Female grillers are some of the most passionate and talented when it comes to weilding a tongs over an open flame. OnMilwaukee and On The Rocks ready-to-pour cocktails teamed up and tracked down a half dozen local gal grillmasters. Grab your own OTR from a local store and get grilling!
According to popular market research company NPD Group, only 19 percent of American women in heterosexual relationships assume grilling duties during a barbeque. These statistics have remained the same for at least 30 years.
Dubbed "the one and only male-dominated appliance in America," the grill is seen by many cisgender men as a socially-acceptable place to wear an apron. But despite the uneven ratio, female grillers are some of the most passionate and talented when it comes to wielding tongs over an open flame.
OnMilwaukee and On The Rocks ready-to-pour cocktails teamed up and tracked down local gal grillmasters. Each participating woman picked what they wanted to grill, where they wanted to buy their grillables, how they wanted to grill and the perfect OTR cocktail to accompany the process.
This is the first episode of the second series of "Girls Who Grill," and Brown Deer’s Lisa Floading shows us how to masterfully grill lamb burgers with homemade Tzatziki sauce.
"I love to cook. And I love to grill. I do a lot of 'let’s see what this does' with whatever I have hanging around in my fridge or my garden," says Floading. "There's always something that can become something else."
Gas or charcoal: I prefer the taste of using charcoal, but I like the ease and speed of gas. I also like my gas grill in particular because the starter doesn’t work so I get to light it by hand and I feel like a badass.
How do you prepare your grill: I clean my grill regularly, but I always rub down the grate with an onion before I start grilling. It cleans, seasons and makes a non-stick surface.
What you grilled for this series: Shawarma/lamb burgers.
Share some secrets of your process: I don’t measure a darn thing. I grew up watching my mom shake seasonings into recipes, taste it, shake a little more and then say, 'Yeah, that's it.' Cooking for me is half luck and half alchemy. My husband often says, 'this is great,' and I'll remind him he'll never have it again because it’s never exactly the same twice.
One grilling tip for lamb: Lamb cooks very quickly – it's very lean and grass fed. So it's a meat you really have to pay attention to. At the same time, you have to resist the urge to flip it too much. And when you take it off the heat, like any meat it's gonna continue to cook. I find this particularly true of lamb so it's important to let it rest.
One general grilling tip: Grilling is about patience and trusting the process.
OTR cocktail paired with meal: Mai Tai and The Aviation.
Watch Lisa make grilled lamb burgers with homemade Tzatziki sauce:
What you need for the lamb burgers:
2-4 pre-made Lamb Patties or a pound of lamb meat to be shaped into patties later
Crushed red pepper and Shawarma Seasoning
Lettuce
Red onion
Onion buns
What you need for the Tzatziki sauce:
Cucumber
Yogurt
Lemon
Garlic
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
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