Hot & Fast BBQ

Hot & fast barbecue gives itself way in the title, it’s about cooking quickly directly over a hot fire. This is where most Brits’ view of BBQ begins and ends, but as you’ll find out if you read the rest of this site, this is only one way of cooking on a BBQ.

Whole Lamb Spit Roasted Over An Open Fire

Some Barbecue purists would say that this is not “real” bbq, it’s grilling. Even if this is the case, you can still do some really tasty meals cooking directly over the coals, just ask the South Africans, Aussies or Brazilians!!! Maybe our problem in Britain is that many people just think of BBQ as burgers and sausages, with the occasional piece of chicken thrown in, all carbon black by the time it reaches the plate.

There’s lot’s more you can grill on your BBQ though and there’s a few simple tips to help you improve the food that comes off your grill. On this page we’re going to share a few basic tips and pointers, if you want to learn more, then why not visit our online BBQ cooking community Grill School.

Meat Selection

The simple fact is, the quality of what you eat depends on the quality of what you start out with. Grilling is best suited  to more tender cuts of meat, try grilling a piece of braising steak and your not going to get a good result. Poultry, fish and tender cuts of pork, beef and lamb all grill well, but if you start with a tough bit of chicken from an old boiler then you’ll struggle to get nice juicy chicken to eat.

Homemade Sausage Mix

If you want to cook burgers and sausages, look for good quality products with a high meat content. Supermarkets sell good quality burgers and sausages these days, or better yet visit your local butcher. Many butchers make their own sausages on site and do some pretty funky flavours for you to try. With burgers, why not try making your own? You can pick up an inexpensive burger press for less than £10, making your own burgers allows you to control what goes into them and gives you the opportunity to try some different flavours in your burgers.

When it comes to fish and seafood, again the key is picking good quality products. Fish seafood require very little cooking and delicate flavouring, you have to make sure you start off with something worth cooking.

Preparation – Marinading & Seasoning

We could spend a long time discussing techniques for enhancing flavour but this subject will be covered a lot more at Grill School. The basic techniques to look at are marinading and seasoning.

Marinading involves soaking your meat in a liquid designed to enhance the flavour and/or tenderise the meat. In some cultures, Green Papaya and Kiwi fruit are used as tenderisers in marinades as they contain enzymes that help make the meat lovely and tender. Using live yogurt can have similar effects. Ingredients such as garlic can impart strong flavours if used in marinades, dried herbs and ground spices will add flavour too. A bottle of Caesar salad dressing and a can of coke makes a wicked marinade for chicken, marinades can range from gloriously simple to fantastically complicated. One important thing to remember though, is that marinades may react with meat if left too long, particularly if they’re acidic, then they will break down the muscle fibres over time.

Seasoning, might be as simple as sprinkling salt and pepper on your meat, in fact with something tasty like a ribeye, you might not want to do anything more. However there are further options too. You might choose to use a dry rub, a mixture of dried herbs and spices that you apply to meat, or you might choose a wet rub, a spice paste similar to a masala. Both wet and dry rubs are available commercially or you can make your own, there are loads of recipes on the web.

Cooking Over Fire

Lighting Charcoal With A Chimney Starter

So this is the easy bit right? A fire is a fire? Well no, not really. The first thing we always suggest is to use good quality charcoal and avoid any kind of chemical lighters. A chimney starter is a great investment to make for lighting charcoal, cheap, quick and requires only a couple of sheets of newspaper to get it going. Once your charcoal is well lit, put it on your barbecue and give it some time to settle, ready for cooking. Always leave an area with no coals, this allows you some space to move things around and manage those pesky flare-ups.

Never put chilled meat on the BBQ, let it come up to room temperature first. Ice cold meat will not sear quickly and will lose more of those lovely juices that you want to keep in there. It’s very easy to burn food cooking at such high temperatures, so make sure you keep an eye on food once it’s on the grill, if you get a flare up, move the meat to your space on the grill where there are no coals. Also whilst it’s important not to undercook your meat, if you overcook it, the results will be dry and tough. Overcooking is easy at these temperatures, so again you need to keep an eye on things. A probe thermometer can be a real help when grilling as it allows you to be more accurate with your cooking.

Final Prep – Glazing, Saucing & Seasoning

Glazed MOINK Balls

Want to add that extra zing to your food? Glazing or saucing can work wonders. Glazes tend to be high in sugar content so you only add them near the end of cooking and you have to be careful not to burn them. A bit of bottled BBQ sauce diluted with beer and honey is an awesome yet simple glaze, but warm it up before brushing it on. you might want to use your marinade as a glaze if it’s suitable, but you’ll need to boil it first if its had raw meat in it.

Brushing meats with sauce immediately after cooking is also a good technique. Again have the sauce hot when you apply it and if you’re brushing it over chicken skin then only do it just before serving or it can make your skin soggy. When applying a sauce after cooking, a high sugar content will mean that the sauce starts to caramelise as soon as it hits the hot meat, this can give a stickier version of a glaze.