Author: Outdoor Cooking King

  • The Gas Grill: Two Companies, One Contested First

    The Gas Grill: Two Companies, One Contested First

    Unlike the Weber kettle, the gas grill doesn’t have one tidy origin story — it has two competing company histories that both claim the title of “first.” The company history pages of LazyMan Gourmet Grills (formerly Chicago Combustion Corporation) and Modern Home Products / Charmglow tell different versions of who actually invented the outdoor gas grill, and the two accounts flatly disagree with each other on both the year and the company.

    A Commercial Broiler First

    The oldest thread runs through Chicago Combustion Company, founded in Chicago in 1932 by Louis McGlaughlin to build industrial and commercial gas burners, according to LazyMan’s own company history. Its ARGIL burner became known for precise flame control, and McGlaughlin, after relocating to New York, adapted that burner technology into a gas-fired commercial broiler called the “BROILBURGER.” LazyMan’s history states the BROILBURGER was the centerpiece of the company’s booth at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where it caught the attention of restaurants that wanted charcoal flavor without the hassle of charcoal. Early BROILBURGER units, per LazyMan, were actually fired by Ford Charcoal Briquets before later versions switched to full gas with lava rocks standing in for charcoal. Through the 1940s, that burner technology was folded into commercial utility stoves, still nowhere near a backyard patio.

    Two Rival “First” Claims

    Here the two histories genuinely conflict. LazyMan’s own account says that until the mid-1950s the gas grill business was “almost exclusively found in commercial cooking,” and that Chicago Combustion Corporation sold the first-ever portable gas grills in 1954, with two other companies — Charmglow and Falcon — releasing their own competing portable grills shortly afterward. Modern Home Products, the company that owned the Charmglow name, tells a different story on its own site: it credits its founder, Walter Koziol, with inventing the world’s first outdoor gas grill in 1960, marketed under the trade name “Perfect Host” — a 22½-inch round portable cart unit built from steel, running on natural or LP gas.

    These can’t both be strictly true. LazyMan’s version puts Chicago Combustion six years ahead of Charmglow and frames Charmglow’s grill as a fast-follower product; MHP’s version omits Chicago Combustion entirely and claims the world’s-first title for its own 1960 design. Each is a company’s own account of its history, not independently verified, and outdoor cooking coverage of the period doesn’t settle which came first — only that both companies were building and selling gas grills within a few years of each other in the mid-to-late 1950s.

    Propane Makes It Portable

    Whichever company got there first, the piece that made a gas grill practical for a backyard rather than a restaurant kitchen was fuel. LazyMan’s history credits Don McGlaughlin, Louis’s son, with sourcing 20-pound propane cylinders for the new portable grill — tanks that, at the time, were used almost exclusively by plumbers rather than by cooks. By 1959, LazyMan says, its portable Model AP sold for $131.25, and that year marked the company’s first real national sales spike for a residential gas grill. In 1960, Chicago Combustion also began wholesaling permanent natural-gas grill installations to the New Jersey Natural Gas Company, which billed customers $1 a month for 39 months to cover installation — an early sign that gas grills were being sold as a home fixture, not just a portable appliance.

    From Round Steel to Cast Aluminum

    On the Charmglow side, Modern Home Products’ own history describes a rapid string of design changes once the Perfect Host caught on. By 1961 the Charmglow name had become well known enough that MHP renamed itself Charmglow Products. In 1962, Koziol re-engineered the original round steel grill into a rectangular painted-steel design with a hinged lid — a shape MHP’s history calls a more efficient grill concept than the round original. By 1964 the company had introduced what it describes as the first rustproof cast-aluminum rectangular gas grill with a patented hinged lid, a design MHP’s own materials say became widely copied across the industry. In 1966, the Chef’s Choice series added a one-piece cast bottom and, according to MHP, received an industry award for design — the company’s account of its own accolade, not an independently confirmed one.

    The Charmglow line didn’t stay with the Koziol family the whole way through, however. MHP’s history records that in 1969–1970 the Charmglow name, along with its grill and lighting products, was sold to the Beatrice Foods Company, though the Koziols retained the underlying company assets and reinstated the Modern Home Products name once the sale’s non-compete period ended in 1987.

    What the Rivalry Left Behind

    Regardless of which company’s “first” claim is taken at face value, both histories point to the same underlying shift: sometime between the mid-1950s and early 1960s, gas burner technology that had spent two decades in commercial kitchens moved onto a backyard patio, adapted to run on portable propane tanks instead of piped commercial gas lines. That’s the part the Chicago Combustion and Charmglow accounts actually agree on, even if they can’t agree on whose grill got there first.

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  • The Invention of the Weber Kettle Grill

    The Invention of the Weber Kettle Grill

    Every backyard charcoal grill sold today owes something to a Chicago metal shop and a batch of leftover buoy parts. According to Weber’s own company history page and independent reporting from Smithsonian magazine, the domed kettle grill that defined “Weber” as a brand wasn’t dreamed up in a design lab — it was welded together by a Chicago Weber Brothers Metal Works employee who was tired of burning his dinner.

    A Sheet-Metal Shop, Not a Grill Company

    Weber Brothers Metal Works was founded in Chicago in 1887, and for decades it made ordinary sheet-metal goods — hinges, wagons, and similar hardware — with no connection to outdoor cooking, according to Smithsonian magazine. By the 1950s, George Stephen, Sr. worked in sales at the company, which his father then ran. Stephen had a habit of tinkering with side products — mailboxes, fireplace equipment — that never quite took off, Weber-Stephen’s current chief marketing officer, Mike Kempster, told Smithsonian.

    What Stephen actually needed, by his own company’s telling, was a better way to cook a steak. Weber’s history page describes Stephen building a brick fireplace barbecue at home in the popular style of the day, only for a dinner party to end with the steaks going up in flames. Smithsonian’s reporting frames the same frustration more broadly: the standard backyard cooker of the era was an open charcoal brazier, essentially a metal tray of coals with a grate on top. Wind scattered ash onto the food, rain filled the tray with water, smoke choked the cook, and the meat rarely cooked evenly.

    Two Halves of a Buoy

    The fix came from what was sitting around the shop floor. In 1952, Weber Brothers Metal Works was filling orders for round steel buoys for the Coast Guard and the Chicago Yacht Club, built from two welded half-spheres. Stephen took two of those half-spheres, added legs to one, and used the other as a lid, according to Smithsonian. The first attempt at home didn’t work — the charcoal fire simply went out for lack of air. A neighbor watching the experiment told him he needed to let some air into it, Kempster recounted to Smithsonian, so the two men grabbed a metal pick from Stephen’s toolbox and punched holes in the bottom. Kempster’s summary of the moment, quoted by Smithsonian: “That was research and development in 1952.”

    Stephen sold the result as “George’s Barbecue Kettle” for $29.95 — around $270 in today’s money, per Smithsonian’s reporting. Over the next several years he refined the design further: wheels for mobility, a taller lid for more airflow and capacity, and a porcelain-enamel coating over the steel body to stop it rusting. Weber’s own history timeline dates the original kettle to 1952, matching Smithsonian’s account. The odd, rounded shape — nothing like the boxy braziers on the market — earned it an early nickname that had nothing to do with cooking: “Sputnik.”

    From Side Hustle to Company Name

    The kettle sold in small numbers at first; Stephen kept working for the family company while selling grills to friends and neighbors on the side. In the mid-1950s, his father told him he had to choose one or the other, Kempster told Smithsonian. Stephen chose the grill, going out on his own with little financial backing. By 1958, business was strong enough that he bought out his father’s partner and took over the company outright. He renamed it Weber-Stephen Products — keeping the Weber name, according to Smithsonian, partly as a safeguard, so he could return to metalworking if the barbecue venture failed. It’s a detail that surprises people, Smithsonian notes: there was no longer anyone named Weber connected to the company by the time Stephen built the first kettle in 1952 — the last Weber family descendant was already gone.

    The Round-Shape Claim Weber Later Backed Away From

    For years, Weber’s own marketing argued that the kettle’s round body was thermally superior to boxier grills — a 1970s Weber ad cited by Smithsonian claimed the domed shape reflected heat as evenly as a kitchen oven. Kempster told Smithsonian that later testing didn’t actually bear this out: the kettle reflects heat well, he said, but Weber has never been able to prove it does so any better than a square or rectangular grill would, noting that most kitchen ovens are rectangular anyway. What actually makes the kettle effective, according to Kempster, comes down to details like grate positioning and air-damper placement, not the sphere shape itself. The shape endures for a different, more practical reason: round steel is genuinely difficult to manufacture, requiring large presses to draw the metal into that curve, which is part of why competitors were slow to copy it.

    A Wider Wave, Not a Single Invention

    Stephen’s kettle landed at a moment when backyard cooking was already spreading through American suburbs, not in isolation. Culinary historian Robert Moss, author of Barbecue: The History of an American Institution, told Smithsonian that casual backyard barbecue actually traces to the 1920s and the early wave of American suburbanization, when magazines began running features with instructions for digging small cooking pits — themselves an echo of nineteenth-century communal pit barbecues. The postwar suburban boom accelerated that shift further, Moss said, as Americans moved from cities into new suburbs and backyard leisure became a kind of escape from modern life. Weber’s kettle didn’t create backyard grilling — it gave a fast-growing audience of suburban cooks a covered, better-controlled way to do something they were already increasingly doing.

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  • Grilled Pound Cake with Berries: Taste of Home’s Recipe

    Grilled Pound Cake with Berries: Taste of Home’s Recipe

    This recipe is taken directly from Taste of Home‘s Test Kitchen — the Grilled Pound Cake with Berries recipe published on tasteofhome.com. It’s a short, six-serving recipe built around store-bought or homemade pound cake, so it works as a quick dessert to tack onto a cookout without lighting a second fire or firing up an oven.

    The idea is simple: butter goes on both sides of pre-sliced pound cake, and the slices pick up a light char over indirect heat while a fresh berry mixture and a lemon whipped cream come together on the side. Taste of Home’s own note on the recipe sums up the appeal — “the toasty flavor of lightly grilled pound cake makes it the perfect accompaniment for summertime berries.”

    Ingredients

    • 1 cup sliced fresh strawberries
    • 1 cup fresh raspberries
    • 1 cup fresh blueberries
    • 5 tablespoons sugar, divided
    • 1 tablespoon minced fresh mint
    • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
    • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
    • 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
    • 3 tablespoons butter, softened
    • 6 slices pound cake, about 1 inch thick

    Method

    Making the Berry Mixture

    In a large bowl, combine the strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, 2 tablespoons of the sugar and the mint. Set the mixture aside so the berries have time to release some juice while you prepare the rest.

    Whipping the Lemon Cream

    In a small bowl, beat the heavy whipping cream until it begins to thicken. Beat in the remaining sugar, then add the lemon juice and zest and beat until soft peaks form. Cover and refrigerate the whipped cream until you’re ready to serve.

    Grilling the Cake

    Spread the softened butter over both sides of the pound cake slices. Grill them uncovered over indirect medium heat for 1 to 2 minutes on each side, or until light golden brown. Serve the warm slices with the berry mixture and the lemon whipped cream.

    Timing and Serving Size

    Taste of Home lists this as a 25-minute recipe in total — about 20 minutes of prep and 5 minutes of actual grill time — and it yields 6 servings, one slice of cake per person topped with berries and cream. Per the recipe’s own nutrition figures, one serving comes to 377 calories, 27g fat, 136mg cholesterol, 193mg sodium, 34g carbohydrate and 3g protein.

    A Few Practical Notes

    Because the cake only needs a minute or two per side over indirect heat, it’s easy to scorch if your grill is running hotter than expected — keep a close eye on the slices rather than walking away, since the sugar in the crust browns fast once it starts. If you’re already grilling something else over direct heat, the indirect side is usually free for the last few minutes of that cook, which makes this an easy dessert to fit in right at the end of a cookout rather than a separate production.

    The recipe calls for fresh berries specifically, so give them a rinse before slicing and hulling the strawberries — the berry mixture sits out at room temperature while the cake grills, so it’s worth keeping that window short if you’re cooking on a warm day.

    Getting the Timing Right

    Both the berry mixture and the lemon whipped cream are built to hold: the recipe has you set the macerating berries aside while the cream is prepared, then refrigerate the finished cream until serving, so both components can realistically be made before you even light the grill. That leaves the grilling step — the fastest part of the recipe at just a few minutes total — for right before you plate, so the cake reaches the table warm while the cream is still cold.

    Since the recipe only calls for indirect medium heat and a short grill time, this is also one of the easier desserts to fit onto a grill that’s already got something else going. On a two-zone charcoal or gas setup, the indirect side is simply the area without coals or an unlit burner underneath — keep the cake slices there rather than over direct flame so they toast instead of scorching in the minute or two the recipe calls for.

    Serving It

    Because the recipe is written for 6 servings of one cake slice each, it scales easily if you’re topping off a smaller cookout — halve the berry and cream quantities for 3 servings, or grill extra slices of cake to stretch the same batch of topping further if you’re feeding a bigger group. Either way, plate the cake first, spoon the berry mixture over it while both are still warm and cold respectively, and finish with a dollop of the lemon whipped cream so it doesn’t melt into the berries before serving.

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  • Grilled Pineapple Upside-Down Cake: Weber’s Recipe

    Grilled Pineapple Upside-Down Cake: Weber’s Recipe

    This recipe is taken directly from Weber’s official recipe library — the Grilled Pineapple Upside-Down Cake recipe published on weber.com. Unlike a grilled pineapple side dish, this one is a full from-scratch cake, baked in a cast-iron skillet with the lid closed so the grill works like an outdoor oven.

    The method leans on the grill for two separate jobs: first as a direct-heat surface to char fresh pineapple rings, and then as an indirect oven to bake the batter poured right over that fruit in the same skillet. Weber’s recipe serves 6 to 8 and calls for a 12-inch cast-iron skillet as the one piece of special equipment.

    Ingredients

    Topping

    • 6 rings fresh (not canned) pineapple, each 1/2 inch thick
    • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
    • 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
    • 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
    • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

    Batter

    • 1 cup all-purpose flour
    • 1 teaspoon baking powder
    • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
    • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
    • 2/3 cup buttermilk (or whole milk mixed with 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice)
    • 2 large eggs
    • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
    • 1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
    • 3/4 cup granulated sugar

    Method

    Charring the Pineapple

    1. Prepare the grill for indirect cooking over medium heat, 350°F to 450°F (177°C to 232°C).
    2. Brush the pineapple rings with the melted butter. Brush the cooking grates clean, then grill the pineapple over direct heat, lid open, until nicely marked, 4 to 6 minutes, turning once. Remove from the grill and let cool. Leave one ring whole and cut the rest into halves.

    Building the Skillet Topping

    1. In the 12-inch cast-iron skillet over direct heat, combine the brown sugar, cream, cinnamon and any melted butter left over from brushing the pineapple. Cook until the sugar has melted and the liquid starts to bubble around the outer edge, about 2 minutes.
    2. Remove the skillet from the heat and set it on a sheet pan. Place the whole pineapple ring in the center, then arrange the pineapple halves around it. Set aside.

    Mixing and Baking the Cake

    1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. In a small bowl, whisk the buttermilk, eggs and vanilla.
    2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream the butter and granulated sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 4 minutes. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in thirds, alternating with two equal additions of the buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Mix until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed.
    3. Spread the batter evenly over the pineapple in the skillet with a rubber spatula.
    4. Bake the cake over indirect medium heat, keeping the grill as close to 350°F (177°C) as possible, lid closed, until the top is golden brown and a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes.
    5. Wearing barbecue mitts, remove the cake from the grill and let it cool at room temperature for about 10 minutes.
    6. Run a paring knife around the edge of the skillet to loosen the cake. Set a serving platter over the top of the skillet, then, wearing barbecue mitts, invert the skillet and platter together and slowly lift the skillet away. Replace any pineapple that stuck to the bottom. Let the cake cool briefly before slicing into wedges.

    Timing at a Glance

    Weber lists 30 minutes of prep time and 46 to 58 minutes of grilling time in total, which lines up with the roughly 6 minutes to char the pineapple plus the 40-to-50-minute bake once the batter goes on. The cake is best served warm or at room temperature the same day it’s made, according to the recipe.

    A Few Practical Notes

    The two-stage heat setup — direct for the pineapple, indirect with the lid down for the cake — means you need a grill that can hold a steady temperature around 350°F for the better part of an hour, so this is a better fit for a kettle or gas grill you can dial in than for a small hibachi-style setup with no lid. Running the skillet on direct heat first to build the caramel topping, then moving straight to indirect for baking, also means you don’t need to dirty a second pan for the topping — it’s the same skillet the cake bakes in.

    Because the recipe calls for fresh pineapple rather than canned, plan to core and slice your own pineapple into 1/2-inch rings before you start, since the grilling and skillet steps both assume rings of that thickness.

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  • Campfire Doughboys: KOA’s Biscuit-on-a-Stick Recipe

    Campfire Doughboys: KOA’s Biscuit-on-a-Stick Recipe

    This recipe is taken directly from KOA (Kampgrounds of America), the campground network’s official camping recipes collection — the Dough Boys recipe published on koa.com, submitted by fellow camper Daphne Weaver of Petersburg, VA. It’s one of the simplest campfire desserts around: a roll of biscuit dough, a stick and a fire are basically the whole ingredient list.

    Dough boys go by a few names around different campgrounds — twists, doughboys, stick bread — but the technique is the same everywhere: dough gets wrapped around a stick, held near the fire until it sets, then pulled off and filled. KOA’s version keeps it as a sweet, cinnamon-sugar treat, which makes it an easy one to hand to kids at the campsite once you’ve covered the basics of handling a stick safely near an open flame.

    Ingredients

    • Instant biscuits (from a refrigerated tube or roll)
    • Squeezable butter
    • Cinnamon
    • Sugar

    Method

    Prepping the Stick

    Find a large stick, at least 1 inch in diameter, and cover the end with foil. This gives you a clean, food-safe surface to wrap the dough around instead of bare bark.

    Wrapping and Roasting

    1. Tear a single biscuit off the roll of biscuits.
    2. Stretch the biscuit over the foil-covered end of the stick.
    3. Roast the biscuit over the campfire until it’s light brown all over.
    4. Remove the hardened biscuit from the stick.
    5. Fill the inside with squeezable butter and sprinkle with a cinnamon and sugar mix.
    6. Squeeze the biscuit together to seal in the filling.

    That’s the entire recipe as KOA publishes it — no exact roasting time is given, because it depends heavily on how close you’re holding the dough to the coals and how hot your fire is running. Rotate the stick slowly and pull it back if the outside is browning faster than the inside is cooking through.

    Cooking Safely Around the Fire

    Because this recipe means holding food, and often a child’s hands, right next to an open flame for several minutes at a stretch, it’s worth pairing it with the basic fire-safety points from the National Park Service and Smokey Bear before you start. The NPS’s overview of campfire cooking advises keeping a safe distance and using long-handled tools, framing it as staying “close enough to toast marshmallows, not hands.” The same NPS page also recommends looking for cooking tools with insulated handles to avoid burns, and keeping a close eye on children around any campfire.

    Smokey Bear’s official campfire safety guide adds a few more points that apply directly here: keep the fire small rather than tall, stay at least 15 feet from tents and other flammable gear when you’re set up near the pit, and never leave the fire unattended while anyone is cooking over it. When you’re done for the night, Smokey Bear’s extinguishing method is drown, stir, drown and feel — pouring water over the coals until the hissing stops, stirring it in with a shovel, and confirming with the back of your hand that nothing is still hot before you walk away.

    A Few Practical Notes

    Because the dough is hollow once it’s roasted, dough boys work like a pocket — the KOA recipe fills it with butter and cinnamon sugar, but the same shell holds up to other fillings if you want to switch it up, like a spoonful of jam or a few mini marshmallows and chocolate chips. Just keep in mind the filling goes in after the dough comes off the stick and has cooled enough to handle, not before.

    If you’re cooking for a group, it helps to stagger who’s roasting at any one time rather than crowding several long sticks around the same small fire — both for the sake of even heat and so everyone has enough room to keep their stick at a safe distance the whole way through.

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  • Grilled Bananas Foster: Grill Girl’s Rum Caramel Recipe

    Grilled Bananas Foster: Grill Girl’s Rum Caramel Recipe

    This recipe is taken directly from GrillGirl.com, the site run by cookbook author Robyn Lindars — the Bananas Foster Grilled with Myer’s Rum Sauce recipe published on grillgirl.com. Lindars has appeared on The Today Show, the Cooking Channel and the Travel Channel, and competes with the Shed BBQ Competition Team, so her grill-safe method for building the rum caramel sauce right on the cooking grate is a solid baseline before you start adjusting it to your own taste.

    Classic bananas foster is normally built in a skillet on the stovetop. This version moves the whole process outside: the caramel sauce reduces in a saucepan set on the indirect side of the grill while the bananas themselves char, skin-on, over direct heat a few inches away. The result is a dessert that picks up a bit of smoke alongside the usual butter, brown sugar and rum flavors.

    Ingredients

    For the bananas

    • 2 bananas, sliced lengthwise with the skin left on
    • 2 teaspoons cinnamon

    For the rum caramel sauce

    • 2 tablespoons butter
    • 1/4 teaspoon allspice
    • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
    • 1/2 cup brown sugar
    • Dash of salt
    • 1/3 cup dark rum (the recipe specifies Myer’s Rum)

    To serve

    • Vanilla ice cream
    • 1/4 cup candied pecans or pralines (optional)

    Method

    1. Prepare a grill for medium heat at 350°F (177°C), creating a direct zone and an indirect zone.
    2. In a grill-safe saucepan set on the indirect side, melt the butter, then add the brown sugar, allspice, nutmeg and salt, stirring to combine.
    3. Add the rum and let the sauce reduce while you work on the bananas.
    4. Grill the bananas exposed-side down over direct heat until char marks form, then flip and repeat on the skin-on side — leaving the skin on helps keep the bananas intact as they cook.
    5. Remove the bananas from the grill and sprinkle with the cinnamon.
    6. Scoop ice cream into a bowl. Remove each banana from its skin and set it on top of the ice cream, then drizzle the rum sauce generously over the banana and ice cream. Finish with candied pecans or pralines if you like.

    Why the Skin Stays On

    The one detail worth calling out is the instruction to slice the bananas lengthwise without peeling them first. Grilling fruit without its skin usually means it falls apart on the grate as it softens; the peel here acts as a shell that holds the banana together through both sides of direct heat, so you get clean char marks on the cut side and a fully cooked, intact piece of fruit to plate rather than banana pulp stuck to the grates. You only peel it away once it’s off the heat and ready to serve.

    A Few Practical Notes

    Because the sauce is built in a saucepan rather than flambéed tableside like the original New Orleans version, there’s no open-flame moment to manage — the alcohol cooks off gradually as the rum reduces on the indirect side rather than being ignited. That makes this a more forgiving way to get the same flavor profile without the theatrics, though it does mean you should budget a few extra minutes for the sauce to thicken before the bananas come off the grill.

    If you don’t want to buy a bottle of dark rum for one dessert, the recipe itself notes a preference for Myer’s specifically, so it’s worth checking whether you already have a similar dark or spiced rum on hand rather than picking up something unfamiliar. The sauce, cinnamon and pecans are what carry most of the flavor here, so small substitutions in the rum shouldn’t throw off the result.

    Serve this one immediately — the whole point is the contrast between the warm, charred banana and rum sauce against cold vanilla ice cream, and that contrast disappears fast once the ice cream starts to melt into the sauce.

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  • Taste of Home’s Cajun Seafood Boil in Foil

    Taste of Home’s Cajun Seafood Boil in Foil

    This recipe is taken directly from Taste of Home — Seafood Boil on the Grill (published on the recipe card as “Cajun Boil on the Grill”), created by home cook Allison Brooks of Fort Collins, Colorado, and tested by the Taste of Home Test Kitchen. It swaps the giant stockpot and strainer basket a traditional seafood boil needs for individual foil packets on the grill, which makes it easy to scale up or customize per person.

    The packet method solves two real problems with a stovetop boil: it doesn’t fill the house with seafood smell, and there’s no big pot or basket to buy or store afterward. Everything steams inside its own sealed foil packet instead, so the corn, potatoes, shrimp and sausage all pick up the same seasoning without ever touching boiling water.

    Ingredients

    Makes 4 packets.

    • 1 package (20 ounces) refrigerated red potato wedges
    • 2 salmon fillets (6 ounces each), halved
    • 3/4 pound uncooked shrimp (31-40 count per pound), peeled and deveined
    • 1/2 pound summer sausage, cubed
    • 2 medium ears sweet corn, halved
    • 2 tablespoons olive oil
    • 1 teaspoon seafood seasoning
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
    • 1 medium lemon, cut into 4 wedges
    • Optional: butter and chopped parsley, for serving

    Method

    1. Cut four rectangles of heavy-duty aluminum foil, about 18×12 inches each.
    2. Divide the potato wedges, salmon, shrimp, sausage and corn evenly among the four pieces of foil.
    3. Drizzle each portion with olive oil, then sprinkle with the seafood seasoning, salt and pepper.
    4. Squeeze the lemon wedges over each packet and tuck the squeezed wedges in with the rest of the ingredients.
    5. Fold the foil up and around the mixture, sealing each packet tightly so steam can’t escape.
    6. Grill the packets, covered, over medium heat for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the salmon flakes easily with a fork, the shrimp have turned pink, and the potatoes are tender.
    7. Open each packet carefully — hot steam will escape immediately — and serve with butter and chopped parsley if you like.

    Checking for Doneness Safely

    Taste of Home’s cues here are all visual: salmon that flakes with a fork, shrimp that have turned pink, potatoes that are fork-tender. Those are reasonable checks, and the fish cue in particular lines up with FDA guidance — the agency’s standard for fin fish is that it’s done at 145°F (63°C), or when the flesh is opaque and separates easily with a fork. For the shrimp, the FDA’s benchmark is flesh that’s gone firm, pearly and opaque, alongside that same 145°F reference point. Because everything is sealed in foil, you can’t see color changes as they happen, so if you’re at all unsure when you open a packet at the 12-minute mark, reseal it and give it another few minutes rather than serving it underdone.

    Note that this particular recipe adds two salmon fillets to the packets alongside the shrimp, corn, potatoes and sausage — Taste of Home includes it “for added heft,” but it’s easy to leave out if you’d rather keep the packets closer to a classic boil.

    A Few Practical Notes

    Use genuinely heavy-duty foil, or double up on regular foil — a torn packet mid-grill means lost steam and juices dripping onto the burners. Seal the seams with a tight double fold rather than just pinching the edges closed, since that’s usually where a packet gives out first.

    Summer sausage is fully cooked and shelf-stable already, so its job here is mostly to render a little fat and pick up smoke flavor rather than to cook through — if you’d rather use a raw Cajun-style link like andouille, budget extra time and confirm it separately, since it won’t be done on the same schedule as the shrimp and potatoes.

    Leftovers keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to four days; reheat gently in a covered pan with a splash of water so the seafood doesn’t dry out or turn rubbery.

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  • Judy Jumonville’s Grilled Soft-Shell Crabs

    Judy Jumonville’s Grilled Soft-Shell Crabs

    This recipe is taken directly from Food Network — Grilled Soft-Shell Crabs, courtesy of Judy Jumonville. It’s a simple low-and-slow grill method built around a Cajun-spiced lemon butter baste, finished with a slice of tomato and a little melted mozzarella.

    Soft-shell crab is one of the few seafoods where the whole point is that you’re not picking anything out of a shell. Once you understand what makes it different from a hard-shell crab, the cooking itself is fairly forgiving — this is a low-fire, baste-as-you-go method rather than a fast sear.

    What Makes a Soft-Shell Crab Different

    A soft-shell crab isn’t a separate species — it’s a blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) caught in the brief window right after it has molted its old, hard exoskeleton, before the new one has had time to harden. NOAA Fisheries describes the stages watermen watch for as crabs approach a molt, moving from hard-shell, to peeler, to buster, to soft-shell — a crab that has just molted and hasn’t hardened back up yet. Because that window is so short, crabs are pulled from the water right at that stage and sold whole, soft shell and all.

    That timing is what changes how you eat it. With a hard-shell crab, you crack the shell and pick out the meat. A soft-shell crab skips that step almost entirely: as Wikipedia’s summary of the term puts it, the shell is soft enough that “almost the entire animal can be eaten.” The only parts removed during cleaning are the mouthparts, gills and abdominal cover — everything else, shell included, is soft enough to eat.

    Ingredients

    For the crabs

    • 6 to 8 soft-shell crabs, cleaned (gills, eyes and mouth removed)
    • Sliced tomatoes
    • Mozzarella cheese

    For the lemon butter sauce

    • 1 pound butter
    • 8 to 10 lemons, juiced
    • 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
    • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
    • 1 tablespoon minced garlic
    • Salt, to taste

    Method

    1. Make the lemon butter sauce: combine the melted butter with the lemon juice, Cajun seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and salt, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, adjusting seasoning to taste.
    2. Have your fishmonger clean the crabs, or do it yourself by removing the gills and cutting off the eyes and mouth.
    3. Set the crabs on a pan or a sheet of aluminum foil and place them on the grill over a low fire.
    4. Baste the crabs generously with the lemon butter sauce, then cook for 5 to 6 minutes per side, continuing to baste as they cook.
    5. Just before serving, top each crab with a slice of tomato and a small amount of mozzarella, and leave it on the heat only long enough for the cheese to melt.
    6. Remove from the grill and serve immediately.

    Checking for Doneness Safely

    The original recipe is timed rather than described visually — 5 to 6 minutes per side over a low fire. The FDA’s guidance for crab is that the flesh should be firm, pearly and opaque throughout, or, measured with a thermometer, cooked to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C). Soft-shell crabs are thin enough that this is rarely an issue at 5 to 6 minutes per side over live heat, but if your fire is running cooler than expected, check that the body meat has gone from translucent to opaque before pulling them off.

    A Few Practical Notes

    Buy soft-shell crabs live or already cleaned and ask your fishmonger about timing — they’re genuinely seasonal, sold mostly from spring into early fall while blue crabs are molting, and they don’t keep well, so plan to cook them within a day of buying. If you’re cleaning them yourself, do it right before cooking rather than ahead of time.

    Keep the fire low and resist the urge to rush this one. Because the whole crab is going on the heat rather than just a fillet, a hotter fire risks scorching the legs and thin shell edges before the body is cooked through, which is exactly why this recipe calls for a low fire and frequent basting instead of a hard sear.

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  • Bobby Flay’s Skewered Sea Scallops with Lemon-Fennel

    Bobby Flay’s Skewered Sea Scallops with Lemon-Fennel

    This recipe is taken directly from Food Network — Skewered Sea Scallops with Lemon-Fennel Dressing, from Bobby Flay’s Boy Meets Grill. It’s built around a short Pernod marinade and a double-skewer trick that keeps the scallops flat on the grate, finished with a bright lemon and fennel dressing rather than a heavy sauce.

    Scallops are one of the trickier things to grill because they’re small, round, and prone to spinning or falling through the grates. Threading them onto two parallel skewers instead of one solves that problem — the scallops stay flat and turn as a unit, which makes flipping far less fiddly than working with individual pieces or a single center skewer.

    Ingredients

    For the scallops

    • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
    • 3 tablespoons Pernod
    • 3 tablespoons olive oil
    • Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
    • 12 sea scallops
    • 8 wooden skewers, soaked in water for 30 minutes
    • 2 lemons, halved

    For the lemon-fennel dressing

    • 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
    • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
    • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
    • Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
    • 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
    • 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh fennel tops

    Method

    1. Heat the grill to high.
    2. Whisk together the garlic, Pernod, olive oil, and salt and pepper in a large baking dish. Add the scallops, turn to coat, cover, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.
    3. While the scallops marinate, make the dressing: whisk the lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, and salt and pepper together in a medium bowl, then slowly whisk in the olive oil until it emulsifies. Stir in the chopped fennel tops.
    4. Thread 3 scallops onto 2 parallel skewers so they lie flat, rather than spin, on the grate — you’ll end up with 4 double-skewered portions. Season both sides with salt and pepper.
    5. Grill the scallop skewers for about 2 minutes per side, or until just cooked through. Grill the halved lemons alongside them at the same time.
    6. Transfer the skewers to a platter and immediately drizzle with the lemon-fennel dressing. Serve with the grilled lemon halves.

    Checking for Doneness Safely

    The original recipe calls for roughly 2 minutes per side “or until just cooked through” — a visual, time-based cue rather than a temperature one. The FDA’s guidance for shellfish is more specific: scallop flesh should be cooked until it is milky white or opaque and firm, and as a general seafood benchmark, an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C) is the safe target. Because scallops are small and cook fast, it’s easy to overshoot that window by even 30 seconds, so pull one off the skewer to check the center if you’re not confident gauging it by eye.

    Recipes courtesy of individual chefs, including this one, don’t always carry a nutrition label beyond what the publisher runs through their own analysis. Food Network’s published nutrition figures for this dish list 342 calories and 10 grams of protein per serving, which is useful context if you’re portioning the dish as a main rather than a starter.

    A Few Practical Notes

    Buy dry-packed sea scallops if you can find them — scallops treated with a sodium tripolyphosphate solution (“wet-packed”) hold water and steam rather than sear, which makes it much harder to get any color on the outside in a 2-minute window per side. Pat them dry with paper towels before they go into the marinade, and again just before they hit the grate.

    Pernod is an anise-flavored liqueur; if you don’t want to buy a bottle for three tablespoons, a splash of dry white wine with a pinch of fennel seed gets you most of the way to the same background flavor, though it won’t be identical. Either way, keep the marinade time short — 20 minutes is plenty for scallops, and the citrus and alcohol in a longer soak can start to firm up the surface texture before the fish even touches the grill.

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  • Weber’s Grilled Swordfish with Jalapeño-Mint Butter

    Weber’s Grilled Swordfish with Jalapeño-Mint Butter

    This recipe is taken directly from Weber’s official recipe library — Swordfish Steaks with Jalapeño-Mint Butter Sauce, developed by grilling author Jamie Purviance. It’s a straightforward direct-heat method that pairs seared steaks with a smoky, herb-flecked butter sauce, and it’s a solid baseline for learning swordfish technique before you start adjusting the seasoning to your own taste.

    Swordfish is one of the more forgiving fish to put straight on the grate. The steaks are thick, dense and meaty enough to hold together without a basket or foil, so all you really need is a hot grill, a spatula, and a thermometer or a close eye on color. This version builds its flavor around charred jalapeños and fresh mint folded into melted butter, rather than a marinade, which keeps the prep quick.

    Ingredients

    For the jalapeño-mint butter sauce

    • 2 medium jalapeño chile peppers
    • 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
    • 1/4 cup minced fresh mint leaves (from 8 to 10 sprigs)
    • 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
    • 2 scallions (white and light green parts only), thinly sliced
    • 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided

    For the swordfish

    • 4 swordfish steaks, each about 8 ounces and 1 inch thick
    • Extra-virgin olive oil
    • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
    • 4 lemon wedges

    Method

    1. Set up the grill for direct cooking over medium heat, roughly 350-450°F (177-232°C).
    2. Clean the cooking grates, then grill the whole jalapeños directly over the heat, lid closed, until the skins blacken all over, about 10 minutes, turning occasionally. Transfer them to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap so they steam, and let them sit for about 10 minutes before peeling off the charred skin and removing the stems and seeds. Dice finely.
    3. In a small saucepan on the stove over medium heat, melt the butter until it’s frothy, then stir in the diced jalapeños, mint, lemon juice, scallions and half the salt. Keep it warm over very low heat while the fish cooks.
    4. Brush both sides of the swordfish steaks with olive oil and season evenly with the remaining salt and the pepper.
    5. Grill the steaks directly over medium heat, lid closed, turning once, until the center is just opaque but still juicy — about 8 to 10 minutes total.
    6. Spoon the warm butter sauce over the steaks and serve with lemon wedges.

    Checking for Doneness Safely

    Weber’s own cue for this recipe is visual — pull the steaks when the center looks “just opaque” but still juicy. That’s a reasonable way to judge swordfish by eye, but it’s worth backing it up with a thermometer. The FDA’s guidance for fin fish is to cook to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C), or until the flesh is opaque and separates easily with a fork. If you’re cooking to time rather than temperature, checking the thickest steak with an instant-read thermometer near the end of the 8-to-10-minute window is the safer way to confirm it’s actually there, rather than relying on color alone.

    Because swordfish steaks are usually cut to a fairly even thickness, they cook more predictably than a whole fillet with a tapered end — one more reason this cut is a good one to start with if you’re new to grilling fish.

    A Few Practical Notes

    Steak thickness matters more than most other variables here. A steak under an inch thick can go from underdone to dry in the time it takes to answer your phone, since there’s so little mass to buffer the heat. If your fishmonger’s steaks run thin, either shorten the cooking time and watch closely, or ask for a thicker cut — Weber’s recipe is built around roughly 1-inch, 8-ounce portions, and that thickness is part of why the timing works.

    The jalapeño char step can be done well ahead: grill and peel the peppers earlier in the day, then just reheat the butter sauce while the swordfish cooks. That keeps the actual grilling stretch short and lets you focus on timing the fish itself, which is the part that actually needs your attention.

    If you don’t want the heat, swap in a milder pepper or skip it and use the mint-lemon butter on its own — the base sauce technique (melted butter plus an acid and fresh herbs) works with most firm grilled fish, not just swordfish.

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