Grill/Barbecue
Grilled Cabbage With Smoked Oyster White Sauce
- Prep time 10 minutes
- Cook time 20 minutes
- Serves 6
Author Notes
Properly cooked vegetables can truly elevate a barbecue. Though often overlooked, this technique opens up a world of textures, colors, and flavors. We don’t need to resort to the same clichés every time we grill like corn on the cob and we can cook with the seasons: Spring offers vibrant green peas, early summer brings fennel and cauliflower—followed by bright sweet peppers—and fall brings forth squash and pumpkins. As winter sets in, we find robust kale and Brussels sprouts. If you share a love for grilling or cooking over live fire, neglecting vegetables would be a missed opportunity, whatever month of the year.
However, the diverse range of vegetables and their varying textures present challenges on grilling day. Each vegetable requires different cooking times, making it difficult to achieve consistent results when cooking them from raw. Some tougher vegetables struggle to cook through the center without losing vibrant color or becoming overly charred on the outside. Additionally, if a significant effort has already been dedicated to cooking the meat, vegetables might become a burden relegated to the end of the barbecue.
An elegant solution is to pre-cook the vegetables before heating up the grill. And the best way to do so is to blanch them. Blanching is the best way to preserve their flavor, texture, and color. Heat coaxes them out and ice locks them in. Much like the Chinese practice of blanching vegetables prior to stir-frying in a wok, this method ensures the vegetables only need a brief encounter with high heat on the grill to achieve the desired blistering and smoky flavor we crave in barbecue. With this approach, the vegetables will cook for a similar length of time on the grill, just a couple of minutes to achieve a delightful char. Personally, I prefer to cook my vegetables early on in the grilling session when the barbecue is at its hottest, typically at the beginning once the coals are white hot.
The following recipe focuses on grilling cabbage, a notoriously challenging vegetable to grill from raw. However, the technique can be applied to any hearty vegetables you have available. This dish also features an all-purpose sauce inspired by the beloved halal cart white sauce, enhanced with the addition of savory smoked oysters. The sauce is creamy and substantial, while the optional garnishes provide additional texture, herbaceousness, spice, and zing. —Lucas Sin
Test Kitchen Notes
This recipe features instructions for napa cabbage, but is a great recipe for grilling an assortment of oddly-shaped, hard vegetables, like cauliflower, parsnips, squash, and more. —Food52
Ingredients
- For the sauce:
-
1/2
pack (3 ounces) smoked oysters, or other smoked and canned seafood
-
1/2 cup
plain Greek-style yogurt
-
1/2 cup
mayonnaise
-
2 tablespoons
(about 30 grams) freshly squeezed lemon juice
-
1 teaspoon
(about 2 grams) freshly cracked black pepper
-
1 teaspoon
(about 5 grams) white sugar
-
3
garlic cloves
-
1 pinch
kosher salt
- For the cabbage & for serving:
-
1
head napa cabbage (about 800 grams), cut into 8 wedges lengthwise
-
Neutral oil, such as canola or grapeseed oil
-
Fresh herbs, such as dill and parsley, roughly chopped, for serving
-
Fried shallots, for serving
-
Chile oil, for serving
-
Sesame seeds, for serving
Directions
- For the sauce:
- Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Taste to check for seasoning and adjust, if necessary, with salt, sugar, and lemon juice.
- For the cabbage & for serving:
- Prepare an ice bath. Over high heat bring a large pot of water to a boil, making sure there’s enough water to cover the cabbage. Season the water with roughly 1 ½ teaspoons of salt per quart of water. Immerse the cabbage into the boiling water, working in batches if necessary. Let the cabbage cook, immersed, for about 45 seconds until the leaves turn maximally green. Immediately take the cabbage out of the water and plunge them into the ice bath, until they cool completely. Remove the cabbage from the ice bath and let them dry on a rack. Repeat this until all the cabbage, and any other vegetables you may be making, are blanched and cooled. Set aside for the grill. This can be done overnight.
- To grill vegetables, build a two-level fire in your grill, all the coals are one side of the grill and the other is free of charcoal. Heat up enough coals–in a chimney or otherwise—until lit and covered in gray ash. The temperature should be high. Set cooking grate in place, cover grill, and allow to preheat for 5 minutes. Clean and oil grilling grate. Lightly oil the surface of the cabbage and cook, with all vents open. Sear the cabbages like steaks until they pick up color, flipping often. The cabbage is basically already cooked in the center, so the goal here is to achieve caramelization. This should take about 5 minutes. Once a deep brown color, set aside on a plate. Cover in white sauce and optional garnishes and serve warm.
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