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Got That Shiny New Grill You Wanted?
Maybe treated yourself to that shiny new grill for your birthday and went all-or-nothing on a Kamado or pellet smoker?
First of all, congratulations.
Second of all, you need to broaden your scope of grillable recipes. Right now.
Having an arsenal of delicious grill recipes equips you to not only expand your own diet but make crowd-pleasing foods that people are sure to remember.
Hosting Labor Day weekend or the 4th of July this year?
“You can’t just serve up burgers and dogs and call it a day; you’re aiming to impress, and that’s exactly what this guide is going to help you achieve”
You can’t just serve up burgers and dogs and call it a day; you’re aiming to impress, and that’s exactly what this guide is going to help you achieve.
Instead of just picking a huge list of random recipes (that most people won’t want to try anyway), I’m going to go over the main foods that you’ll be grilling, and throw out a few recipe variations after teaching you how to properly cook them.
Let’s go over the fundamentals, then a few variants, and with the right tools, turn you into a grilling machine.
If you’d like to see a graphical breakdown of the grill recipes, we got you covered:
30 Delicious Grill Recipes for All Occasions
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How to Grill Chicken Like a Champ + 3 Recipes
Chicken can dry out pretty easily.
It’s an art to learn how to cook chicken on a grill the right way.
You want to stick to lower temperatures, such as 225° F up to 300° F.
This keeps is fairly consistent, but still cooks it slowly enough that you’ll be able to get some good sear marks, and retain a lot of moisture.
Higher heat will dry it out very quickly.
Consider using a food shield, made out of aluminum foil, if you’re using a sauce or marinade with your chicken.
Chicken should be 100% cooked through; you don’t want “rare” poultry.
Pesto Poppers
Using your metal skewers, take eight cubes of fresh, boneless skinless chicken breast, and position them on the skewer.
Coat in salt and pepper. Toss these on the grill and pull them off to rest when they’re done.
Using a homemade or store-bought pesto, lay some out on a plate, and roll the skewer in the pesto until it has a light, even coating. Return to heat for two minutes, and serve.
Chicken Teriyaki Salad
Marinade cubed chicken in olive oil for ten minutes, then add teriyaki sauce to the mix and cover for an additional twenty minutes.
This will let the sauce absorb. Skewer one piece of chicken, then one wedge of green bell pepper.
Alternate using chicken and a vegetable of your choice each time until the skewer is full.
Repeat this until your skewers are full. Cook for 15 minutes, let rest before enjoying it. Serve over arugula.
Lemon Pepper Chicken Breast
Line a pan with kosher salt and lay your boneless skinless chicken breast down on it.
On the other side, add additional salt and lemon juice. Leave at room temperature for ten minutes.
Place directly onto a hot grill and close the lid. Cook for seven to eight minutes on each side.
As it comes off the grill, add more lemon juice and freshly cracked black pepper.
How to Grill Pork Chops the Right Way + 3 Recipes
First of all, you need to start with thick pork.
Pork is very fatty, and for the grill, that’s a good thing. It acts as a shield to let the rest of the pork cook through without losing its moisture content.
The fat drips off, and you’re left with lean, char-marked pork that looks fantastic.
Thin strips of pork (like ½” or so) are going to get crispy. I don’t know anyone who likes crispy pork chops, outside of Shake ‘N Bake.
It’s always a good idea to brine your pork chops before cooking.
Messy Spareribs
Soak your raw pork chops in a brine of water and salt for about ten minutes. This will help retain moisture while they’re on the grill.
Grill for five minutes on each side at about 300° F. Be sure that the grate is hot enough to leave grill marks.
After both sides have cooked, use your glaze brush to generously slather sauce on the top of the spareribs.
Cover and let cook for 15 to 20 more minutes. You’ll get the perfect blend of crispy skin and savory sauce.
When finished, place upside-down on serving tray and brush with more sauce.
Grilled Tenderloin Discs
Pork tenderloin can be a tough one to cook on the grill, but if you wrap it up enough and cook low and slow, it can be done while retaining moisture.
When your tenderloin is done, cut them into ¾” discs, and get ready to make the magic happen.
Grill them on each side for two minutes so you can get a really nice but light sear mark on them.
When they come off the grill, apply kosher salt, pepper, and a thin layer of zesty Italian dressing to add some spice.
Spiced Pork Chops
Add soy sauce, garlic, red pepper flakes, and a little bit of Frank’s Red Hot into a bowl.
Mix it up, and lather this on top of your chops before they ever hit the grill.
You want to also salt your chops and make sure there’s an ample amount of pepper for this to really pop.
Let the open flame hit it; you want it to caramelize to the pork chops for this to work.
How to Grill Restaurant-Quality Shrimp + 3 Recipes
Shrimp is a bit of a double-edged sword.
You either end up grossly undercooking them, or they char to a crisp and taste awful.
There’s a key to getting them done the right way: olive oil. You want to marinate them in olive oil.
Shrimp don’t take long to cook, so you don’t need to over-salt them to retain moisture.
Their muscle fibers are very loose, so the salt won’t do much other than over flavor your shrimp.
Skewer them so that the skewer enters and exits the shrimp twice, and then rest them down on the grill to cook.
Don’t let them just hang loose, or you’ll lose some through the grates.
Italian Grilled Shrimp
Once your shrimp are on the skewer, get a little bit of olive oil on them and stick as much parsley to them as possible.
From there, you’re going to toss them on direct heat. That’s not where it ends, though.
Once your shrimp are halfway through cooking, as it says on the guide above, you’re going to cover them in a bit of zesty Italian dressing.
Heat them up again for about two minutes, and you’re good to go. It’s simple but effective.
Coconut Shrimp
Yeah, you can get it without going to the steakhouse now.
Coconut shrimp require a mixture of flour, salt, black pepper, panko bread crumbs, shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened), and put that to the side.
Cover the shrimp in a few beaten eggs and some coconut oil, then wrap it around in the coating.
Put on the grill for a few extra minutes on each side, and ensure they don’t slide off the skewers.
Spicy Garlic Grilled Shrimp
This is perhaps my favorite way to enjoy shrimp, with a bit of a kick.
Put some minced garlic in a bowl, some paprika, lemon juice, cayenne, and an absolute ton of lemon.
Mix that up, and add a little bit of olive oil as you see fit until the mixture is thick, but not powdery or tough.
From there, coat your shrimp, and then store them in the fridge for about fifteen minutes to help the coating stick.
Grill for a little bit of extra time on each side, and serve; you’re good to go.
How to Perfectly Grill Salmon + 3 Recipes
Salmon is fantastic, but it can fall apart pretty easily, like most fish.
There’s a trick to prevent that from happening.
You want to salt the actual side of the fish, but you also want to apply kosher salt to the scale side.
This helps prevent it from sticking to the grill grates, at least as much as you can.
It’s salmon; you’re always going to lose a couple of small morsels here and there.
Salt the salmon, grill it, and pull it off the grill about 2 minutes before it’s done cooking.
The residual heat will continue to cook the salmon while it’s resting.
Lemon Filets
Lemon and salmon go together so unbelievably well that you can actually make it the costar to the dish.
If you just take your lemon slices and grill them right alongside salmon, you get a nice charred flavor while retaining that citrus flavor to drizzle down on the salmon. Boom; you’re done.
Garlic and Herb
Get ready to empty your pantry into this recipe, because it’s going to be wild. Get your filets ready, and get a bowl.
Mix in olive oil, soy sauce, dijon mustard, brown sugar, parsley, lemon zest (not just lemon juice), thyme, salt, and pepper in a bowl, and whip it up until everything blends together perfectly.
Marinade your filets for as long as you can, up to four hours, and just slap it on the hot grates to get the best flavor.
Ginger and Soy Salmon
Grind up some fresh ginger root in a bowl, and mix it with some soy sauce.
It’s going to be tangy at first, but after you whip up some parsley and a bit of lemon zest in the bowl, it will even it right out.
Make tons of this, and lather your salmon filets. Let them rest at room temperature for about twenty-five minutes before you toss them on the grill.
How to Grill Corn (The Right Way) + 3 Recipes
All it takes is one burnt kernel to really throw off the taste.
It’s hard to achieve a blend of crispiness and beautiful color, but it’s possible. Shuck your corn and put it to the side.
You want to melt some butter in a bowl and use a basting brush to apply it generously over your corn, even before it goes on the grill.
Pop it on a 350° F grate, and close the lid. You want to turn it every four minutes until you have an even golden color that you enjoy.
Red Hot Corn
Frank’s Red Hot really does go on everything.
It’s not good when you just put it on the corn when it’s done; you have to lather it in Frank’s and then grill it to lock in that flavor and remove some of the tanginess of the vinegar in the sauce.
Garlic Butter Corn on the Cob
On a cast-iron pan, right on your grill, fry up a ton of minced garlic in little pieces.
You can buy it for pre-minced from the store, so long as it’s in oil.
Fry the garlic, remove it from heat, and gently melt the butter in the pan. Paint your corn with it while it cooks, and presto.
Sour Cream Corn
Sour cream can cut the heat out of a lot of different dishes, and with corn, it makes each kernel pop (not for real).
Add some salt and pepper to your corn, cook it with butter on it, and then top it with sour cream and fresh herbs. Just eat it straight up like that.
How to Grill Filet Mignon Without Butchering it + 3 Recipes
Now, this is one cut that you don’t want to mess up.
You want high heat, and a fast cook so you can keep the inside at the right temperature, but tender and not overdone.
Your filet mignon slabs should be applied directly to a clean, 450° F grill grate after the grill has been closed for 15 minutes, and had time to preheat.
You want no more than eight minutes in total for your filets. Four on each side.
If you like it rare, three on each side is perfectly acceptable as long as you monitor the temperature.
For this to work, put them on the grill fast, and keep the lid closed for as long as possible.
Garlic Butter Filet Mignon
Filet mignon absorbs flavors like nothing else, and when you lather it in garlic butter, it absorbs all that deliciousness and somehow makes it even more tender.
Soak this for about thirty minutes or so, and then grill it.
Top it with a slab of garlic butter as you plate it for the dramatic and extra rich effect.
Balsamic Wine Mignon
Want to add a little booze to your recipes?
Balsamic vinegar is strong, and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think we can agree on red wine, right?
Mix balsamic, red wine, and green herbs of your choosing.
The dijon mustard is optional, but I enjoy it. Soak your filet mignon in it for about two hours in the fridge, and make sure the grill is oiled well so it doesn’t stick to it.
Worcestershire Filets
This is super simple, it just involves you tossing a bunch of stuff in a blender.
You can do that, right?
Add in Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, minced garlic, cayenne, fresh herbs, olive oil, and a pinch of lemon in there.
Whip it up, marinade your filets for 30 minutes at room temperature, and let her rip. This is destined to be a fan favorite.
How to Grill Eggplant and Keep it Crisp + 3 Recipes
Eggplant is one of those vegetables you only ever hear about when grilling (outside of eggplant parm).
You know why?
It’s best when it comes from the grill. It’s so easy to make it spongy and gross, so I’m going to tell you exactly how to avoid that.
You’re going to follow suit with the shrimp, and marinade this in olive oil for an extended period of time. It sounds counterintuitive, but it gets the job done.
Put your eggplant slices in a bowl with olive oil, salt, and a bit of lemon, and give it 30 minutes before it meets the grill.
Spiced Eggplant Slabs
Ready to singe those taste buds?
I mean it in a good way, of course. In a bowl, whip together some cajun spice (and by some I mean a lot), lime juice, olive oil, and you’re good to go.
Depending on how you like your seasoning, you can make this thin by adding extra oil, or thick by making it with more dry ingredients.
Italian Eggplants
It’s a roundabout way of saying there’s a lot of fresh herbs in here.
Make your own Italian seasoning; use fresh thyme, oregano, and basil together for a good mix.
Add some olive oil and garlic, and whip everything together in a blender.
It’s going to feel like a light pesto, but that’s how it’s meant to be.
Spread it on top of your eggplants after you flip them over on the grill when one side is nice and crispy, and you’re ready to rock and roll.
Ten Tomato Eggplant
It really has ten tomatoes in it. Cut up nice thick chunks of tomato, and coat them in salt and pepper.
Add some parmesan cheese, olive oil, and Italian style breadcrumbs on top.
Grill your eggplant as I’ve listed above, and cook the ten tomato mixture on a food shield.
Top it when they’re done, and you’ll never cook eggplant another way.
How to Grill Vegetables and Make Stellar Stir-Fries + 3 Recipes
I’m going to let you in on one little secret when it comes to stir-fries: you’ve got to use a griddle pan.
I know, I know, you can be upset with me all you want, but it makes a world of difference.
Griddle pans can just go over your grate, and turn direct heat into indirect heat, which is going to help you transform those boring veggies into a truly stupendous stir fry.
Grease your griddle pan, let it pre-heat for about five minutes, and drop your veggies on after they’ve been seasoned.
Give them three on each side before you flip. That’s the basics of it, and this works for most vegetables, but these recipes take it to another level.
Garden Stir Fry
Carrots, green peppers, red peppers, chopped broccoli, and cucumber slices—it’s like heaven topped right on your steak or chicken.
This is perhaps the most simple stir fry out there because it involves nothing more than what I listed in the section above.
It cooks, the veggies get tender, and the flavors imbue on their own.
Snap Pea Stir Fry
Snap peas are another vegetable that rarely gets utilized outside of grilling.
Let’s make it shine. In a bowl, mix some freshly ground ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, and a touch of balsamic vinegar; it’s going to smell potent, but it will reduce over the heat.
Soak your snap peas for fifteen minutes, and toss them on the griddle plate for ten.
Pepper and Mushroom Mix
Some peppers and mushrooms topped over a well-cooked, medium-rare steak are fantastic.
Throw some soy sauce and sesame oil into a bowl, and then mix in your red and yellow peppers, some chopped mushrooms, and let it soak for two hours in the fridge.
Cook for ten minutes on the griddle plate, and we’re good to go.
How to Grill Asparagus Spears + 3 Recipes
Asparagus (and eggplant) got separate spots from the standard vegetable category, because they’re fan favorites at every cookout, and you rarely see them served up anywhere else.
People can pass on stir fry, but nobody is going to pass on a good, hot plate of asparagus spears.
Asparagus can hold a lot of water, and we want to dry them out just a little bit.
Salt the heck out of these, and then chop off the super hard fibrous ends at the bottom.
Toss those suckers in the garbage can, and preheat your grill to about 450° F.
Lemon Pepper Spears
Mix together lemon juice in a bowl with salt, pepper, and a bit of cayenne to keep things nice and spicy.
Once it’s blended, paint your asparagus spears using your basting brush and be generous with the amount you apply.
Let it cook like this, but also add some more when it comes off the hot plate.
Blackened Bacon Wrapped Asparagus Spears
Who doesn’t love bacon?
This is a bit of a different twist, but trust me. Mix salt, pepper, brown sugar and a bit of lemon together in a bowl.
Coat your bacon in it like your life depends on it.
Wrap your asparagus spears and stab some toothpicks through them, and then cook them as is. You’re going to thank me later.
Parmesan Spiky Spears
I say spiky because we’re really going to grill these until they get a nice tender-crisp to them.
Salt, pepper, olive oil, and some lemon juice need to be mixed together in a bowl.
Slather the spears in it. Grill your spears as I’ve listed above, and then at the end, toss it in a bowl of parmesan cheese before you serve it.
How to Grill Lobster Tail and Keep it Tender + 3 Recipes
Half of the magic here honestly comes from proper preparation.
You have to cut your lobster tails a very specific way by butterflying it.
Use kitchen shears and cut a hole going down the outside of the tail shell, then gently pull the sides apart until the meat can be removed without coming apart from the horizontal flap of the shell.
Lay the meat on top. From here, you need to lather it in butter before you even cook it.
You want to put it meat side down on the grill for about four to five minutes, and then flip it over onto the shell for another three to four minutes.
Boom. You have a lobster tail.
White Wine Tails
Mixing wine with food is basically the best thing ever.
For this recipe, you’re going to mix together some standard honey, a splash or two of white wine (chardonnay), and some additional melted butter in a pan.
You have to reduce this in a pan over low and slow heat, so use additional burners on your gas grill, or turn down the heat on your charcoal grill.
Reduce, coat, enjoy.
Cajun Lobster Tails
You’re already cooking this with a ton of butter on it, and that’s the best way to have it, but what if you spice things up a bit?
Get some pre-mixed cajun spice, and grill up some garlic in a cast iron pan on the grill.
I want you to sprinkle your cajun spice in the pan while the oil from the garlic is sizzling so that it toasts the spice every so slightly.
Get a silicone spatula to scrape this out about 45 seconds after you toast the spice, and layer it on top of those buttery lobster tails.
Herb and Garlic Butter
You knew this was coming, and you’re not the least bit mad about it.
I think the best way to have lobster is with tons of butter, and a healthy amount of garlic.
Follow the steps I’ve listed above, and when it comes to the plate, add freshly fried garlic and herbs right on top.
Consider This Your Crash Course in All Things Grilling
If you’re new to grilling, this is a crash course.
If you’re a seasoned veteran, consider this a refresher.
What are you going to do with these recipes? When are you going to put them to good use? Who are you serving?
Prepare for grill day, get your grill tools ready, fire things up, and be the reason that people overeat on delectable grilled foods.
Be the reason that they hit you up later for recipes and ask what your secret is. You’ve got this.
