July Fourth Party Planning
Using your George Foreman Grill to make Fourth of July Party Food Fast & Easy
The fourth of July is less than two weeks away and it’s time to start planning for your independence day party! Although many people like to cook outdoors for the 4th, your George Foreman grill is a great way to get your party food ready in a snap – faster than you could on a traditional outdoor grill. This means you can use it for all your party grilling or as a supplement to your outdoor grill to get more done at the same time.
The problem with a traditional grill is that you can only fit so much food on the cooking surface at once. While this works fine for family dinners, a party with more people can cause a bottleneck in your cooking progress. Since you have to turn the meat, you’re generally talking about 10-20 minutes of total cooking time per full grill of food. Assuming you’re cooking several things, this can mean you spend the majority of your party cooking, instead of enjoying your guests.
Using your George Foreman grill, you cut the cooking time in half automatically, because you’re cooking the food from both sides at once. You also cut out the time spent tending to your heat source, because your indoor electric grill will maintain the cooking temperature no matter how long you’re cooking. With this in mind, you’re shaving a significant amount of time off your party cooking.
Of course, some people are sticklers – particularly when it comes summer BBQs and parties – that they want to cook on the traditional grill to get that backyard BBQ flavor that can be hard to replicate on an indoor grill. While it’s true that you’re going to lose some of the natural smoke flavor from your meat, there are ways to get around and/or use your grill as a supplement. Here are our top three tips to making your Fourth of July party cooking faster and easier:
1. Pick and choose what you cook on your outdoor grill.
If you have several things that you’re cooking for a party and you want your guests to really taste that outdoor BBQ flavor in their food, you should pick out the most show-stopping foods and cook only those on the outdoor grill. If you have a loin, whole chicken or ribs that you really want to wow your guests with, then cook the burgers, hot dogs, etc. on your George Foreman grill. This way, more of your food will be done around the same time and you spend less time cooking, overall
2. Add seasonings and marinades to food cooked indoors.
You can enhance the foods cooked on your George Foreman grill with seasonings, rubs and marinades to make up for the missing natural flavorings you get from cooking over an open heat source like fire or coals. Using spices, herbs and even liquid smoke, you can give your indoor-cooked food that outdoor feel – or an even more unique flavor so your guests won’t miss the outdoor tastes at all.
3. Don’t cook for an army unless you’re serving one
A factor that usually slows down summer BBQ cooking is simply making too much food for the number of people at the event. If you’re cooking four or five different items, there’s no need to make sure everyone has 2 servings of each – sure your 12 guests might go through 24 hot dogs if there was nothing else, but with hamburgers, BBQ chicken and ribs to eat as well, as anyone really going to miss the second frank?
The solution is to cook only one serving of each food you’re making per guest. You can buy extra to be on the safe side, but as you’re cooking you should cook for one per guest. This keeps you from spending all your time cooking hot dogs as your guests wait for the rest of the food to make it to the grill. Then, if you need additional servings of something because it runs out, you can cook it at the end.
We’ll be giving more tips on cooking and party planning for Fourth of July in the next two weeks, so stay tuned for more information.
