC power and zero battery waste. The FR300 has a TV audio section and will even recharge a dead cellphone battery in a pinch.

It’s a great radio to have on hand for emergencies, and a subtle way to demonstrate alternative-powered consumer devices for friends.

Weekend Grub: Grilling with Chimney Starters

Philip Proefrock — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:44:19 +0000

Image Credit: Joshua Thompson via Wikipedia
This week's Weekend Grub is less a recipe for what to cook than some suggestions about how to cook it. If you're looking for recipes, check out yesterday's post on vegan BBQ.

Summer is here, and for many, that means time to start cooking outdoors. For some, bottled gas (propane, most commonly) is a preferable choice for a number of reasons, while many others prefer to cook over charcoal. I'm not going to get into a long debate about which is the best. It's something like the 'paper-or-plastic' debate. Given some of the issues around the extraction and processing of propane, as well as it's non-renewability compared to wood charcoal, I think that it's possible to make the case either way.

If you choose to cook over coals, there are some considerations that can help make your grilling a greener experience. A chimney starter is a simple, inexpensive, easy-to-use tool that quickly gives you coals ready for grilling. Most importantly, there is no need to rely on starter fuels to get a good fire for grilling. I was introduced to the chimney starter by a good friend several years ago. I was immediately drawn to the simplicity and efficiency of it. It concentrates the heat to start the coals more quickly and evenly than just lighting them in the grill. (Cooking celebrity Alton Brown famously even uses a chimney starter as a kind of concentrated mini-grill for quickly searing tuna. I haven't tried this myself yet, but I plan to, when I have a suitable opportunity. The recipe for Chimney Tuna Loin is fairly quick and easy, but requires a high quality piece of tuna.)

The chimney starter is a simple tool. Very basically, it is an open ended metal cylinder with a grille in the middle, and a handle on one side. Stuff a single sheet of crumpled newspaper into the bottom, and fill the top part with as much charcoal as you need, then light the newspaper. The paper serves as kindling to get the coals started, and the cylindrical shape keeps the heat focused on the coals themselves. After a few minutes, you'll have flames coming out the top, and the coals are ready to go.

In addition to how you start your coals, you can also make greener choices in your selection of the charcoal itself.

First of all, choose natural, or lump, charcoal rather than processed briquettes. Briquettes have undergone more fabrication, so there's more energy spent to make them. They also have various ingredients in addition to charcoal, binders which hold them in their shape, for example, as well as sprayed-on hydrocarbons which are used to make the "easy light" or "match light" briquettes. Some other things that can be found in briquettes include: coal dust, starch, sodium nitrate, limestone and borax. If you really want to get into it, I found that there is a website with lots of information specifically about lump charcoal, and even has reviews of different brands of charcoal.

Secondly, look for the origin of the charcoal. A couple years ago, I bought a bag of lump charcoal rather than briquettes, and was proud of myself for doing so until I saw that it came from Brazil. (Wonderful, someone's found a way to make even more money off of clearcutting rainforests.) Charcoal isn't something that you need to import from thousands of miles away. I've since found a store that carries charcoal that is domestically manufactured, and that is what I've used since then.

Lastly, if you are sticking with hamburgers, but have decided to try some locally-raised, grass-fed beef, remember that there is typically less fat in it than there is in most typical supermarket ground beef, and you should adjust how you cook it in order to have it cook properly.

Tip o’ the Day: Grill Green

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:12:49 +0000

With the weather getting warmer in most of the US, many of us are looking forward to a steak, hot dog or veggie burger hot off the grill. If you're planning on firing up the barbie this weekend, here are a few tips for lowering the impact of that flame-cooked meal:

While nothing beats charcoal for flavor, gas and electric grills are the top choices for energy-efficiency and cost.
If you can't live without that charcoal flavor, look for all-natural briquettes (made from plant materials) or wood briquettes that come from sustainably-produced wood sources. You may have to dig a bit: these are easier to find in countries other than the US.
Avoid the quick-light charcoal, or lighter fluid: chimney or electric starters work just as well or better, and don't produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Choose greener foods to throw on the grill: organic or locally-produced meats, or even meatless options. Fresh vegetables are wonderful grilled out.
When cleaning the grill, avoid toxic cleaners: vinegar and a little elbow grease work wonders!

Got other tips for green grilling? Do share! Thanks to Thriftyfun.com and the Green Guide (a GO advertiser) for the great information.