How to Make Grilled Summertime Fruit

Until you try it, you never believe how great grilled fruit tastes. I start by giving strawberries and bananas a coating of sugar. When I grill them, they become warm and soft inside. They get a crispy sweet crust. I add a minty citrus syrup with blueberries as a finishing touch. Grilled mixed fruit is a wonderful escape from ordinary desserts. Before I start on the syrup for my grilled fruit, I want to make sure that my grilled pan is heating. We need it nice and hot before we put the fruit on. Alright, well that heats up, I am going to make the syrup and I am going to add some simple syrup, I took a half-a-cup of sugar and I dissolved it in a quarter-cup of water. So you just bring the water to boil, add the sugar, dissolve it, and then cool it. So then we are going to add some lemon juice. We are adding lemon in each dish today. The lemon is going to brighten and highlight all the ingredients. Go ahead and roll it to release all the juices that makes it easier when you squeeze it. That just brings a little bit of a tart tangy flavor as well. Then in the end, we are going to add some mint. There are so many different varieties of fresh mint out there these days. The other day I saw chocolate mint. So there is chocolate mint, pineapple mint, lavender. I am using a peppermint today. I love it, so have fun. We are going to chop the fresh mint, and it smells so good. Mint is probably one of the easiest herbs to grow. It kind of grows like weeds. It takes over everything else. So we add the mint in there and some fresh blueberries. There we go. We will just toss these together. Oh, it looks so pretty. Yummy, my grill is getting nice and hot. So next, hold my strawberries, cut the top off and then just cut them in half, just like that. The size doesn't really matter when it comes to strawberries. They are not sweeter, just because they are smaller. And we've also got bananas. I love bananas. I love how sweet they are. So we will just peel the bananas. You want to just cut the bananas, just like that, cut it again because that one is a pretty long one and there we go. I am just going to put them all in this bowl because I am going to toss them with a little bit of sugar. So I am going to add a quarter cup of regular granulated sugar. I just tossed them in that. It will also protect them on the grill a little bit, so I am just going to toss them up with my fingers and it creates this nice crust. It's really pretty. It's kind of the same ideas when you dust flour on meat. It just protects the meat and keeps it moist. It's the same type of thing, the sugar protects the fruit and keeps it nice and moist inside. We have got a nice, hot grill, let's get the fruit on the grill. We just want to grill for a couple of minutes, just until the sugar creates this nice golden crust. And you can see the grill marks. Just gently take them off the grill. That looks perfect. Now, you can smell the sugar, they smell so sweet. I am just going to spoon the blueberries and the syrup right over the top. See the fresh mint. Now the mint, the blueberries, and the syrup just get heated by the warmth of all the fruit here, of the strawberries and the bananas. Okay. So let's grab a banana and some strawberries and some blueberries. Banana is crunchy. It's got sugary crust, and it's warm inside so it just melts in your mouth. Love it.