Grilling Etiquette How To Cater For Vegetarian Guests At Your Grilling Party

When you think of a grill party, your mind turns immediately to big, juicy steaks, cooked over hickory smoke, or a beautiful piece of flaky and tender white fish, with the subtle flavour of oak. But hey, your daughter is bringing her new boyfriend, a real nice guy, and you don’t want to disappoint either of them. Or maybe someone in the family has decided to become a vegetarian – again, you are sensitive enough to worry what they will eat. Just dipping in the salad bowl will not be much fun!! However there are plenty of ways that you can cater for vegetarians whilst grilling in the backyard. Sure, it’s a bit more hassle as you will need to have a second set of tools handy and keep part of the grill free of meat and fish. But you will probably find that vegetarians are tolerant if things get a little mixed up, during the party, provided they do not have an allergy to what is being cooked – but that is a whole different ball game anyways. First, there is the easy option. Get down to the local supermarket and see what they have in the way of vegetarian burgers and vegetarian sausages, you will generally find, unless you live in a small town, that they do. Maybe ask the guest if they can recommend something that they like, or just some vegetarian food brand names of products that you can check out to see what is available locally. They will probably appreciate that you have asked. It is also possible to find dried mixes that you can re-hydrate and form into burger or sausage shapes. These just cook as you would the meat versions. But if you wanted to really impress, make your own, but remember to try it out first or you could be heading for grilling disaster! Any home made burger will tend to be more fragile, vegetarian ones even more so. If you have a fish cooking cage, you can use that (suitably cleaned first of course!) to ensure that the mix stays together. If you have not got time to practice beforehand, buy commercially made vegetarian products. Where do you get the recipes? From the same place that you got this information – the internet of course. Just Google ‘vegetarian burger recipe’ and you will get plenty. To make the barbecue sauce, just use your own favourite recipe but replace the stock with a vegetarian stock in place of the meat stock. These can be made (try Google!) or bought in the form of powders or cubes. For extra flavour, soy sauce is good, as are a couple of English products Marmite (Vegemite in Australia) or Worcester Sauce. Be careful not to over salt if you are using these as they are quite salty to start with. So there you go, grill party catering for vegetarian friends or family is not too much of a chore after all, just a little bit more organisation and preparation is needed.