By Taylor Sutton, MS, RD
United Supermarkets’ Lifestyle Desk
Summer is an excellent time to add more produce in the diet with all of the fun items that are in-season. Diets rich in fruit and vegetables are linked with a variety of benefits like lower blood pressure, reduced risk of heart disease and stroke, better eye health, increased gut health, and so much more.
There are so many different ways to add more produce to your day. Ways like adding more to your salads to build different flavor profiles, chilled soups, as snacks or dippers to the snacks, into smoothies, added into baked goods, veggie omelets, added into any casserole, blended pasta dishes and so many more.
Grilling produce can add such a depth of flavor and give a different life to foods that can reawaken the summer time taste buds. Just about any vegetable can be thrown on the grill depending on the size and we’re here to help you along the way with a few ideas.
Our top 3 tasty tips for sealing in those beautiful grill marks and delicious flavor are:
1. Oil up the veggies – not the grill. Give your veggies a light even toss in a little oil to help build the char marks and not stick to the grates
2. Close the lid. This helps actually cook and not just char the veggies.
3. Season with simplicity. We love to grill up a bunch of things at work because let’s be honest getting out the grill in Texas heat isn’t always the most fun task. So save yourself some time with future meals by grilling the veggies with simple seasonings (ie: salt, pepper, garlic) so you can revamp them in multiple ways.
Last pro tip that we will leave you with is get the drill HOT! Like 375 and above, close to 450 if you can. The veggies might look a little dry when you first pull them off of the grill, but give them time as when they rest they will sweat and deflate a bit.
Rainbow Vegetable Skewers
What You Need
8 cherry Tomatoes
8 baby Carrots
1 small Squash
1 small Zucchini
1/2 small Eggplant
1/2 small Purple Onion
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Salt and pepper as desired
How It’s Made
1. Preheat grill to medium high heat
2. Soak wood skewers in water
3. Cut squash, zucchini and eggplant in 1 inch slices
4. Open the onion in layers and cut them into 2 inch squares
5. Skewer the vegetables starting with tomatoes, followed by carrots, squash, zucchini, eggplant and purple onion
6. Brush lightly with olive oil and salt and pepper as desired
7. Place on grill for 2-3 minutes per side just enough to obtain grill marks
