Preheat the Grill 

Always start with pre-heating your grill for at least 10-15 minutes while you prepare your food for the fire, just as you would an oven. For most vegetables, medium-high heat works well to ensure light charring and grill marks without softening the vegetables too much for perfectly cooked, tender-crisp results.  

Get Creative 

Whether it’s a spice rub or a marinade, grilling gets even more fun when you experiment. Once you know the basics of a marinade – acid, fat, something salty, and seasoning, you’ll find the possibilities are endless.

Cooking Times Matter – and Size Does Too!  

Different vegetables are ready at different times. If you are using tender vegetables like sweet peppers or sliced onions, they will be ready before sturdier produce like corn. Vegetables with high moisture content – like squash, zucchini, and mushrooms – should be left alone for a few minutes on the grill before flipping to ensure grill marks. If you are mixing vegetables together, cutting them into same-sized pieces will give you the most even result.  

Grill Vegetables After Proteins

When your cookout includes protein, it’s usually best to start there and cook the meat or plant-based protein all the way through before giving it a rest while you finish the vegetables. At this point, the temperature of the grill will have cooled slightly, which ensures your produce doesn’t get charred on the outside but not fully cooked through.

Clean Up is a Cinch 

You’ll find that grilling is much faster and easier to clean up than working indoors. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll love how you can spend less time washing up, and more time enjoying your cookout. Brushing the grates when your grill is still hot, and lightly oiling the grates works like a charm, but for stuck on stains or strongly flavored food, like fish, rubbing a halved onion (yes, an onion!) is an unexpected and non-toxic trick that works wonders, and with something you probably already have in the pantry.  

Try Out Our Veggie Grilling Recipe

Grilled Eggplant Dip with Tahini & Grilled Naan

Checkout Our Grilling Tips for the Omnivore

Meat lovers – we’ve got you covered with juicy grilling tips from our grilling series to perfect your proteins!