Grill-Baked Skillet Apple Crisp Recipe

Every early fall, I force my family (whether they want to or not) to brace for the crowds, sweat through their flannel, and head out to our favorite local orchard to go apple picking. My kids run wild through the rows of apple trees, tasting, and often throwing, every apple they can reach, while my husband and I try to keep up. Yes, admittedly a few apples are harmed in this process, but fun is had and memories are made (at least for me). We come home happy and exhausted, with an obscene amount of apples that we spent a LOT of money on, that I then have to figure out what the heck I am going to do with. 

Once we are home, for whatever reason, no one wants to simply enjoy a fresh apple. So in an effort to whittle away at the seemingly endless pounds of apples, I’ll first take a deep breath and remember that I put myself in this situation, then I’ll churn out a range of apple desserts. A favorite go-to post-apple-picking dessert is an apple crisp that I bake on my grill. While the fall days are still warm and the nights turn pleasantly crisp, I’ve grown to love baking on my outdoor grill. It gives me more time outside to embrace the autumnal weather.

There’s something irreplaceable about the experience of taking the lid off the grill to see the freshly baked apple filling still bubbling away with its lightly charred oat-crisp topping—the intense apple-and-cinnamon aroma wafting over me along with a cool fall breeze. It’s an experience one can’t quite replicate with an indoor oven. Plus, charring the apples and grill-baking the crisp creates a unique, lightly charred, and subtly smoky flavor that balances the sweetness of the apple filling and buttery oat topping.

To better understand the key techniques for successful grill-baking, I’d point you to my article on the topic to review the basics before baking on a grill for the first time, but I’ll summarize the main points as they relate to this recipe. To start, it’s important to measure, prepare, and have all of the ingredients readily available on a prep table by your grill. I like to do this while my grill is preheating to make the best use of my time.

This apple crisp bakes well on both a charcoal and gas grill, but I prefer using a charcoal grill for the irreplaceable smoky flavor that burning charcoal briquettes infuse into the charred apples and the baked crisp topping.

Whether using charcoal or gas, it’s important to build the charcoal (or keep the primary burner lit) on one side of the grill so that you can bake over indirect heat. This avoids scorching the bottom of the apple crisp and mimics the more even heating environment of an oven.

That said, I do take advantage of the direct heat for this recipe by charring the halved apples on the hot side of the grill before slicing them for the filling. Don’t be shy about developing a good deal of char on the cut faces of each apple half, you won’t regret the flavor that some deep char adds to the filling, delivering a remarkable depth of flavor that instantly evokes campfire cooking. The charring step also serves to par-cook the apples, which ensures the filling and the crisp topping bake at the same rate on the grill.

The result is a warm, bubbly apple filling with bits of welcome char to balance the brown sugar and cinnamon, topped with a buttery pecan-and-oat crumble that crisps to perfection from grill-baking. It’s in that first bite that I’m reminded why I love the fall, and why I’ll be sure to force my family to pick even more apples next year.