Choosing Fresh Zucchini

The best zucchini comes straight out of your garden. Just wash, slice, and grill. If you don’t have a garden, your next best option is a local farmer’s market. Vegetables always have better flavor when they haven’t been sitting around in cold storage. Even if you’re buying from the grocery store, though, you can still get delicious grilled zucchini if you know how to pick the right ones. Don’t choose the biggest zucchini in the bin; smaller zucchini will be more tender and flavorful. Feel for soft spots and avoid zucchini that look wrinkled around the stem, as this means they’ve been sitting around a while.

Delicious Zucchini on the Grill

Ready to start grilling? Wash the zucchini and pat dry; then slice either in quarters lengthwise or in round slices. Coat the zucchini slices in oil and add salt, garlic, and a little lemon zest. If you want the zucchini to really soak up some flavor, you can let it marinate for about 20 minutes. Once the seasonings have been added, place the zucchini slices on the grill over medium-low heat. Cook until zucchini can be easily pierced with a fork. Be sure to turn the slices so you get those nice grill marks on each side. Sprinkle with some additional sea salt and lemon zest or parmesan cheese before serving.

More Recipe Ideas

If you have a lot of zucchini from the garden or you just want some additional seasoning options, try some of these ideas to give your zucchini a different flavor:

Italian–Marinate zucchini in Italian dressing and sprinkle with mozzarella.

Herb vinaigrette–Brush with a mixture of your favorite vinaigrette, some garlic, and a pinch of basil, oregano, and rosemary.

Lemon Butter–Make a lemon butter sauce of melted butter, lemon zest or lemon-butter seasoning, garlic, and oregano. Brush onto zucchini before grilling.

Mixed Grill–Mix zucchini with yellow squash, broccoli, carrots, onions, mushrooms, and peppers for a satisfying side dish. Place vegetables in an aluminum foil pouch, and then toss with oil-based salad dressing or olive oil and your choice of seasonings. Seal pouch and place on grill over medium heat for about 15 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

The brisket is a very large, flavorful, and versatile cut of beef. Its large size combined with a unique blend of fat, collagen, and long muscle fibers make brisket an ideal cut for many dishes.

How to Grill Brisket: Texas Style

The most common method of grilling brisket involves a subtle seasoning profile, if any seasonings are used at all. This method produces what most think of as “Texas style” BBQ brisket. This type of brisket is cooked to the point where the fat and collagen break down completely, leaving nothing but tender meat fiber that pulls apart easily. These meat fibers are either pulled apart by hand or chopped, producing either pulled or chopped brisket barbecue.

How to Grill Brisket: General Considerations

Texas style brisket is a relatively simple affair. The basic recipe and procedure follow. Keep in mind that the recipe here ought to serve only as a guideline. Everyone has different tastes and preferences. A large piece of meat like brisket is very forgiving and will likely turn out very tasty no matter how you may botch up the recipe. So rest easy knowing that though you may venture far and wide with your seasoning blend, you are almost guaranteed a delicious result. The only way you could mess up a smoked brisket is by not cooking it at all. With that in mind, experiment away.

How to Grill Brisket: Procedure

1) Assemble a basic BBQ meat rub for your brisket. About half of this rub ought to be kosher salt, with another quarter of the rub being brown sugar. From there, typically you would use around 10% to 15% chili powder, or other generally spicy seasoning. The rest can be a mix of aromatic seasonings, the most dominant being onion and garlic powder.

2) Apply your rub generously to the entire exterior of your brisket. Massage the rub into the meat with a firm hand; you want to get as much flavor into the meat as possible.

3) Tightly wrap the brisket in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight, or for up to 3 days. In general, the longer your brisket has to absorb the seasoning flavors, the better. This is known as a dry brine.

4) 8 to 12 hours before you plan to eat your brisket, light a fire in the smoker and stabilize the temperature around 200-225 degrees Fahrenheit. Lay in a few chunks of hickory or mesquite wood for smoke flavor and wait until they begin producing strong smoke before you lay on the brisket.

5) Smoke the brisket at 200 – 225 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 – 12 hours, until the internal temperature reaches at least 195 degrees.

6) Remove the brisket from the grill and pull it apart for sandwiches or other serving styles. Brush on sauce as desired and enjoy!

Go back to BBQ Recipes from How to Grill Brisket

Go to iGrillBBQ.com Home Page from How to Grill Brisket