Sure, homemade barbecue sauce is fantastic. Fresh potato salad is amazing. Hand-cut fries are impressive.

But if you're juggling a grill, entertaining guests, chasing kids, refilling drinks, and trying not to turn your burgers into hockey pucks, shortcuts aren't cheating—they're survival.
The trick isn't avoiding convenience foods.

The burgers have disappeared.
The potato salad bowl has been scraped clean.
Everyone's leaning back in their chairs, sipping a cold drink while the conversation drifts from vacation plans to old family stories.
Then someone says the words every backyard host loves to hear.

​Every backyard griller has been there.
You're trying to flip burgers, keep an eye on the chicken, answer the same question for the fifth time ("Is the food almost ready?"), refill someone's drink, stop your dog from stealing a hot dog, and somehow remember which burgers are medium and which are well done.
Meanwhile, everyone else seems to be relaxing.

Some nights you want to spend hours tending the grill, sipping your favorite drink, and perfecting a rack of ribs.

Other nights?
You just want dinner on the table before everyone starts asking, "What's taking so long?"
That's where foil packet dinners shine.

If you've ever walked down the grilling aisle at your favorite store, you've probably wondered the same thing I have:

There are gadgets for flipping burgers, gadgets for shredding meat, gadgets for cleaning grills, gadgets for holding corn, gadgets for making perfect hot dogs, and somehow...gadgets designed specifically to hold other gadgets.