Blueberry Cobbler

This week there were lots of comments flying back an forth on Facebook since my sister sent me her alternative to indoor cooking for the summer - frozen pizza re-heated on the BBQ instead of in your kitchen. This sparked a whole discussion about in-direct heat.

If you have a BBQ with more then one burner then you can do this. You can even do it if you have one burner, but it'll mean getting yourself an aluminum pan to throw out afterwards. In-direct heat is basically turning your BBQ into a small oven - leave one burner on and put whatever it is you're cooking on the opposite side. You could even do it with a coal BBQ, just stack all the coals on one side! This is made much easier if you have a thermometer built into the lid, if not you can buy one for an oven at the dollar store. For instance - I know with one burner on LOW, my BBQ usually maintains a temp of about 325 degrees.

So what can you cook with in-direct heat? Chicken is the first thing that jumps to mind, because of the high fat content and the sweet sauces that usually go into cooking BBQ chicken, indirect heat is great for getting your chicken cooked without burning it. You could even do a roast with a big enough BBQ and a roasting pan. However, my favorite is doing desserts on the BBQ.

Blueberry Cobbler

2-4 Tbsp butter
4 cups blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tsp lemon zest
Nutmeg

In an 10 inch iron skillet, melt 2 Tbsp of butter and add 2 cups of the blueberries and 1/4 cup of the sugar. Simmer the berries until you get a nice jam-like consistency, this may take about 15 minutes. Remove from heat, add the remaining ingredients and mix well.

1 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
4 Tbsp butter
1 cup milk

Mix the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, then melt the butter in a sauce pan, ad the milk to the melted butter, then add to the dry ingredients. Stir until slightly dough-like, and spoon the topping onto the blueberries - start from the middle and work your way out with small spoon-fulls. You won;t be able to spread the topping much once it's on the blueberries. Leave space around the edges for the heat to escape. Bake on the BBQ using indirect heat, at about 375 degrees for 30 minutes. If it's not "brown" enough at the end you may have to pop it into the oven on broil for a minute to make it look crispy.

Serve with high quality vanilla ice-cream!