Easy BBQ Recipe

Another away-day BBQ today, that is two in two days. Today we were at Granny BS’s house and it was a great opportunity to test out one of the Weber range of BBQ Marinades.

We had the traditional Weber BBQ Marinade (£9.94 for 6 Amazon), a simple and easy BBQ Recipe that you simply pour over your meat, leave to marinade and then slap onto the grill.

We seem to always use the BBQ marinades over chicken but they also work really well over other cuts and varieties of meats such as Lamb chops, Pork Steaks, Beef steaks (Sirloin, fillet and rump etc).

I also thing the Weber BBQ Marinade works well when you brush it over seafood kebabs and, if a rogue veggie has snook in, you can smear it over their veggie kebabs as well.

Weber BBQ Sauce and Marinade

Marinades work best when you can leave them to flavour the meat overnight but we only had chance to give the Weber BBQ Sauce Marinade a couple of hours over our chicken breasts and being honest, you would not have noticed the difference had they been marinading for three days!

The flavour was spot on!

You kind of expect it to be perfect, it is Weber after all, but this really is spot on. In my mind it even beats the Paul Newman range of marinades. The trouble with some of the marinades is that they taste synthetic and a bit fake, but the Weber BBQ Sauce tastes authentic and original.

Easy BBQ Chicken Recipe

The Weber BBQ Marinade was not only a quick and easy BBQ Recipe it is one of those recipes you can prep in a couple of mins and leave to marinade whilst chatting with friends and still taste amazing.

Everyone loved the chicken and I suspect that had we not admitted that it was out of a jar I could have claimed it was home made! I totally would have as well…

Kudos Weber, you have done it again…

Popularity: 2% [?]

We Love Over Farm Market

So Friday is all about the BBQ Loving for me. Getting ready for firing up the BBQ, planning what animal is going to be gracing the grill and what salads will be made but not actually touched by my own fair lips.

We are off on an away-day BBQ this weekend at Cotswold Water Park with a load of friends and currently planning what to take with us. By The Way; Cotswold Water Park is great because they have full on BBQ hire service. For the Win!

Anyway, on our way over we are going to be picking up the meat for BBQ which leads me nicely on to my Friday loving… this week it goes to Over Farm Market in Gloucestershire.

For those of you reading this in far flung places this will mean very little, but for anyone Midlands or South West based, Over Farm Park is well worth a visit. Aside from the brilliant farm shop, amazing team working there (more of that in a sec) they also have an actual working farm where you can go and feed the animals (including a Buffalo).

If that isn’t enough to tempt you, when you consider that the Country’s most well respected County Magazine, Cotswold Life no less, has recently given it the Best Farm Shop Award then you should be racing to get there.

Going back to the shop, it stocks traditional fruit and veg (dull), some brilliant local ales, wines and cider (exciting) and my favourite; it has a brilliant meat counter (mega exciting!).

Pretty much all of the meat consumed by the iLoveMyBBQ.com tribe comes from Over Farm Market and having tried so much it is difficult to pick one thing out… but if I had to, their Chinese Marinade Pork Steaks are probably my favourite.

Situated on the A40, by the Toby Carvery and only a little distance from the M5, Over Farm Market is a great day out.

Popularity: 1% [?]

BBQ Tips for You

Us BBQ Grillers, we are under a heap of pressure! Getting the food ready, getting it cooked, knowing when it is cooked and making sure everyone gets fed without a trace of food-poisoning.

I thought I would answer the age old BBQ Question of

“When do I know when my BBQ Meat is cooked” be it BBQ Chicken, BBQ Sausages, BBQ Burgers, or even BBQ Steak.

So here is a little guide, nothing definitive so don’t be trying to sue me if things still go wrong

BBQ Chicken

If a chicken breast or alike, there is a good chance that it will have some form of marinade on it that will stop you being able to see if the juice coming out of it are running clear (sign of being cooked), so I usually cheat and cut into the thickest end of the chicken breast to see if it is pink or white inside. If white, it is ready! I keep the one I have cut into for myself so no one can see my sneaky handy work.

If a whole chicken or alike the chances are you will not have put a marinade on it so you can simply prick with a fork once the cooking time has elapsed and if the juice runs clear it is usually a sign that it is cooked.

Remember, you cannot eat raw or pink chicken!

BBQ Burgers

Some burgers are ok to eat with a teency bit of pink inside, especially if they are made from steak mince or alike. The better the quality of the mince the more chance there is that you can (once again) prick them with a fork and if the juice runs clear, they are done.

The teency bit of pink only works with steak/beef mince though remember.

BBQ Sausages

These can be a real pain in the bottom! I always find that the better quality pork sausages take a bit longer because of the higher meat content. I pretty much always end up cutting the end of one in half to look inside and make sure there are no pink bits left. Once again, I keep the one I have cut open for myself so that no one can see I have cheated.

BBQ Steak

Similar to burgers, prick with a fork and if the juice is clear, they are done. Remember though, some people like steaks to be rare so check first. If you see blood starting to rise to the top of the steak when cooking, that is usually a sign that they are medium and nearly done.

Hope this helps!

Popularity: unranked [?]

A little competition for a Wednesday…

We have an OXO BBQ Set on offer for one lucky winner, all you have to do is share your own BBQ tip or recipe in the comments section of this blog post. Could it be any easier?

Up for grabs are: Oxo Good Grips BBQ Fork, Oxo Good Grips BBQ Turner, OXO Good Grips BBQ Tongs, all in all, with a RRP of around £25.00.

The OXO BBQ Gadget range are fantastic, durable, long lasting and look very slick (for BBQ gadgets).

A winner will be chosen at random on Wednesday next week. Remember to keep checking back to see if you have won!

Win Free BBQ Gadgets

Popularity: 35% [?]

Top 5 BBQ Books

BBQ’ing is all about sharing recipes and I make no secret of the fact that we have hundreds of books that we use to get ideas and inspiration from.

With this in mind, here are my favourite, Top 5 BBQ Books…

1. Blistering Barbecues (£12.71 Amazon)
By Kate Weatherell, Nigel Tunnicliff and Time Reeves. I love love love this book. This is the book that introduced me to BBQ Pizza’s! The people behind this book have their own Pro BBQ Cooking Company.

2. The BBQ Bible (£23.94 Amazon)

By Steven Raichlen. one of the best Xmas present I have ever had. Worth it just for the BBQ rub recipes and more exotic meat dishes.

3. Weber’s Complete Barbecue Book (£9.43 Amazon)

Weber is a leading BBQ product and sauce company so having their book is a must have.

4. BBQ 25 (£8.95 Amazon)

Adam Perry and part of the Richard and Judy 2007 Book Club. A really interesting, back to basics BBQ book. As you can guess, it is 25 classic BBQ recipes.

5. Jamie’s America (£14.99 Amazon)

A brilliant book that you would not initially realise is a BBQ book. I absolutely love it and it is packed with unusual, but traditional, American BBQ recipes.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Charcoal v Gas BBQ's - Which Are Best

So here we go, our take on the Gas v Charcoal BBQ Debate and which is best. You will never get me to switch to Gas from Charcoal but I can see why some BBQ fans do love a Gas barbecue.

Here are my Top 5 Pros and Cons on Gas v Charcoal BBQ’s..

Gas BBQ Pros

1. Quick to heat up and get going

2. Easy to clean

3. Don’t have to keep buying coal

4. Can keep the BBQ at a consistent temperature

5. Easier to cater for large families or get togethers

Gas BBQ Cons

1. Not as good a flavour as charcoal

2. Gas can work out expensive

3. Typically uglier designs

4. Cannot cook pizza’s on them (need high temp)

5. They are basically just the same as cooking the food indoors!

A Selection of my Favourite Gas BBQ’s are in the Amazon Widget Below

Charcoal BBQ Pros

1. Much more flavour

2. Can do more adventurous recipes on charcoal BBQ’s (pizza, beer can up the bum chicken)

3. Can position the coals as you require (hot spots, indirect BBQ cooking recipes)

4. Designs are much prettier (Kettle Charcoal BBQ’s!)

5. Smell much nicer and you can use woodchips etc

Charcoal BBQ Cons

1. Messy

2. Tougher to clean

3. Hard to control temperature

4. Far more potential for eye brow removal

5. Seem to age/break more quickly than Charcoal BBQ’s

A Selection of my Favourite Charcoal BBQ’s are in the Amazon Widget Below

Popularity: 9% [?]

Clim Tim and his Proper-Job BBQ Sausages

Having a BBQ site can have its up and its downs: the Ups; getting to try so many new BBQ Recipes, the Downs; that I quite often get asked to look after the BBQ when we go to friends or relatives.

Therefore, today at The Clims was a beautiful way to start off the first BBQ away session of the year as I was not called on for grilling duty.

We had some great veg and dips to start… very much the must-have beginning to every BBQ across the UK, and then went down the route of some great chicken skewers marinaded in a BBQ sauce.

If the chicken was good, well… The sausages that came from a local deli called “Farmhouse Butchers” in Gloucester were out of this world.

The humble sausage often gets overlooked at BBQ’s for being a bit dull and unadventurous but I find the only people who say this are those that have never ventured off the beaten track of supermarket bangers that are very hit and miss.

Even the higher quality supermarket sausages contain nowhere near the meat content, or quality of pork as many of the independent butchers and deli’s and I have lost count of the number of supermarket ones that come in such a thick skin that it feels like you are chewing on something made by Durex!

So, hats off to The Clims for putting sausages back on the BBQ menu by getting some quality bangers from Farmhouse Deli in Gloucester!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Beer Can up the Bum BBQ Chicken Recipe

A brilliant new tool for the Beer Can up the Bum BBQ Chicken Recipe!

Regular blog readers will know that the one dish that causes most people to check out this blog for the first time is the Beer Can Up the Bum Chicken BBQ Recipe.

For three year now we have been cooking this great and simple BBQ recipe and it has been brilliant fun, but the one thing that keeps annoying me is that if you are not careful, the chicken falls over.

This results in grappling with a hot chicken, scalding hot beer and dodging red hot coals… yeah, there is a lot of the word “hot” right there.

Well, browsing around Amazon the other week I found a tool just for this dish called the “Beer Can Roaster” made by BBQ Masters. The Beer Can Roaster is currently on sale reduced from £11.99 to £9.25 so I ordered one and today we are trying it out.

When you first open it you think there is no way a full UK can of beer will fit in it and it must have been designed for those mini Budweiser cans from USA… but no, an average UK can of beer (we went for Fosters) fits perfectly as you can see from the main picture.

So, now we have everything in place I will report back later on how it went.

Oh, and by the way… our pet Bassett Hound does not like the sun so much, check him out hiding in his bed in the shade!

Hugo the Basset Hound Sunbathing

Popularity: 4% [?]

Steak BBQ Recipe

Many people arrive at this site looking for quick and easy BBQ Recipes and this is one of the easiest.

This is a Steak and Veg roll with a twist, the twist is that the veg is shredded thinly and packed inside the steak. It takes minutes to prepare and minutes to cook.

Ingredients needed for the Steak and Vegetable roll BBQ Recipe (feeds 4-6)

4 Steaks (Rump, Sirloin, up to you, 8oz)

3 Medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced (length ways – long thin batons)

3 peppers (any colour) thinly sliced

2 Onions thinly sliced

A load of soaked in water cocktail sticks

Step By Step Guide to Making the Steak and Vegetable Rolls BBQ Recipe

1. Prepare all the veg

2. Flatten the steak with a meat hammer or rolling pin and cut in half width ways

3. Arrange a selection of each of the veg along the edge of one of the halves of steak and roll

4. Secure the rolls using the cocktail sticks

5. Grill on a medium heat BBQ for 5-10mins, or to your choice

6. Slice in half to serve…

6. Enjoy…

A quick and simple BBQ Recipe that we hope you enjoy.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tandoori Chicken BBQ Recipe

Many people worry, well… not worry as such, it is just BBQ’ing… Many people get Tandoori Chicken and Chicken Tikka mixed up. Rather than get into a debate whereby I will be wrong and get a load of emails let me just start by explaining how I see the difference. It is in two parts, BBQ Chicken Tikka can be quite dry and spicy whereas BBQ Chicken Tandoori is moist, nice and not as spicy.

Traditionalists will point out that Tandoori is also a type of oven but hey, lets just stick to what we know.

Anyway, back to the BBQ Recipe for Tandoori Chicken.

Ingredients needed for BBQ Chicken Tandoori (to serve 5/6)

5 or 6 Chicken Breasts

200ml natural yogurt

Handful of chopped coriander to serve

2tsp garam masala

1 lemon, grate the rind and squeeze the juice

1/2tsp ground cumin

1.5inch ginger, grated

1/2tsp cayenne pepper

2tsp tomato puree

3 cloves garlic, crushed

Step by Step Guide to Making BBQ Tandoori Chicken

1. Get all of the ingrdients (apart from Chicken and Coriander) in a food processor and blend until smooth or place in mixing bowl and mix well. If blended, pour ingredients into mixing bowl

2. Cut your chicken breasts into chunks (3 per breast)

3. Mix the chicken breasts with the marinade and leave to marinade for at least 2 hours and preferably overnight

4. Once marinaded place each chink onto individual skewers

5. Cook normally on a medium to high BBQ for 5 or so mins (or until cooked) turning occasionally

6. Serve with a yogurt dip and coriander (natural yogurt, chopped cucumber, lemon, chopped de-seeded chilli, all mixed together)

Popularity: 6% [?]