Grilled lettuce

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This fantastic grilled lettuce recipe from Helen Graves is served with a choice of dressings for a surprising summer dish. This recipe was made on a Big Green Egg barbecue for unparalleled results.

First published in 2017

If you’ve never tried grilling lettuce then you're in for a treat – the edges have a lovely charred, smoky flavour, while the insides remain crisp and fresh. Use a firm lettuce like little gem, or hearts of romaine. There are so many ways to dress them, too; here are two cracking ideas.

Ingredients

Metric

Imperial

Grilled lettuce

  • 6 lettuces, such as little gem or romaine (you can use any kind, as long as they're firm)
  • olive oil
  • salt
  • pepper

Blue cheese dressing

Caesar salad dressing

Method

1
To begin, set up your Big Green Egg for direct cooking with the Cast Iron Searing Grid
2
To make the blue cheese dressing, crush the garlic with a small pinch of salt in a pestle and mortar until creamy
3
Crumble the cheese into a bowl and add the garlic, along with the remaining ingredients (apart from the bacon). Whisk together until smooth, then season to taste with salt and pepper (the cheese will already be quite salty so you probably won't need much). Taste again and add a little more lemon juice if required
4
To make the caesar salad dressing, crush the garlic and anchovies in a pestle and mortar with a small pinch of salt. Grate in the Parmesan, add the yoghurt and lemon juice and mix well
5
Add 1 tbsp olive oil, mix to combine, then add the final tbsp of oil and mix again. Check the seasoning
6
Remove any tatty outer leaves from the lettuces and cut each into quarters. Rub each quarter with a little olive oil then season with salt and pepper. Grill until lightly charred, for about 1 minute on each side
7
If serving with the anchovy dressing, mix the lettuce through the dressing until well-coated and serve with an extra grating of Parmesan. If serving with the blue cheese dressing, simply arrange the lettuce on plates and pour the dressing over the top. Sprinkle with the chopped crispy bacon to serve

Helen Graves is Head of Content at Great British Chefs. She's also the author of the cookbook LIVE FIRE: Seasonal Barbecue Recipes and Stories of Live Fire Traditions, Old and New, and the editor of Pit, an independent magazine with roots in live fire cooking.

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