grilling / BBQing

bonkey

When I lived in Ireland, barbecue (technically its grilling rather than BBQing, but lets not argue) was typically one of two things:

1. A sunny summer afternoon round one of the lads places, where you took your life in your hands eating chicken drumsticks which were black on the outside and raw on the inside.
2. The preferred method of cooking when on holidays with my folx.

So I'm wondering...

Do you know how to bbq/grill properly? Is it something you do often? Gas or wood (or do you care)? And..perhaps most importantly...what do you cook on the barbie?

Over here (Switzerland) in the summer months, I'll grill/bbq as much as possible. Anything to avoid turning on the cooker really (cause our place is enough of a heat-trap in summer without adding to it).

While the classic fare of good steaks or homemade burgers is hard to beat, I also do quite a lot of marinaded this-and-that (tuna or swordfish in coriander, chilli, garlic & lime...woargh) as well as roasted peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, corn on the cob, spuds, etc. This summer I also intend to get more into slow-roasting larger joints as well...just for fun. I'm also gonna see if I can get some aromatic wood-chips, cause I reckon with a wee bit of ingenuity I can use my lidded grill as some sorta hybrid grill/smoker, which could be fun. And bread. I'm sure I can make bread on the BBQ too.

So...any other grilling fans out there? And if not....why not?

jc

Tom Dunne

bonkey wrote:

any other grilling fans out there? And if not....why not?

I don't quite simply because of the weather. It always seems so much hassle to drag the BBQ out for an hour of sunshine.

I used to BBQ everything when I moved out of home years ago. I even got to the stage where I was BBQ'ing the Sunday breakfast staple of sausages, rashers and pudding.

cerebus

Hard to top a good BBQ.

Besides the usual summer evening duties, my trusty charcoal-burning Weber gets trotted out regularly during the rest of the year. It has been used to cook our Christmas turkey for the last 4 years, feeding up to 12/14 people on occasion. It has also handled legs of lamb/geese/chickens as the occasion demands.

We have also used it to cook dessert a few times (various crumbles/cobblers) - these worked reasonably well.

My next ambition (to be achieved sometime this summer hopefully) is to try cooking pizza on the grill...

A South African friend of mine does some amazing things to salmon with a smoker-style contraption, using woods like hickory and maple. Ends up with smoked salmon that is out of this world.

commuterised

We have a gas barbeque with a lid on it, and I regularly cook on it, even when its raining.
Would just do the usual meats like steak, burgers, chicken, corn on the cob, salmon, spuds, vege skewers. Tastes so much nicer than grilling inside, gives plain meat a gorgeous taste. It's also a great low fat way of cooking.

rubadub

bonkey wrote:

where you took your life in your hands eating chicken drumsticks which were black on the outside and raw on the inside.

Seen it a million times. They putting stuff on when it is still flaming, and consider it "gone out" when it is actually at the perfect stage, greying coals with that heat mirage you can see.