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Hamburgers And Sausages On Plate

Source: Iulia Natrapei / EyeEm / Getty

Indoor grilling is great for people who don’t have the backyard space for an outdoor grill, reducing the fat in your grilled foods and also for the cold winter months! Check out these tips to have a successful grilling experience:

What Can You Cook?

Flat pieces of meat like steaks, pork chops, and tenderized chicken breasts work best for indoor grills. Seasoning them with a dry rub or just salt and pepper tends to work better than any type of wet marinate, which usually leads to a lengthy clean up and sometimes a lingering smell. Flat vegetables, like sliced zucchini and eggplant, will cook evenly but need to be watched closely so they don’t burn or start to stick.

What Can’t You Cook?

Grilling vegetables is tricky, but trying to do this on an indoor grill is literally impossible unless you lather the veggies with oil — and that sort of defeats the whole purpose. Using sugar-based sauces like teriyaki and sweet and sour can be tricky, too. This leads to the marinade getting stuck to the plates and a lot of clean-up time. Hamburger meat is best used when it has about a 15-percent fat content.

Clean Up

Wait until the grill has cooled off, but not completely. Then, taking a semi-wet sponge, squeeze out some soapy water onto the surface and let it soak for a little bit. For tough stains you might need to really use some elbow grease to get the stains out — use a sponge with a scrubber side and go up and down the grooves of the grill until you loosen up the stuck-on food particles. Don’t use any type of metal utensil to try to loosen the food — this will ultimately leave the grooves gouged out and reduce the non-stick appeal of the grill.

Happy grilling, y’all.

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