This time of year, a lot of us spend time preparing meals on the grill or barbecue.
As most of us know, meat is particularly well suited to this. Whether it’s a steak or a chicken leg, it works well on the barbecue. May vegetables also lend them selves to being grilled. Potatoes work if you leave them long enough, and things like corn and even zucchini are pretty good on the barbecue.
But I have to be honest. Until very recently, I had never tried fruit. Yes. Fruit. On the barbecue.
Now most fruit just isn’t going to work well on your average grill. Toss on a blueberry, and that’s just going through the grill and into the fire. Strawberries are also not likely to be a good fit, unless you use big ones. And even then, you would have to be careful.
But things like pineapple and some melons turn out pretty good.
Cooked pineapple isn’t so strange. You can argue about whether or not it belongs on pizza, but cooking pineapple brings out a different taste. It almost seems sweeter.
And the same can be said for cantaloupe.
I know. It’s pretty tasty all on it’s own. Why would you mess with it? But at a recent family gathering we decided to toss a few slices of pineapple on the grill and someone suggested we try the same with cantaloupe.
It is a thing. You can even find recipes online, which we didn’t know at the time. You can’t leave it on long, because it does start to get a bit soft. Just three or four minutes on each side. Just enough to get some grill marks on the fruit. It’s actually pretty good. It seemed sweeter and juicier. I will say, it surprised me how good it was.
Maybe other fruits will work as well on the barbecue. If we can just find a way to stop them from falling into the flames.