The end of the barbecue season...

Well that’s it, the end of another barbecue season. We managed a few along the way, both here and at the cottage but I don’t think we’ll get another – the evenings are too chilly. We barbecue at the drop of a hat. All it takes is a single ray of sun and we’re out there smoking everything up. I think our neighbours think us a bit mad, sometimes we barbecue for nights on end - they may even run a book on how early in the spring we’ll start this time.

It doesn’t seem five minutes ago that we were lighting our first back in April and now it’s time to put the barbecue away for another year. Once I’ve emptied it of the water from last night’s rainstorm that is.

Over on the other side of the world, in Australia, my sister is just about to start her barbecue season. They’ve just traded their gas barbecue for a charcoal fired beast of a thing made out of ceramic. It really is a monster, very expensive, but it seems to do everything and I guess that if you have guaranteed sunshine throughout the summer, prawns as big as chickens, and a barbecue culture nation then you’ll eventually get your moneys worth.

Run the advertisement…

"The Kamado weighs 103kg [that’s 17 stones!]. Ceramics are heavy. The reason you want to break your back dragging one of these things home is simple: Food grilled on it tastes great. You can grill, you can sear, you can smoke, you can use it as a pizza oven, and it all comes out better than anything else you’ve grilled. Really. Better. So much better. The egg is sealed, so it ends up functioning as grill and oven at the same time, locking delicious moisture inside, and it gives you incredible temperature control. Once you dial in the controls, you can set it at a certain temperature and by golly, it will keep that temperature until the charcoal runs out."

By golly! Yes, it does sound good and such a change from gas fired which isn’t really barbecuing at all.

I don’t get gas fired barbecues and I’ve never cooked on one. I’ve eaten food cooked on them though and to be honest you might as well have cooked on an electric griddle or fried your sausage and burger in a frying pan.

Yes, there’s something about charcoal smoked food that adds to the flavour – perhaps it’s the carcinogenics…

We've tried barbecues of all types and sizes over the years, including one that I bought for a hundred quid that sounds a little like a small Kamado. That did everything to by golly, you could even barbecue indoors – not that we ever did. The problem was, like gas fired, it didn’t taste barbecued for some reason. Oh, it was very healthy (the blurb said so) but I missed the tar and smoke. It’s ended up in the shed somewhere gathering dust in our barbecue graveyard.

For the last few years we’ve been barbecuing using a stockpile of small dish barbecues we bought at Aldi or Lidyl (I can’t remember which) for £1.99 and a few more of exactly the same design which we bought at Asda in their end of season BLOW – everything must go – OUT sale for an incredible 50 pence each. Well, they were too good a bargain to miss and they work a treat when there are just two of us. They don’t use too much charcoal, don’t burn for days, and as long as you are happy to eat and cook in relay (which we prefer) are big enough and last long enough for a few courses. Sometimes I leave one out to rust over the winter and when spring comes, if it's gone too far, get another from the cupboard ready for the cycle to begin again.

Oh well, that’s it for another year. You know I really should get off my arse, clean out that rusty old barbecue and put it in the shed, there’s probably another season in it at least.