Grillin!

It's been so absurdly nice out lately I decided we needed to get ourselves a grill and have a barbecue. We live in an apartment, so a massive standing grill was pretty much out of the question. We found a nice little sitting Blue Rhino grill on the cheap at Walmart and picked it up. We didn't want to mess around with charcoal because of the uneven cooking and big mess, so we went with the mini-propane tank variety. I wanted to make sure it stayed nice and pretty, so some accessories were in order as well.



Putting it together wasn't too bad, but I'd never assembled a grill before so it took me a good half hour or so of dropping wing nuts and trying to figure out the instructions. We had three main foods in mind to test it out, first being something my mom used to make when I was a kid. It consists of potatoes, green peppers, and onions cut up and put into a foil packet. We then drizzle on olive oil and put on whatever spices strikes our fancy. To try something new I added in some garlic this time too.



Of course we also did the standard burgers and hot dogs as well for good measure. I was thinking I wanted to go Boca burger and Morningstar Farms soy dogs myself, but once Megan had put all the spices in the hamburger I changed my mind.



Getting the propane tank on the grill and making sure it wasn't leaking was honestly kind of terrifying as I'd never used propane before. Once it was all done it was pretty smooth sailing. Here's the first official use of the grill tongs on the potato packets:



After the packets had cooked for about a half hour we put on the burgers and dogs. The bottom grill isn't big enough to hold everything so I transferred the packets onto the top heating grill and attempted to close the lid. Mistake it turns out, as the top grill isn't strong enough to support three foil packets full of potato wedges. It popped out of the slot and full onto the burgers. It took some quick maneuvering to get it back into the slot without anyone getting burned. I guess the top rack is going to be hot dog only territory from now on. Here's the finished meat:



Now that I've got a grill I intend to use the fuck out of it. We're going to go fishing this weekend and try out cooking our own fish. I usually grab a red snapper or catfish fillet from 2Js every Saturday to bake, so this ought to be a fun treat grilling something more fresh.