Grilling Side Dishes

We are at the end of the grilling section and we are finishing it up with side dishes. This two side dishes both turned out great but I wished I could have done them on a "real" charcoal grill and not the gas grill as you will see. We will start...

Dish 1: Tropical Hash!!

Sounds yummy right! You are right. It was awesome. Let me say that I am a huge fan of grilling and grilling plus sweet potatoes in an awesome combination. First lets get something out of the way... Yams vs. sweet potatoes? Yes there is a difference. When shopping for a sweet potato you must look for the light colored (almost pale pink) skin potato. These potatoes are much more starchy and less sweet. The more common "yam" that we all know and love thanks to Thanksgiving is the darker orange color one that is considerable more sweet than the sweet potato ironically. :) The hash calls for sweet potatoes but less face it... Yams are the bomb and I LOVE them. They are also more Caribbean in nature (where they are grown) and therefore I choose yams. (Ok so I didn't know all that stuff before I purchased the yams but obviously I made the right choice right?) Ok so you turn your grill on and grill the sweet potatoes (yams) :) for an hour which will make the potatoes soft. Basically what you do if you cooked regular potatoes in the oven for baked potatoes. Now, if I had a charcoal grill this would be no big deal and probably next time I go camping I will make this but heating a gas grill for 1 hour is a pain and uses a lot of propane. Not saying it's expensive but just for a side dish is crazy.

With about 20 minutes left I put 1 banana on to get black on the outside. As you can see we threw on some teriyaki steaks to put some of that heat to use.

Inside the house I warmed up some coconut milk and butter on the stove to just about boiling. Once the potatoes and banana were soft and black (banana only) I mashed them with a fork to a mash potato like consistency. Now I know some of you like mash potatoes with lumps and some without. To be honest, I was too lazy to pull out the mixer and I do NOT like lumps but wanted to follow the directions as closely as possible and AB calls to fork it.

To make the smooth consistency I added the coconut milk/butter as needed to make a yummy mash. Serve on side of chicken of steak as seen here!!! YUMMY!!!

Now I have made sweet potato mash (yams) but not on the grill before and Symon said it was too sweet. He loved this tropical mash because (in his words) "the coconut milk and banana made it awesome". We did not get any BBQ type flavor out of this. Of course we did not use a BBQ technically, gas instead. So unless you have your grill on for something else, it doesn't matter if you make this in the oven or outside. It is awesome. It should be noted that both of my kids tried this and did not like it. Go figure.

Dish 2: Grilled Romaine

This dish was not a surprise to me. I have heard of grilling romaine before. I though this would be an easy one. Again, I questioned why to grill it when it is literally on the grill for 1 minute total. Was it even worth turning the propane on? Guess we would find out. I took one heart of romaine and cut it into quarters. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

I then proceeded to make the dressing/vinaigrette. This included whole grain mustard, apple cider vinegar and capers. I have never had capers before so I decided to chop them. (not called for in the recipe) because I was afraid to be honest. Plus when I was telling my mom about the recipe she said she didn't like capers which worried me a bit more. I know they are pretty salty and are usually used for the salty briney (not a word but you know what I mean) taste so it couldn't be too bad.

I placed the 1/4 romaine pieces on the grill and turned ever 15 seconds. The goal is to get a char look/taste without wilting the lettuce too much. I was never able to get a grill mark before the wilting happen.

Then you take it off, serve whole with dressing on top. Now this is not the most easiest way to eat a salad so Symon and I decided to cut it up and add some leftover grilled chicken on top as seen here.

We ended up adding parmesan cheese and croutons in the end because the lettuce was really wet tasting which we think was because I put too much olive oil on the romaine at the beginning before grilling. Overall I would try this dish again. Maybe even put it into a tortilla to make a caesar wrap. (which we had tonight)

Overall grilling experience was great. I have much more confidence in grilling. In the future I would like to have a "real" grill or camp more so I can BBQ more and get that smoky flavor. Let me know your favorite thing to grill and maybe I can add it. The next section moves on to broiling which is actually upside down grilling. Think about it!!!!