Be Excellent To Each Other

Ok, so if (big if) I considered buying a permanent barbecue so that that likes of @Cras didn’t scoff at my disposable one, and Mr Zoidberg wasn’t too scared to visit in case I poisoned him, what would I be looking for.

For starters, what is the difference between the £80 and the £64 offerings here? What’s the sort of bucket contraption under the first one?

George Foreman GFKTBBQ Portable Round Kettle Charcoal BBQ, Adjustable Vent, Integrated Thermometer, 2 Wheels & Chrome Grill https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07D76T6R ... 8264?psc=1

We have this as Cras said "Buy this one" and the lad wasn't wrong.

https://www.bbqworld.co.uk/m/weber-barb ... al-bbq.asp

*nod*

I did see that brand keep popping up as recommended, but unfortunately that’s out of my budget for the moment.

The one you've linked up top will likely be just fine. The cheaper one has a tray at the bottom that spent ash will drop onto. The more expensive one has more of a bucket so it'll collect more of the ash and just be a bit tidier. I'm not convinced that's worth an additional £15

Super. That’s good to know. I wasn’t sure what that underneath but was and couldn’t find any information about it anywhere. Cheers, sir.

I’ll keep looking around as I’m not decided on whether to get one yet, but a lot I was looking at seemed to be one of those two styles and I couldn’t work out the difference (I wondered if maybe it was for extra coals or something )

Frankly disappointing

I wouldn’t trust it not to bubble up and go black

I did see a yellow one that folds up into a handbag

It fascinates me how different the ways we 'spell out sounds' can be.

Never would have occurred to me to use 'Ziiiiiiiii' as the barbecue sizzle sound

How would you have spelled it? I think I’d go with something like zzzhhhhhhsssss

Would love it but still can’t afford that one even if all the Yes Chefs say it’s the best (Cras did a few posts up)

Buy a cheap version of the same thing to see if you enjoy it, with the knowledge that in a year or two you'll need to buy another one. At that point you'll know if it's worth the investment.

I was hoping someone would ask

I'd go with TTTTTTTSSSSSSSSHHHHHH probably.

Gotta have a hot grill to get that TTTTTSS at the beginning

Aldi have on the past had some decent-isj barbecues. Good warranty / returns policy too

Go to one of the Yes Chef's houses and steal theirs. They probably want an excuse to buy a new one anyway.

Excellent plan. I think Grim… built a whole outdoor kitchen, so I could probably pick up a sink and a workbench, too.

Steal their expensive one, sell it on ebay, buy a cheap one.

TBH I suspect just turning up at their house and asking to have some BBQ food would probably work most of the time.

There's actually one at my house (albeit an older model) that's been covered and unused for about four years.

It belongs to Craster

I'm sure he won't mind

Excellent plan

I’ll have a look around (online, not in Grim…’s garden) to see if I can find something that looks durable and of that same style, but less spendy. I know it won’t last as long, but those nice ones are just a bit much when we have so much to fix in the house (like the dining room ceiling). It won’t ‘live’ outside, and will go into the garage between uses, so hopefully that will extend its life a little.

Replace the bulb in the dining room with a searingly bright led then no one will be able to see whatever is wrong with the ceiling. Much more cost effective and easier to boot!

(Part of my drive to replace all the incandescent bulbs in the house with LEDs is to avoid dealing with the electrics that cause them all to dim/brighten even without high power things like fridges cycling on)

Ahhh! Ahh haaaaa! But your plan falls down because for some reason there IS NO CENTRE ROOM LIGHT.

Do your barbecuing in the dining room, and no one will look at the ceiling because they'll be so fixated by the barbecuing.

That’d certainly hide the ceiling.

Finally bought a barbecue (today, over a year later).

Chose this one, so I hope it’s ok.

https://amzn.eu/d/39aoRkN

It should arrive in a few days. The meantime, what else do I need to buy to have a barbecue? Apart from food. I worked that out. But what kind of charcoal do I need, how do I light it… what barbecue tools might I need (if any), and how is best to clean it.

Many thanks for any advice.

Morrisons usually has Big K charcoal at ok-ish prices over summer - it's gone up a lot generally, everywhere over the last couple of years though.

Natural firelighters, never fluid(-soaked lighters).

Gloves, tongs and a spatula are the main tools.

A wire brush for scrubbing the rack while it's hot isn't necessary but saves scrubbing mould off before each use.

Ooh, a Weber. It'll be great

There are specific attachments for doing offset cooking/smoking and so on, for later, but again not necessary.

For grilling I still use the 57cm, £18 kettle I got from Morrisons 7 years ago as a "temporary this first year" one, though I really shouldn't as it's got so flimsy - I'd buy a Weber kettle myself if I wasn't still convinced I'll be constructing a giant custom one this summer definitely this time!

The ones I looked at that were the same style (I googled “barbecue kettle”) after reading your post before realising that what I had bought , were apparently quite flimsy, so I chose this one as it looked like it might be a bit more robust.

We’re probably going to just be doing some veggie sausages and burgers, corn cobs and the like for the most part, rather than anything fancy

Shall pop along to Morrisons for all the required bits as my parents might be visiting to help fit the pond on Sunday so might see if I can actually cook something.

One of these is a must, it takes a lot of the hassle out of getting the barbecue lit -- and the set I've linked to there contains a bag of charcoal and some lighter cubes too, so that really is everything you need for your first cook

I e read the description on that page and even watched the video, and though I now have a fairly comprehensive idea of what it looks like from every angle I haven’t the faintest idea what it actually is.

Am I to understand that if we simply put the coals into the bottom of the kettle and lit them then they would take ages to get going or just not light, and this chimney solves that problem?

This is a purely academic question now by the way, I have bought the set you linked to, GazChap.

More or less, yeah. Light the chimney and after 20 minutes or so (when the topmost coals are turning white or you can see flames coming out the top) you can tip them into the BBQ, put the grates on top, and start cooking.

Everything will be super hot at this point of course, so wear heat-resistant gloves when picking up the hot chimney, tipping the coals in, and putting the grates on (and then any time you go back to the bbq)

Also a good idea not to wear open-toed shoes when doing this either, especially if you’re not used to doing it. Last thing you want to do is accidentally tip a super-hot lump of charcoal on to your exposed foot!

Scroll up to find the link I posted which also contains all the tools you need to get started.

Oh wait, I can just press this.

FFS, Beex.

I think we’ve got most of that ordered now (or, at least, a version of those things, but with a cheaper bbq, etc), but I think what we need now is something like tongs and the like.

Tried to have my first barbecue yesterday and it was a bit of a disaster if I’m honest.

It was mostly because my mother wouldn’t let me do anything myself, from assemble the barbecue, to light it, to putting the food on, to cooking the food, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t do it ‘right’, and honestly the food was cold and horrible. I had a hundred times better results with the little disposable barbecues last year.

So, I’ve cleaned it as close to brand new as I can get it, and I’m going to try it again on my own terms one day after school.

So, please confirm for me (as it’s a little obscure in the book) the bottom vent should be open, yes? Also, the top vent should be all the way open for quick cook things (burgers, etc) or the lid off, is that right?

See, I was trying to say that you need them open to increase the oxygen so the coal thingies can burn properly. But she kept saying to close them to ‘increase the heat’ and my gosh, she would not listen to me. I tried to open them and asked her to let me do it myself but she pushed me out and when I went to check they were fully closed, and (surprise) it had gone out and everything was cold, so then she started ripping up bits of cardboard boxes and shoving them between the grate, just loads and loads of cardboard, lighting each piece individually with one of those long clicky lighters so everything was cold and covered in soot.

Harrumph.

Anyway, so I didn’t really get to try, so to try and actually undo that experience and try again, please give me tips.

Also, that chimney lighter worked super well, Gaz. Brilliant recommendation, thank you

Awww mimi

If I'm going in to something cold and either haven't spent time watching it being done before, or spent time preparing myself - I often find the first time to be, let's say, suboptimal... or even something I make a complete hash out of.

Sounds like it wasn't really you doing it though, and positive spin on it: you've already learned a lot by seeing what not to do. It sounds to me like your idea with the vents was logical and it seems to make sense*, so now you can try it that way and see how it goes. I also did have a little laugh at the 'using lots of cardboard' bit.

I don't have any experience using charcoal - pretty much all the bbqs out here run off gas bottles. Someone once told me that this is not really a true barbecueing experience, it's more like just simply cooking outdoors and I find myself both agreeing with the statement and not caring at all about the sentiment because, whatever, it's still ace.

*What I reckon - certainly at the beginning, the fire needs plenty of air to get going and get the charcoal and the bbq nice and hot, so the vent should be mostly open - I'd imagine that once it's all hot enough there's probably some fiddling with the vent to close it a bit so you can keep it ticking over at a nice heat but combusting a little slower so it doesn't rip through all the fuel or get your food all burny. I'd love to hear if I'm close or wayyyyyy off.

I usually read a lot of resources before I start a thing, but my mother is definitely a ‘dive in headfirst’, which is why she tried to put the lid on the bottom and put the legs so the wheels handle was on the side, so had to unbuild it the first time, but also didn’t have time to try and read how to best set it up before she was already lighting it. I did once she left, and I can see several things that were wrong (definitely top vent all the way open for quick cook things, or even lid off), supposed to warm the rack before putting food on, etc, but I didn’t think the bottom vent being open or closed was obvious even after reading.

I did look at a gas barbecue, but because it’s going to live in the garage when not in use I was just a bit nervous about storing the gas bottle, which is probably daft, but it definitely was a factor, plus I associate barbecues with burning the little coals. I did briefly look at an electric ‘barbecue’ but really I might as well plug our tiny George Foreman grill outside

I know that my ma has a gas barbecue at home, but she’s never used it as it’s always my twin brothers that run the barbecue there (some might say with good reason ) so she may have been doing something with my barbecue that she’d do with the gas, because maybe the lid requirements are different. Not the bits of cardboard though. I think she was just winging it then, though still talking as if that is ‘what you do’.

Also, when I was cleaning it that was the hardest but to clean, the sides where she’d been putting the cardboard. They left thick carbon deposits on the grill, whereas there was none anywhere else. You can get them off but it’s hard work. I probably didn’t need to but I wanted to do it again on my own terms, if that’s not too silly.

The top vent can stay all the way open pretty much the whole time -- there's probably some scenarios in which you'd want to close the top vent a little bit, but I've always left it open all the way.

The bottom vent is the one that you'll be adjusting -- the more open it is, the more airflow, the hotter the coals will burn. I'm no expert on this by any means, but unless I'm wanting to smoke something for a long time, I just leave the bottom vent all the way open.

Re. lid off -- this was one of the 'mistakes' I used to make when I would do a barbecue. If you leave the lid off, your food won't really cook unless you're cooking the items directly over the hot coals, and the coals won't stay hot for anywhere near as long.

If you leave the lid on, you have a lot more options -- if you pile the hot coals up to one side of the kettle, you can use that side to cook 'direct' (i.e. the food is directly over the coals), and you can use the other side to cook 'indirect' (where the food is off to the side, and the cooking happens more like in a normal oven)

You can also mix it up, so you can cook things indirectly until they're done, and then stick them directly over the hot coals for a bit to get the "chargrilled" lines on them and stuff like that.


You're correct.

She is not.

And yeah, as you've discovered, this is bad All sorts of stuff on cardboard that would potentially taint the food and make it taste weird.


No worries -- I think it was one of our resident Yes Chefs that stressed how good they are to me, and it made everything so much easier! I watched my neighbours struggle to get their barbecue lit without one yesterday, took them nearly an hour of fart-arsing about, false starts etc. but they got it going in the end.

I remember my uncle standing hours with a hairdryer pointed at the barbecue when I was a kid, or my mother’s ex squirting lighter fluid at the barbecue.

I’ll give it a go alone either this week or next (weather depending, though it’s looking promising).

Also, saw these whilst looking on Ocado:



Do you reckon they influenced the song lyrics, or the song lyrics influenced the naming of these? Which is chicken, which is egg?

Can confirm BBQ chimneys are excellent. I get a bag of "light-the-bag" coals, stuff em in the chimney, light a natural firelighter underneath, then light the bag. 15 minutes later, red hot coals!

Nooooooo they have accelerant, don't they?

/clears throat

Yep.

@mimi you were trying to do everything right. I close vents as I do offset cooking as Gaz was describing... But I get away with it due to all the terrible tolerances on gaps, I imagine on a Weber kettle they'd need to be at least partly open. And lid off for searing/hard grilling. Try not to be disheartened!

Sorry, yes, and thank you to Grim… who also did a link