15 Grilled Vegetable Sides That Will Steal the Spotlight at Your Memorial Day Cookout

Grilled cabbage wedges drizzled with sauce inside of a blue platter. On the lefthand side of the image are a small bowl with a metal spoon holding additional sauce, and in the top left corner is a blue plate holding silverware. — Serious Eats / Eric Kleinberg

Burgers and hot dogs are all well and good, but vegetables shouldn't be an afterthought at your cookout. Not only will a few carefully chosen sides round out the meal, but having the grill already fired up means it'll only take a few minutes to cook whatever produce you have on hand. Many vegetables are arguably at their best when cooked over a live fire, and when prepared thoughtfully, they can be just as exciting than the main event. Below, you'll find 15 delicious grilled vegetable sides—including cabbage, carrots, and corn—that deserve a spot at your next cookout.

June 2019

Slathered Grilled Corn Ribs

Serious Eats / Morgan Hunt Glaze

Fresh corn off the grill is a must for almost every backyard cookout. To make these grilled corn "ribs," we toss them with an aromatic garlic-paprika butter, char them over the grill, then top them elotes-style with a squeeze of lime, rich Cotija crema, and a sprinkle of cilantro.

Slathered Grilled Corn Ribs
Grilled Whole Cauliflower

Serious Eats / Lorena Masso

Serious Eats contributor Tim Chin gives a whole head of cauliflower the teriyaki treatment: He slathers the vegetable in a deeply savory teriyaki sauce, then grills it under tender. It's "probably the meatiest version of cauliflower I could dream up," he writes. "Something main-course worthy."

Grilled Whole Cauliflower
Simple Grilled Asparagus

Serious Eats / Qi Ai

Grilling asparagus is so simple, you barely need a recipe for it: Just toss the trimmed asparagus stalks with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then throw them on the hottest part of your grill for a few minutes. We recommend picking up fatter asparagus spears that won't fall between the grates. Serve your charred asparagus with our two-minute aioli flavored with harissa, sumac and mint, or tarragon and lemon.

Simple Grilled Asparagus
Charcoal Chimney–Grilled Asparagus With Green Goddess Dressing

Vicky Wasik

Want your grilled asparagus lives up to its full potential? Make your chimney starter do double duty: Place a small wire rack over the starter to use as a mini grill for your vegetables before you dump the coals out over the grate and start working on the meat. The concentrated heat from a cylinder full of burning coals is just what your crisp green vegetables need to stay crisp as they cook, instead of turning limp. Here, we use the technique to produce bright and snappy charred asparagus spears, which go great with a side of green goddess dressing for dipping.

Charcoal Chimney–Grilled Asparagus With Green Goddess Dressing

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Grilled Garlic Scapes

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

Grilling garlic scapes caramelizes and chars their exterior, highlighting their mild allium flavor and natural sweetness. It's simple: Just toss the scapes with olive oil, salt, and pepper, spread them out on the hot side of the grill, then flip them frequently to ensure they're well-charred.

Grilled Garlic Scapes
Grilled Summer Squash With Chimichurri

Vicky Wasik

Chimichurri, the Argentinean herb sauce typically made with parsley, is equally good with grilled meat or vegetables. Here, we dress up humble grilled zucchini and summer squash with the Argentinean sauce for a bright, herbaceous side.

Grilled Summer Squash With Chimichurri
Grilled Trevisano or Radicchio With Gorgonzola, Olive Oil, and Saba

J. Kenji López-Alt

Served raw, radicchio and trevisano are a little too bitter for my tastes, but on the grill, they become sweet and succulent. In this simple recipe, we char halved heads of radicchio and serve them with olive oil, gorgonzola, and saba, a sweet syrup made from grape must, though any sort of balsamic vinegar–based condiment will work in its place. Want a vegan variation? Try dressing grilled radicchio or trevisano with a sour-sweet cherry gastrique instead, for a bold mix of flavors that's a great accompaniment to whole grilled fish, grilled chicken, or other simple mains.

Grilled Trevisano or Radicchio With Gorgonzola, Olive Oil, and Saba
Grilled Cabbage With Spicy Thai Dressing

Serious Eats / Eric Kleinberg

Cutting cabbage into big wedges leaves the core intact and helps hold the vegetable together as you char it over high heat. The grilled cauliflower is sweet and nutty, and makes a wonderful complement to a spicy dressing of fish sauce, lime juice, and brown sugar.

Grilled Cabbage With Spicy Thai Dressing

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Grill-Roasted Carrots With Sweet Soy Glaze

Serious Eats / Robby Lozano

These glazed carrots are quite a bit more time-consuming than many other grilled dishes, but they're totally worth the wait. After roughly 45 minutes to an hour over medium-high heat, the thick slabs of carrot become deeply flavorful and tender. Brushing the carrots with a honey and soy sauce mixture in the last minutes of cooking creates a glaze that enhances the vegetable's sweetness and provides a salty contrast.

Grill-Roasted Carrots With Sweet Soy Glaze
Charcoal Chimney–Grilled Broccolini With XO Sauce

Vicky Wasik

The same chimney-starter method used to prep asparagus above works wonders for tender-crisp broccolini stalks, too, and lends just the right amount of char. For an excellent foil to the sweetness of broccolini, try salty, savory XO sauce.

Charcoal Chimney–Grilled Broccolini With XO Sauce
Charcoal Chimney–Grilled Sugar Snap Peas With Buttermilk-Dill Dressing

Vicky Wasik

Snap peas can be a challenge to grill using traditional methods—they're small, slippery, and prone to falling through grates or burning to a crisp while you attempt to flip them with tongs. That alone is reason enough to try our chimney-starter method for these seasonal delicacies, but you'll also get better results: evenly blistered beans that retain plenty of the snap in their name. A creamy buttermilk dressing flavored with fresh dill complements them nicely.

Charcoal Chimney–Grilled Sugar Snap Peas With Buttermilk-Dill Dressing
Grilled Mixed Mushrooms With Sesame Dressing

Shao Z.

Even though mushrooms contain a ton of water, they're prone to drying out on the grill. Basting them with a flavorful liquid (in this case, a combination of butter and soy sauce) throughout the cooking process keeps them nicely moist. For extra flavor and crunch, we add a nutty dressing of roasted sesame seeds, mirin, and soy sauce.

Grilled Mixed Mushrooms With Sesame Dressing

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Elote (Grilled Mexican Street Corn)

Serious Eats / Melissa Hom

While this Midwestern boy is never going to complain about a plain old grilled ear of corn, that doesn't mean there isn't significant room for improvement. This Mexican classic is slathered with a creamy sauce made of mayo, crema, Cotija cheese, garlic, cilantro, and powdered chile, and each bite it sweet, salty, savory, nutty, creamy, and tart all at once. Make plenty of the sauce and stock up on extra corn, because this is bound to be a hit.

Elote (Grilled Mexican Street Corn)
Simple Grilled-Potato Salad With Grilled-Lemon Vinaigrette

J. Kenji López-Alt

Potato salad is a standard cookout side—often a little too standard. It's rare to find a potato salad that truly feels novel, but that's exactly what this dish is. After parboiling new potatoes, we smash them up lightly in a bowl, which coats them with a thin film of starch that'll turn especially crispy on the grill. The smoky, charred grilled potatoes are finished with a vinaigrette made with grilled lemons—a touch of fire helps bring out their sweetness—instead of a mayo-based dressing.

Simple Grilled-Potato Salad With Grilled-Lemon Vinaigrette
Grilled Green Bean Salad With Red Peppers and Radishes

J. Kenji López-Alt

This salad is tailor-made for cookouts, particularly because most of the work—making a quick vinaigrette and adding radishes, scallions, and red peppers—can be done in advance. All that's left to do after is quickly char the green beans and incorporate them into the salad. That basic technique works with all sorts of other ingredient combinations, too—try a variation made with grilled broccolini, pickled chile peppers, olive oil, red onion, and lemon juice.

Grilled Green Bean Salad With Red Peppers and Radishes

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June 2019

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