How to Grill Vegetables Like a Total Badass

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How to Grill Vegetables Like a Total Badass

Russell Moore of Oakland, CA's Camino shares his best tips for making eggplant, mushrooms, figs, and more taste awesome by throwing them over some hot coals.

Grilling season is here, which tends to be great news for carnivores. But meat is only part of the equation; if you're going to grill an entire meal, you're going to need to get some good-for-you stuff in there, too.

Russell Moore is known for the fire-cooked feasts at his Oakland restaurant, Camino, and while carnivores who dine there can sink their teeth into dishes like duck-fat-braised duck legs with duck cracklings, there's a lot of love for vegetarians to be had as well. (We doubt your vegan cousin would mind ditching a frozen veggie burger in favor of some King Trumpet Mushroom Parcels with Greens and Grilled Rutabaga.) Moore's cooking is living proof that grilling doesn't need to bring out your inner carnivore—you can absolutely grill a delicious meal that's not just vegetarian-friendly, but vegetable-centric.

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We asked Moore for his best tips for anyone, grill master or grill novice, who wants to move beyond the world of steaks and burgers—not that there is anything wrong with those, of course. (That said, if you thought a massive bone-in steak was the most impressive thing that you could cook with fire, consider Moore's grilled ratatouille.) Below, Moore shares his wisdom to help you avoid sad, burnt or undercooked vegetables, and strategies for managing your coals.

Photo courtesy of Camino

Photos by Yoko Takahashi

Why You Should Care About Grilling Vegetables My big thing about grilling is that if you're going to light a fire to grill something, you might as well grill everything that you can. If you spent the time to build a fire and you have a nice fire, it's ridiculous to grill a steak and nothing else—a waste of energy.

There's not a catch-all answer for how to grill a vegetable. You have to consider what you're trying to do to each vegetable before you put it on the grill for the best effect. Everyone's been to the backyard barbecue where there's burnt vegetables that are kind of dried out. People sometimes have the opinion that grilled vegetables are dried out, wrinkly, bad vegetables, which they can be. Some people associate burnt food with grilling, and I'm on a personal crusade to stop that.

The Vegetables to Start With Right Now Corn is just about coming on in California, and grilled corn is delicious. But it's difficult to put a naked ear of corn on the grill and cook it all the way through without it drying out and getting kind of hard, so what I do is I pull the husk back but leave it connected and brush the silk out between the kernels. Then I cover it back up with the husk—I don't season it or do anything yet—and then I cook it really hot. What you're trying to do is burn the husk on the outside and steam the corn on the inside. If the husk is falling apart, tie it on. Throw it on a really hot part of the grill, burn it all the way around, let it cool, then take that husk off and get rid of it. Smear some sort of compound butter on it and then grill it again.

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For something complicated, it's really fun to do grilled ratatouille. And that's grilling everything: squash, onions, tomatoes, and eggplant, which is the trickiest one. I mostly recommend people bake eggplant, but you can grill it really slow. The last thing you want is raw, hard eggplant, which is about the worst thing you can eat.

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The Best Fruit for Your Fire Fruit is tricky. Apricots and figs work, if you get them at the right point. Take a fig and split it lengthwise, brush it with a little oil, and season it with salt and pepper, and on a nice clean grill I grill it fairly quickly. You can get the cut sides brown a little bit, and then pull it off and serve it with ice cream or something. We make fig leaf ice cream; we grill fig leaves, which brings out a kind of coconut-y quality in them, and then we steep milk with the fig leaves and make ice cream out of it. So, of course that tastes really good with grilled figs.

How to Plan Your Order of Grilling Think about what you want to do to [each thing]. You can grill something big first, on a slower fire while you have other coals developing somewhere else, and when you take that off you can grill something quicker.

Say you want to grill zucchini. Either you want thick slices or thin slices. If you want thick slices of zucchini grilled, they're going to take ten minutes to cook, which means you can't have a raging fire. You have to have a nice cool fire or a fire that's mature, hot on one side and another part of your grill that is [a bit] cooler. If you're not thinking and you just throw everything on the grill drunkenly, you're going to have a bunch of burnt stuff that's also raw [inside]. The point of grilling isn't to show how cool you are—that you can cook everything in a fire.

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Some vegetables I actually like to boil first before grilling them. Cauliflower is really good grilled, but it's better if you cut it into wedges and cook it in garlicky water, let it cool off, and then brush it with oil and chilies and grill it.

Why a Huge Roaring Fire Isn't Always Best I definitely don't want to grill over flames. I have no coals that have flame coming off of them. A vegetable is a porous thing, and it would really pick up the sort of sooty, kerosene flavor. I'm careful to keep the grill really clean and I brush it between everything with a wire brush and always wipe that immediately after with a clean, dry towel. I don't do the oiled rag that a lot of people recommend, because I feel like that's putting oily, sooty stuff back on the grill. You want the fire to make your food taste good—you don't want dark marks because your grill is dirty.

If you're building a fire, right next to it where some coals are developing, you can take a whole clean eggplant and kind of nestle it right into the coals. Its really easy to do, and really hard to mess up. Pull it out of the fire and peel off that burnt skin off, and on the inside, you have delicious eggplant stuff that you can make into a spread for a toast or part of a salad. I like to throw them in there while I do something else, because you can kind of ignore it and I don't like to waste the fire. The next day, you have this smoky salad that reminds you of the fire you had yesterday.

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The Best Setup for Beginners Of all the backyard things, I like the little hibachi. I grew up with one of those, and you can get them at a Japanese store. They're not fancy, but what's cool about them is they usually have two grates, so you can build a fire on one side, and when that turns to coals, start cooking on that side while you put new coals to burn next to it on the other side. At home, I really just like a couple of bricks and a grate over it, and I build a wood fire next to it and wait for the coals to develop and rake them under as needed.

What You Should Make This Weekend I'd make the grilled ratatouille. I really like king trumpet mushrooms. You can cut them into halves and marinate them for up to two hours. Marinating softens them a little, makes them juicier and a little easier to grill. My marinade is usually just garlic, herbs, and oil. They're very meaty, so meat eaters tend to like them, too. Put them on a skewer and grill them and serve them with ratatouille—that's a pretty fancy meal. You could also make a really unique bruschetta where you grill a piece of bread dry, take it off the grill, rub it with garlic and a ripe tomato, and then drizzle olive oil on it. That's delicious, and can be served with whatever you are eating.

RECIPE: King Trumpet Mushroom Parcels with Greens and Grilled Rutabaga

For Those About to Grill Give yourself more time than you think to get the fire right. And if you're having people over, think of some really easy snacks that people can eat while you're trying to figure it out. If you're not patient, you might make a mess. But if you have a little snack—something you can put on toast that you grill while you're getting everything else ready—and you have some wine to drink, your guests are going to be fine. You can wait another hour if you need to. Just have a way to keep making more fire to keep the party going—and to keep the grill going.

Thanks for talking with us, Russell.

Read more about Russell Moore, Camino, and how to play with fire here. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.