Chef’s Note: The consistency of the soup may be adjusted to suit your taste. Leave some chunks of tomato, if desired, or continue to purée until the soup is completely smooth.

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By the end of this summer, I will be able to write a book on how to cook exclusively outside.

As I’ve mentioned, probably too often, I live in Texas, where it is currently HOT. My house is small, but tragically under-cooled in the summer, so when I turn on the stove or oven, it gets too stuffy to manage—and I move the kitchen outside.

For the last few years, I’ve only had a charcoal grill, because I believe the general consensus in the grilling universe is that charcoal is better than gas, and I am a rule follower. But this year, we invested in a gas grill because, cool or not, charcoal is just not an efficient way to grill nightly. It’s a big process, and one we just weren’t committed to on most weeknights.

Now that we have a gas grill, we are using it literally every night, and I have started exploring cooking inside recipes outside.

It’s going great.

I’m coming to realize that I can cook literally anything on a grill if I think of it as an outdoor stove and oven all-in-one, which expands my summer dinner repertoire beyond grilled veggies and steaks. We don’t need special tools to cook on a grill, despite what the folks at fancy cooking stores have made us think all of these years. We just need cast-iron or stainless steel pots and pans (the grill can get too hot for most non-stick) and an adventurous spirit.

That’s why this week, when my husband asked for roasted sausage and broccoli (a la this recipe) over pasta, I said, “Light the grill!” I used my stainless roasting pan for the veggies and sausage and my usual pasta-boiling pot. Nothing ever touched the grill directly, but we were still grilling!

Because I was replicating the heat of the oven, I kept the lid closed and the heat cranked to medium-high. The thermometer on my grill indicated that we were cooking at about 400°F for most of the time, which was just right. My veggies and sausage cooked evenly and browned nicely, and actually in less time than they would usually take in the oven.

Here’s what I used to make about 5 servings:

• Your grill might get hotter than your stove or oven would, so keep an eye on whatever you’re cooking and adjust the heat, as needed. If your grill has levels, take advantage of your ability to move delicate items away from the heat source.
• Never put glass on the grill. Only use cast-iron or stainless steel pans that are suitable for high-heat cooking.
• You can sauté on your grill, so don’t be afraid to create a quick pan sauce to go alongside your more traditional grilled items.
• I bought a few disposable aluminum trays in assorted sizes, which, if you treat them right, don’t have to be single-use. I pull them out when I need to save space on the grill (the loaf pan size comes in handy) or don’t have a grill-safe pan to suit my needs.

– Posted by Laura, DISH editor

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Grilled Vegetables

Chef’s Note: You can use any of the sauces below to dress your grilled vegetables.

Charmoula

Chef’s Tip: Preserved lemon is an iconic ingredient of the region and has a very different flavor profile than lemon peel or lemon juice due to the salting and curing of the lemons.

Greek-style Sauce

Italian-style Sauce

Tarragon-Mustard Sauce

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Just like you, we’re not making fully formed extravagant dinners every night of the week. Sometimes a basic pan-cooked protein + side is as good as it gets, like a sautéed chicken breast or seared pork chop.

But just like the foundations of French cooking tell us, nothing makes a simple dish better than an even more simple sauce. And luckily, once you’ve cooked your chicken or pork or steak, or whatever it is you like, you’re 80% of the way to the perfect sauce.

A pan sauce is a sauce made using the pan drippings leftover from sautéed meat. The brown bits, or the fond, are concentrated flavor—a little salty, a little sweet, and very savory. To make a sauce from the fond, we simply add a liquid ingredient to form the base and remove the brown bits from the bottom of the pan, and add any additional flavorings we may like.

Here’s how to make a pan sauce—no recipe needed!

1. Season your meat, and sauté it to the doneness you like. Sauté is best, since it cooks the meat without added moisture, ensuring a nice fond. This method also works for roasted foods; everything we explain here can be done in a stainless steel roasting pan on the stovetop. Regardless of the method, the ability to create a sauce depends on the flavor leftover from the item you cooked.
   

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2. If your pan drippings begin to burn, don’t panic! Add a few tablespoons of moisture to the pan as it’s cooking. Water, broth, wine, or even beer will do the trick. This will deglaze the pan and reconcentrate the flavors with just enough added moisture to keep it from scorching. You can do this as many times as you need.
   

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3. Once your meat is finished cooking, remove it from the pan and set it aside to rest. If there is a lot of fat left in the pan, pour out all but a tablespoon or two, and return the pan to the heat. If your main item is lean, like chicken breast, fish, or shrimp, add some butter or oil to the pan. Reduce the heat to medium, and add flavoring ingredients, like onion, shallot, ginger, garlic or some spices. You don’t need much: a few cloves of garlic, a quarter to half an onion. Let everything cook until the aromatics are soft, about 5 minutes, or if you’d like a deeper, richer flavor, let them brown and caramelize around the edges, about 10 minutes.
   

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4. You’ve surely heard the term “deglaze,” and now is the time to put it into action! Add a liquid to the pan to help loosen the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. You don’t need tons, just about 1 cup. Though you can use any liquid (yes, even water, in a pinch!), this is a good time to add some acidity to help balance your sauce. White or red wine, dry vermouth, dry sherry, beer, or even vinegar are popular options, but any kind of broth or stock works great, as well. You can combine one or more of these options depending on what you like and what you’re serving.
   

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5. Add any other flavors that you would like to incorporate, like fresh herbs, mustard, miso, or lemon zest. Let the mixture simmer and reduce until it tastes delicious and rich, adding more liquids, acid, or even honey as needed to balance the flavors.
   

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6. When the liquid is reduced and the sauce is flavorful, remove it from the heat. You can serve it now, as is, or add a tablespoon or two of butter. Swirl the butter in the pan, allowing it to slowly melt and incorporate into the sauce to make it smooth and glossy (this is the trick that makes restaurant sauces so good!). Season the sauce with salt and pepper, and you’re ready to go. You can strain it, if you like, but for a casual dinner, you can spoon it over your protein and get to the good part.
   

Notes:

• Pan sauces are not quite as easy with vegetable dishes, since vegetables tend to leave very little behind in terms of drippings and fond. That’s not to say you can’t make a pan sauce after sautéing or roasting vegetables, but you’ll need to add more flavors to make it rich and robust.
• If you do burn the fond in your pan, there’s unfortunately no rescuing to be done. To avoid a bitter sauce, make something on the side, like a chimichurri, or even just a simple vinaigrette to drizzle over your protein.
• If you need a little more guidance, this roast pork with honey-mustard pan sauce is a very good example. Chicken Breast with Fines Herbes Sauce has a few more steps and shows you how to incorporate a slurry for a sauce that is a bit more substantial.

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Pistou is the subtly different French version of pesto, the fragrant Italian herb paste. While pesto typically includes nuts, pistou may or may not. The key ingredients for both are basil, olive oil, garlic, and cheese. In fact, the first version of pistou was essentially a cheese paste—basil may have been a later addition.

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