Cook your vegetables caveman style: directly on the coals
He’s a little more famous for being the 34th president of the United States, but Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower also loved to man the grill.
His technique for cooking steaks was to toss them directly onto the hot coals, to the amazement of his audience. As the meat was directly exposed to about 2,000 degrees, the steaks would take on a spectacularly charred crust, going from raw to medium rare in a matter of minutes.
Eisenhower called them “dirty steaks,” but today the technique is known as “caveman cooking.”
The technique is hardly limited to meat, and I would argue that it works even better with tomatoes, peppers and onions because you don’t have to hit a specific internal temperature and can do the cooking mostly by sight.
“It’s really about the most primal method of outdoor cooking that exists, but we got to the point where we forgot about it,” said grilling guru, television host and author Steven Raichlen in a previous interview. “There is no doubt that it can be intimidating, but there is tremendous flavor to be had with the technique.”
The key is the proper setup of your grill. (Sorry, gas grill fanatics, but this type of cooking isn’t for your equipment.) You need to start with hardwood lump charcoal, which is easily found in any store’s grilling section. Hardwood lump (I’m a big fan of Royal Oak) looks like small pieces of wood of varying sizes, versus the uniform look of briquettes that can be found in a bag of a commercial brand such as Kingsford.
You want lump charcoal because it doesn’t ash as much as briquettes, so whatever goes directly on them will come out charred but fairly clean.
Just wave a cutting board over the charcoal before adding the food to blow away any loose ash.
Onions, tomatoes, corn on the cob and peppers work best with this technique because they cook quickly — less than five minutes — and benefit from the charred flavor. Root vegetables, including beets, carrots and radishes, also work, but they take longer to finish — maybe an hour for large beets.
But here is the really good news about caveman veggies — they require zero prep. Instead of chopping, slicing and dicing, you toss them on the embers whole.
Caveman veggies do require sturdy gripping tongs and a good set of heat-resistant gloves. The heat just a few inches from the direct coals is about 2,000 degrees, compared to a standard grill-grate configuration of about 500 degrees.
If you really want to go all-in caveman and add a piece of meat such as a steak or a chicken thigh with your meal, do that first. The vegetables will cook so quickly that they will be done in about five minutes while the meat rests.