The Seasoning Mistake You'll Want To Avoid When Grilling Vegetables

Like most foods, grilled vegetables — no matter how delicious on their own — could always use a little help. Seasoning your favorite veggies is essential for boosting flavor. You can season carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and the like in a multitude of ways, whether you want to incorporate funkier flavors like seaweed or keep a dish simple with basic salt and pepper. Yet while there's no one right way to go about seasoning, there is one wrong way. The worst mistake you can make when it comes to seasoning your grilled vegetables? Not using enough.

Seasoning grilled vegetables is not the time to go light. Grilled veggies — much like grilled steaks — require more seasoning than you think. That means you'll want to go heavy on the salt and pepper, dried herbs, crushed red pepper, cumin — whatever you like. These seasonings bring out the flavor of your vegetables and will work wonders in your next grilling session. And the best way to season your vegetables is before, not during, the cooking process. 

Being proactive is important when grilling vegetables, and you'll want to coat them well before they reach the grill. As a general rule, sooner is better; you want to make sure the vegetables are flavored all the way through, so seasoning can neither be a sprinkling nor an afterthought when headed to the fire.  When preparing, cut your raw vegetables (on the small or thin side if you don't want to burn them) and coat them with oil. The oil will help any seasonings you want to add cling properly and not be lost to the grill grates. 

Alternatively, you can season your vegetables by way of a marinade, the same way you would for, say, grilled chicken. To add flavor this way, add your raw vegetables in a bag with marinade, and let them soak for roughly 30 minutes. And because it's not meat, that marinade is safe to reuse on other veggies, or to glaze on your meats. Who knew something as simple as grilled vegetables could taste so complex?