A Week Ahead of Time
- Create a guest list and invitations
- Plan your menu
- You can approach it a few different ways - theme (such as Mexican), casual (hamburgers & hotdogs), or formal (steaks or pork tenderloin)
- Shop for Accessories, Plates & Napkins
- Have fun with this - you can use your theme, create an ambiance and add pops of color in your outdoor space.
Day Before
- Grocery Store, Farmers Market, & Butcher Shop
- By going to the Farmers Market & Butcher Shop you are not only supporting local farmers and business owners, you are offering you guests the freshest ingredients which allows for better tasting food, at its seasonal best.
- Make Dessert
- This is another opportunity to tie in your theme - if you are doing a casual cookout - make homemade ice-cream; something fancier - you can get a little more creative (a fruit tart) or even go to your local bakery and see what looks good.
Morning of Cookout
- Decorate your outdoor space
- Now is your time to pull out everything you coordinated from last week -make sure you add candles and lanterns to create the right ambiance.
- Prep meat
- If you decide to make hamburgers, they hold together if you let them sit in the refrigerator for at leas an hour before putting them on the grill. Are you going to marinate your meat? The longer the better in most cases.
- Get your grill ready, so you don't have to worry about that when your guests arrive.
- Make salad
- Does your salad fit your theme? Make sure you don't dress it until right before you serve the salad.
- Prepare vegetables for the grill
- Cut your vegetables and have them ready to be salted and oiled before you put everything on the grill - you don't need to do anything fancy to make them taste great - especially if you got them at the farmers market.
Night of Cookout
- Relax and enjoy your guests - everything can be thrown on the grill while you visit and celebrate the evening.
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