What BBQs should you buy?
What BBQs should you buy?
It’s a question that has plagued meat-lovers for decades… Should you choose a gas or charcoal, or ceramic BBQ or invest in a wood fired oven?! There’s no set answer, as the BBQ that’s best for you depends entirely on your priorities – it’s all a matter of taste versus convenience versus time.
Here are some of my top hints and tips to use when deciding between BBQs:
Convenience:
One simple thing to remember when it comes to convenience is that the more convenient a BBQ becomes, the less smoky flavour it will produce. Gas BBQs heat up and cool down very quickly and they are very easy to use. A charcoal BBQ can take up to 60 minutes to produce the whitened ashes that are essential for grilling.
You need to decide what you value more – traditional smoky BBQ flavour or speed and convenience. If you want to come home from work and throw a couple of steaks on the grill for a quick and hassle-free dinner, then a gas BBQ might be what you’re looking for.
Control:
You also need to consider how much control you want over your BBQ process. Although the heat of charcoal BBQs can be adjusted on ceramic barbecues, gas barbecues have easily adjustable and accurate heat controls. All you need to do is turn the dial and you’ll have the exact cooking temperature you need. Charcoal is very hands on and require for you to plan an area where the charcoal is limited to create an indirect heat environment. Indirect heat will help the larger pieces of food to cook through without burning. Bqq lovers will enjoy the skill and time that cooking on charcoal BBQing requires.
Flavour:
Charcoal BBQs and wood fired oven often provide a better sear than gas BBQs, because they produce more direct infrared heat. Charcoal also creates more smoke than gas, and this provides a broad range of tasty flavour molecules for your meats. You can create smoky flavour on a gas BBQ by using a small smoking box while bbqing.
Using wood fired oven.
Wood fired oven are great fun to cook pizza, flat breads, naan bread but also steaks and roasts such as leg of lamb. You will need to use the oven in 2 version using a digital thermometer. with very high heat for pizza to allow pizza cooking in 90 seconds you will need to have as much heat as possible to reach around 400-500˚C.
For all other uses, the pizza oven needs to be used like a conventional oven. The heat therefore needs to be tamed with the use of the leftover of the heat and maintaining around 150-180˚C. you will need to do a few trial and error to master the oven like slow cooked pork shoulder or whole baked seabass in sea salt crust