Too hot for the oven

Can you smell that?  Awww... the grill is going again. It's been way too hot to cook inside, surprising for Minnesota, but we've been hit with a few streaks of the 90's. I know it's not as hot as where some of you live, just remember it gets -40* or more below zero here in the winter too!   We've been finding lots of meals to make on the grill this summer.  Not only does it taste wonderful, it keeps the house cooler too.  And who doesn't love pizza right?  I think we could eat pizza three times a week and never get sick of it.  Last summer we enjoyed taking the freezer pizzas and placing them on our pizza stone on the grill.  Really if you've never had grilled pizza you need to.  It's AMAZING!  We took the pizza stone inside for winter and used it once in the oven, and that was one too many times.  It ended up shattering, thankfully not until I took it out of the oven.  If you've ever bought one, they're not cheap so it wasn't something we ran out and replaced right away.  But we've missed grilled pizza this summer and I knew there had to be a way to make it without the stone.  I was doing some digging into how when I thought about our pizza pan.  We have one with the holes on the bottom I thought we could just place that on the grill.  And then I found it.  A mouth watering picture of grilled pizza with the delicious looking grill lines on the crust. I knew I wanted to make 'THAT' kind of grilled pizza.  A little more digging and comparing different techinques and we were ready to give it a try. 

So where do you start?  

First start with the homemade pizza crust recipe that I love so much. Really pizza crust in under 15 is unbelievable!  I love how it tastes too.  Mix it up and let it rise.  Then divide the dough into 4 equal parts.  Take your trusty dough roller or just flatten it out with your hands.  If you're a daredevil and have just washed your floors, give it a toss in the air and pretend you're in a fancy pizzeria!  Once you get your dough ball rolled out, place it on a greased cookie sheet.  I added cornmeal to the one in the picture to help get the dough off the pan when I needed it, but soon realized it came off just fine with the greased pan so feel free to skip that step!

Next gather your toppings. 

You'll need some sauce, cheese and a dish of olive oil.  The rest is up to you for what to add.  The kids wanted just pepperoni.  Mr. Bacon and I added some fresh sliced mushrooms and black olives to ours. 

Now it's time to head out to the grill!  Heat your grill to med. heat.  Mr. Bacon said he heated ours to about 375* give or take.  I don't think I'd heat hotter than this temp, lower is fine, it will just take a bit longer to cook the pizza.  Next take your olive oil and add a bit to your dough.  Spread it around. You want to make sure you coat it enough so it doesn't stick to the grill, but not enough so the oil is dripping off the dough. 

    

Once the dough is oiled, it's time to put it on the hot grill.  Gently pick up the dough. Be careful because it will stretch out. Misshapen dough is ok!  But dough with holes are super thin spots just makes it not look as pretty!  It also can make the dough burn.  Place the dough on the grill oiled side down. 

Close the lid of the grill.  After about 3-4 minutes, take a peak at your dough. When you start to see it bubble it's time to flip!  Now there is a trick to flipping the dough.  We tested out grill tongs, it didn't work.  They had too sharp of  'teeth' on the one's we tried and it just tore the dough apart.  Instead we opted to use our gigantic spatula.  It came with the pizza stone when I bought it.  It works wonderful.  Either will do the trick to flip the dough if you are careful.  If you only have tongs, try to find ones without sharp 'teeth'. 

 

 All flipped... OH look at those grill marks! (Sorry for the corner of the spatula, I blame Mr. Bacon!)

 

 Next toss on the toppings.  This step we found you want to work fast for.  For one because these pizzas cook fast, but mainly because you are sticking your hands into hot 375* heat!  Spread on some pizza sauce, add the other goodies and top it with cheese, then close the lid again. 

 

 After another 3-4 minutes take a peek at the pizza's.  At this point you are just wanting the cheese to melt.  Once it looks ooey, gooey and delicious, it's time to scoop it off the grill!  See our big pizza scoop! 

  Take it inside, let it cool for a few minutes and cut into slices. I like to top mine at this point with some fresh grated Parmesan cheese!  It's the perfect pizza dinner! 

 

It's the perfect pizza dinner! I hope you enjoy yours as much as we did ours!

Grills, great food and gardens - Oh My!

Ahhh... Can you smell that? Yeah it's the grill going again. We love to grill in the summer. Actually all year long, but there's something about grilling in three feet of snow and 20 degree weather that takes some of the joy out of it! Around this place Mr. Bacon is the grill master, perhaps one day I'll venture into grilling more. I mean I could grill if I had to, I prefer to leave that alone for now though! I'm happy to do the prep work and keep the mess outside.


Last night we broke out the charcoal grill. The gas grill makes great food, but the taste is so much better when it's cooked over the charcoal. And it was one of those perfect nights for grilling too, sunny, a light breeze, the kids running around the back yard, one of these waiting to be enjoyed! Your beverage of choice can vary.

So what did we toss on the grill? A summer favorite around the bacon house, tinfoil dinner. I know you have no clue what that is right? Don't worry there are pictures to follow. I have to say I love this meal though, not only do I not hear any complaining from the kids on why they have to eat it, there isn't much mess left over when dinner is done.

Tinfoil dinner:
*I have been told after explaining this meal to some that they also call it hobo dinner*

1.5lbs ground beef or turkey
5-6 med potatoes
4-5 carrots depending on size or about 1 cup chopped
4-5 mushrooms thick cut
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp favorite seasoning- I use Weber smoky mesquite
1 tsp season salt
1 tsp McCormick's Montreal steak seasoning
1 tsp liquid smoke
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

* All seasonings are optional and feel free to change them to your own taste. Also toss in any other favorite veggies!

First start out with a large chunk of tinfoil. I think mine is about 2 ft long (it was a bit too long) but use your best judgement according to how much you are going to make.

Next wash the potatoes, and dice them with the skins on. Place them in a large bowl and add 2 tbsp olive and 2 tsp of your favorite seasoning. Mix them up a bit to coat everything.

Then chop up some carrots and mushrooms, add them to the bowl and lightly mix.

Now it's time to mix up that burger. I like to season my burger. This is the same mix I put in my hamburgers when I make them too. Place your burger in a bowl. Add the worcestershire, liquid smoke, season salt and steak seasoning to it. You can adjust any of those to your taste or add in your own favorites. Nows the dirty part. You can mix this with a spoon, but it will take you awhile. I like to just dig in and get messy and mix it with my hands. I think it all gets worked into the burger better this way.

Once the burger is all mixed up, it's time to add everything to the tinfoil. First I spread out the veggie mix we made up already down the middle of the tinfoil (length wise). Then I take the burger and start making mini meatballs. These are small, about 1 inch in size if I were guessing at a measurement. Really it's all guess around here! The 1.5 pounds of burger I used made 45 mini meatballs. Place them on top of the veggie mix.

Now it's time to wrap it up! Bring in the two long sides first and roll them down. This can be kinda tricky when there is as much food to wrap up as I have, but I just squish it all in. Then roll up the sides. I like to have a bit extra on the sides to help create handles to lift it on and off the grill with.

Now it's ready for the grill.

Time to sit back and enjoy the sunshine. This needs to cook on a nice hot grill for about 30 minutes or so. I think Mr. Bacon left this one on for 40 minutes since it was rather large. The more food, the longer cook times. If you'd only used 1 pound of meat, you don't need it on as long. Oh the other nice thing about this meal, you can change it up to what ever you like, different spices? No problem! Prefer chicken? Toss it in! I love that about this dinner. You can even make up smaller individual packets for each family member and let the kids pick and choose what they'd like in their packet. That way they can't tell you they don't like it!

While this was cooking and the kids were off playing, I decided to check in on my garden. Last week we planted our garden and I am like a kid waiting for Christmas, always checking to see what's peeking out of the ground now! Here it is when we planted it. It doesn't look like much yet.

We are lucky to have a large enough yard to have a good size garden, we even have a section for just strawberries! Which are loaded this year. I even found this little guy flying around!

And when I peeked in on the garden, I was happy to find these peeking back at me too! My peas and zucchini are starting to grow!

Now how about checking in on that dinner. The 40 minutes are up and it's smelling SO good out here. Really I wish I could do a scratch and sniff picture of the grill. Sniff, sniff... Ahhhh! Well you will just have to make it for yourself and enjoy the yummy grill smell.

Once it's on the table, open it up and you're ready to go. An all in one meal ready to go!

Even Bacon bit gets some after a quick run though the kidco food mill!

The kids enjoyed it so much each of them had thirds! I hope you enjoy it just as much.