Not every home owns or uses a microwave oven. Most might have but can’t use it probably because it’s faulty or for some other cogent reasons. Ovens are also not that cheap.
But then, not having an oven doesn’t mean you can’t bake or make your favorite dishes any longer. You can do that conveniently.
If you’re wondering how you can bake without a microwave, you’re not alone. However, this post will furnish you with the right information on how you can bake your cakes, brownies, and other dishes without an oven. Keep reading!
Is it Possible to Use a Baking Pan in Your Grill?
The answer to this is YES! You can use a baking pan in your grill and achieve an outcome that’s a similar result to using a microwave.
Take the grill as your outdoor oven. It can serve as an oven and a stove-top too. So, you can use the grill outdoor to bake almost everything you bake indoors.
When it comes to baking, most grills have what it takes to replace the microwave oven. They produce heat, which is what you need to bake.
Most grills also have lids, enabling them to function like microwave ovens. This cover helps reduce heat loss and causes heat to circulate evenly so your baked food item can come out good.
The heat is what you need to make those brownies, cake, or pizzas. And grills are equal to the task. They can produce low, moderate to extremely high temperatures, depending on how you want it.
Heat control is another thing that makes grills a wise choice for baking. You can control your gas grill’s heat via the dials.
Being able to bake with a grill outdoor has several benefits. You won’t be heating up your kitchen now and then whenever you bake indoors. Your electricity bills will reduce too.
Factors to Keep in Mind When Using Your Baking Pan on the Grill
Using baking on a grill is quite simple, but you need to put several factors into consideration. Let’s go through them.
1. Keep it clean
It’s important to tidy up your grill before you start baking. Why so? It’s necessary to ensure your baked food item doesn’t taste differently.
Tidying up the grill won’t take the entire day. A few minutes and you’re done. So make sure you clean up your grill before you start baking. You surely don’t want your newly grill-made pizza to taste like yesterday’s steak.
2. Monitor the temperature
Whether you’re cooking or baking, the temperature in the closed lid is very crucial. It will decide if you’ll undercook or overcook your dish.
Excitingly, most grills have a built-in thermometer. In such a case, there’s no need to invest in another thermometer. But if yours doesn’t have, don’t think twice before getting one. Besides baking, you would need a thermometer for other dishes.
Thermometers read temperatures, and knowing the temperature inside the lid will help make your baking expedition a success.
3. Your baking pan matters a great deal
When you’re baking on a grill, two things come to mind. First, you would want the baked item to be perfect. The other is to avoid any injury risk.
With that said if you want to get your baking right and avoid any casualty, get the right baking pan to use in your grill.
Several choices of baking pans are available. These include metal pans, glass, and ceramic pans. In all honesty, metal pans might not be the fanciest among these three options. But that won’t decide the outcome of your baked item.
Among the three baking pan options, metal pans are a suitable option. They are durable, solid, and can handle extremely high temperatures. Glass and ceramic might be the fancier baking pans. But they can shatter when subjected to extremely high temperatures.
However, there are several types of metal pans out there. So choose your bakeware based on your needs.
You’ll find tube pan, loaf pan, muffin pan, round cake pan (9 inches), baking pan (square type 8 inch), Bundt pan, baking pan (9 by 13 inches), and sheet pan, which happens to be a wise choice for starters.
You can also go for a cast-iron skillet or pizza stone. The pizza stone is useful for baking bake cakes, breads, pizzas, and cookies. Cast iron pans are a wise choice for your brownies, and cakes.
4. Consider preheating the grill
Don’t just put stuff into the grill, and then turn on the heat to start baking. First, you have to heat the grill and exercise little patience until the temperature inside the lid is 25 degrees hotter.
Again, you need to check to ensure the heat is evenly distributed before you start baking. It’s necessary for whatever you’re baking to be evenly heated.
5. Keep the lid closed
Heat is the most important thing in baking. With the right amount of heat, your baked food item will come out well.
So, it’s important to always keep your grill’s lid closed while baking. Avoid opening the lid now and then. But if you must, then make it snappy.
Have in mind that temperature could drop when you open the lid for too long. That’s because a lot of heat would be lost.
Keeping the lid closed will enable you to bake faster. The heat will be evenly distributed throughout the item you’re baking.
6. Choose a realistic baking time
Do you know that grills tend to cook faster than microwave ovens? Yes, they do. This literarily means that you shouldn’t always rely on your recipe’s baking time. You could be wrong most of the time.
If your recipe boasts a range of baking times, don’t settle for the highest baking time. Choose the least baking time and work with that. Even if you don’t get the desired result in your chosen time, you might not be far from the accurate baking time.
As time goes on, you’ll have an in-depth understanding of how to bake with a grill and know the accurate baking time for each recipe.
Now how can you determine if your baked food item is done? Let’s assume you’re baking a cake. To find out if it’s ready, use a toothpick and have the cake pricked at different parts. Observe the outcome each time you prick it.
If the toothpick comes out clean, then you don’t need to continue heating the cake. But if it comes out filled with batters, continue cooking. But heating for a few minutes would be enough to get the desired result.
7. Consider using indirect heat
Your gas grill produces extremely high heat. Therefore, direct heating might not be conducive to most recipes. One way you can avoid messing up your baked food item is to utilize indirect heat.
What does this mean? Bake over the burner’s unignited part. Let’s say your grill has four burners. Only ignite the last two burners, leaving the remaining two at the center unlit. The unignited part is you should place your baking pan.
Can You Put a Stainless Steel Pan on the Grill?
The answer is yes, and no. First, here’s the reason you can’t. Most stainless steel pans are designed to withstand a moderate amount of heat. That’s like 400 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, the pan won’t chip and cook nicely. But it’s common for the grill to get extremely hot. And this can cause the stainless steel pan to chip or warp.
Placing the stainless steel pan directly on the heat source can damage it quickly. It would deface your stainless steel pan before you know it.
Here’s why you can use it. Only use the stainless steel pan on your grill if you’re using indirect heat. That way, the temperature won’t get extremely high or too much for the stainless steel pan to handle.
The stainless steel pan is indestructible and it won’t chip when used under moderate heat.
Can You Use Foil Pans on the Grill?
Of course, you can. Whether it’s a gas or a charcoal grill, you can use the disposable foil pans.
These aluminum foil pans are a wise choice for grilling, particularly for those that lack experience in grilling. With the foil pan, whatever you’re cooking would come out well.
Now, what makes using aluminum foil pans on a grill a wise option? These foil pans are good at absorbing heat. So whether you’re using a gas or charcoal grill, it doesn’t matter. High heat doesn’t affect the foil pan or the food item inside the pan. The foil pan would turn down the heat to 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
The only drawback in using foil pans on a grill is the cooking time. Because the temperature is lower inside the foil pan, whatever you have inside will take a longer time to cook. But you’ll have even and well-baked goodies when it’s ready.
So, if you’re a beginner and want whatever you’re baking to be perfect, the aluminum foil pan is a good option.
Can You Put Pyrex on the Grill?
The straightforward answer is No. You can’t and shouldn’t put your Pyrex on a grill unless you want it torn to piece. Instead, use heavy metal cookware.
Pyrex is heat-resistant, agreed! But don’t let that coax you into putting it on your grill. It heats and cooks well when exposed to even and gradual indirect heat. But when allowed to touch the heat source directly, such as on the grill or even stove-top, it could shatter in pieces.
An abrupt temperature change is also not good for Pyrex. It often happens when you move the Pyrex from the refrigerator to the preheated grill. And this could cause the glass to shatter before you know it.
Easy Dishes That You Can Bake on the Grill
You can bake several dishes on your grill conveniently. The outcome will be as good as when a microwave oven is used.
Here are some of the quick and easy dishes you can bake on your grill.
French Fries
You may have probably made some yourself, but not on a grill. Now keep in mind that you can prepare this delicious snack outdoor on your grill.
How? Get your potatoes sliced and ready. You would need a baking pan for this. Next is to preheat the grill with the lid covered. Heat the grill to at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit (This shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes or so).
Now add your potatoes to the baking pan and start heating them. Turn the potatoes constantly so that the crisp would be even on each side.
Brownies
Who doesn’t love brownies? Kids enjoy them. You can make your backyard smell like you just opened a truckload of chocolate by baking brownies in your grill outdoor.
Assuming you already own a grill. What you need now is an aluminum foil tray or cast iron pan. But keep in mind that the baking has to be done using medium heat. An indirect heat where the temperature is 350 degrees Fahrenheit would give you the desired outcome. You should also heat for at least 45 minutes, though you can achieve the desired result much earlier.
Note – Don’t place the aluminum baking tray or cast iron baking pan on the grill’s grate. Use smaller-sized tin cans to raise your cookware up a bit.
You’ll be surprised to find that your grill-baked brownies would be way better than when you use a microwave oven.
Other dishes you can bake on your grill are:
- Quiche
- Pizza
- Strawberry skillet pie
- Summer fruit cobbler
Conclusion
You can bake on a grill and achieve the desired result. The process is also convenient if you follow the right process, which we have highlighted in this post.
The truth is, not everyone has a microwave oven. So, the grill can be a good replacement. And besides, baking indoors can be tiring. But outdoor, there’s proper ventilation and you’re going to have more fun chatting with your friends and relatives while baking.
References:
https://www.misen.co/blogs/news/how-to-cook-with-stainless-steel
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/8-unexpected-ways-to-cook-with-your-grill/
