7 Foods You Should Never Grill

Grilling is a great way to maintain a clean kitchen during warmer months, not to mention keep the temperature down inside your home. The grill is as versatile a cooking tool as any, perfect for making steak, burgers, chicken, veggies and many types of seafood, but some foods just don’t work as well when laid over the grates. 

A traditional grill with slatted grates is able to put food in direct contact with the flames for a charred summer kiss, but those penetrable grates can making cooking certain foods a tricky business. Some food items including flaky fish, scallops, bacon and smaller vegetables aren’t good candidates for the grill. 

If you do plan to grill them, you’ll want to secure the food with special grilling equipment to keep them from falling down and making a mess.

Here are seven foods to avoid cooking directly on a grill.

Flaky fish

If you’ve ever slapped a filet of flaky fish like tilapia, cod or halibut over an open flame, you probably know why it’s not the best idea. Flaky fish tends to fall through the grates to a firey death once it starts cooking. 

Instead, try grilling any one of these firm fish that seafood chef Akira Beck recommends. If you simply must grill flaky fish over the grates, get yourself a fish grilling basket to keep those filets in tact. 

Peeled shrimp

Grilling shrimp over a hot grill isn’t a bad idea, but if you’re going to do it, keep the shrimp in its shell until after it’s done cooking. Peeled shrimp cooks quickly and can dry out in the blink of an eye. Since you can’t cook in oil or sauce on a grill, you’re better off not peeling it to protect the meat from intense heat. 

Scallops

Scallops are another seafood that in theory is great when grilled, but the potential for disaster just isn’t worth it. Even large scallops are liable to fall through. Instead, cook them in a carbon-steel or stainless-steel skillet over the grates to give them a proper seer and caramelized crust that slatted grates just won’t deliver.

Small or thinly sliced vegetables

Certain vegetables were made for the grill, while others were made to fall right through to the flames below. Small vegetables such as green beans, snow peas, button mushrooms and broccoli florets should never be flung onto a bare grill. 

To make an outdoor stir-fry or cook smaller, sliced veggies on the grill, use skewers or cook them in a sauté pan on the grill or over a grill mat to keep them safely away from the fire.

Read more: Before You Fire Up Your Grill, Here’s How to Make It Shine

Bacon

Bacon, even thick slabs of it, is another poor choice for the grill. Thinner bacon will be impossible to manage but even thick-cut bacon is so fatty that grease will drip through to the fire below and cause annoying, possibly dangerous, splatters and explosions. 

Worse yet, you’ll have a seriously disgusting grill to clean up after. Instead, try this cleaner method for making bacon.

Breaded meat

You might be tempted to make grilled chicken or pork cutlets, but save that breaded meat for the air fryer, oven or sauté pan. Much of that coating will shake free from the food, and you’ll end up with a pile of burnt breading at the bottom of your grill. 

Calzones

Pizza on the grill is an excellent idea, but the pie’s puffier cousin won’t work quite as well. Because of a calzone’s thickness and shape, it’s difficult to get the inside cooked without burning the doughy shell. The innards are also likely to spill out and leak down into the grates, creating a greasy, cheesy mess to clean up later.

Instead, use a pizza oven to cook perfect calzones in mere minutes and save yourself from carb-related heartbreak.

For more kitchen tips, read our guide to the best cheap steak cuts and the seven surprising foods I only make in the air fryer and the