Barbecue tips anybody?

If you're cooking for more than a dozen people who eat meat a joint started off in the oven and finished on the BBQ always goes down well and is cost effective too, I find far less is wasted than burgers, sausages etc.

 

That's cheating WW. BBQ food is only food done on the grill. Thats BBQ law i'm afraid

 

I will be cheating quite extensively in order to ensure that nobody goes home poisoned. I'll be starting much stuff off in the conventional oven, to be finished on the barbie. The reason for this atrocity is that more people have accepted my invite than I expected, and my barbie grill is only small, so to cook a decent amount of food for everybody, the oven is going to have to do much of the work, as it would just take too long to cook enough food thoroughly on the barbie grill.

 

Looks as though your weather will be spot on Clueless. That's worth many,many brownie points

 

So, how did it go?

 

Sorry, I should really have updated this thread but I started another for the aftermath story:

http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/busy-day-good-result.45461/

Basically, it went very well. Many thanks to all who provided tips and encouragement

 

And quite correct

Another impressive recipe for the BBQ (and yes, it is all cooked on the BBQ) is what we call "Charlie Chicken", but is a whole chicken cooked on a beer can.

Basically, take a can of beer, drink one third, then put your chicken over the can so that the leg tips and the beer can form a tripod. I usually rub some flavourings over the bird before I do this.

Once the bbq coals are nice and hot, pop your Charlie Chicken on the grill. Now, I use coals so I tend to put the chicken in the middle of the grill and then move most of the coals to the sides so the heat is going up either side of the chicken as well as a few underneath to heat up the beer. Effectively, the steam from the beer cooks the inside of the chicken and keeps it moist while the coals cook the meat from the outside.

Here's what I mean.



It's quite a nice dish to cook on the bbq on a Sunday for a family meal because you can just walk away for an hour and get on with other gardening tasks while it merrily cooks away. If in doubt about it being thoroughly cooked, just use a meat thermometer; I don't but that's because I've done it so many times I sort of "know" when it's done

NB: Do take care when removing the cooked bird from the can! Hot beer scolds
And do not drink the remaining beer!!!

 

A few from yesterday.

Butterflied leg of lamb.





Shoulder on the bone.





The meat was wrapped in foil, and the total cooking time was 6hrs, with the shoulder started an hour before the leg. The meat was turned every 15mins, and when cooked, it was served with a greek style salad, german potato salad and Waitrose grand mange .

Home made BBQ and racks.



Marshmallows heated over the home made fire pit.

 

A glorious spread there Eddie. Looks really delicous.Fit for a king and queen.
I absolutely adore marshmallows cooked in this way.
Thanks for the piccies and the beercan recipe. Very novel

 

Saturday is the only day that counts this weekend, and I'm spending approx 8hrs of it cooking on the BBQ.

Tomorrows main feast is Maple-mustard pulled pork, with charcoal cooked jacket spuds, Greek style salad and olive oil drizzled over grand mange.

The only downside is that I'm on antibiotics, so drink is off the menu for me. :(





.

 

Do you fancy a gate-crasher or two Eddie. Sounds delicious!

 

I'll do the drinking, you eat the meat Doin any fish?

 

That is very kind of you.

Apart from possibly putting anchovies in the salad, there's no fish on this occasion. But I am hoping to start to cook outside at least once a week, so perhaps next weeks dish could be a lovely fish machli.

Or if you have any lovely spicy fish recipes that you would like to share, I'm more than happy to give it a go. Fish is one of my favourite foods.