How to Make Great Tinfoil Dinners on the Grill

Summer is here and people really enjoy grilling out. Only, for a lot of us, that means an endless rotation of hamburgers, hotdogs, and brats and if we get REALLY crazy, maybe some chicken. But meat meat and more meat and as good as grilled meat is, it means that someone is left behind in the house making the REST of dinner - whether it be the potatoes or the vegetable side, there are more dishes to dirty and things to be done than simply frying up dinner on the grill. But not with tinfoil dinners - they allow the grill to be the creator and cook of your entire summer meal!!

Tinfoil dinners are easy to make and for most of the steps, even the younger kids can help, which can allow dinner time to be more of a family time than ever before!!

The basic ingredients of a tinfoil dinner are hamburger, potatoes, carrots, and corn. You can add other veggies as desired - I've heard it's also very good with mushrooms and beans, but just about anything could be included.

For each "dinner" you will need two sheets of aluminum (tin) foil, each 18" long. Place a pat of butter in the center of the tinfoil and on top of that, place a hamburger patty. We usually use about 1/3 pound of hamburger in our hamburger patty and season it with Lowry salt and onions, but you can season your burger to your preference.

After the hamburger, you'll want to chop up two potatoes potatoes into small bite sized pieces - about the size of scalloped potatoes. Leave the peelings on. You'll also want to chop the carrots up into small pieces. We use twelve baby carrots per meal, but this too can vary based on how hungry you are and how much you like each ingredient. Pile the potato wedges on the hamburger and then the carrots. Add other veggies in this step too. If using corn, we usually use half a can of "Niblets" per tinfoil dinner. When you're done adding ingredients, top off with a pat of butter.

You now have a meal laying on a sheet of aluminum foil. You'll want to take hold of each long side of the foil and gently bring them together so you're creating a kind of "hammock" for your food. When the two sides are together, fold them to create a seal and then continue folding (basically rolling to foil) until the tinfoil is tight to the food. Do the same with each end - make small rolling folds until the tinfoil is tight to the food inside. If this method of wrapping sounds very complicated to you, don't worry - you can actually use just about any folding/wrapping method you want, as long as you make sure the food is fully inside the tinfoil and seems well wrapped.

Once you've got the tinfoil roiled up around the food, place the "package" seam side down on the second sheet of tinfoil. Repeat the fold and roll procedure with the new sheet of tinfoil so when you're done, you have a dinner that is packaged in two layers of tinfoil.

Now comes the easy part! Place the meal on the grill!!! You'll want to let it cook for 20 minutes and then flip it over and let it cook for 20 more. You may need to adjust this time if you have a very large burger or a very small burger. Once each side has cooked for 20 minutes, remove from the grill and eat! The great thing about this meal is that you can unroll the tinfoil and go to town, creating much less of a mess to clean up afterwards.

Tinfoil dinners are a good meal for the entire family. Each family member can create their own to their own personal preference - maybe Mom loves mushrooms and Junior loves corn, each meal can be custom designed with these preferences in mind. Prep time takes about 10-15 minutes and cooking time takes 40, so it's a good balanced meal for the entire family in under an hour without a lot of clean up. Tinfoil dinners are a huge hit around my house and I'm sure they will be around yours too!