The ILoveMyBBQ.com squad

Well, here we are again BBQ Lovers and this year it is BBQ Season 10!

Wow, Ten whole years of BBQ madness since I caught the grilling bug. So, come on, did you have a good winter? What did you get up to? Share a little.

Here is the update from Me and Cario and some of the other regulars who feature on I Love My BBQ .

Cairo, Hugo and I are all well and had a nice winter. Ok, so we had an incident where we ran out of heating oil on Christmas Eve but apart from that everything went well. Duggle (Hugo) is still growing and is now one of th heaviest basset hounds ever known to man. His barking and howling is in fine form and I bet the neighbours cannot wait for the summer to begin so he can sing to them some more!

The Clims are all fine and Claire is now back at work and Molly (Mollster) is doing really well. Bounding around everywhere and at the time of writing is just learning to walk. Timmy was the inspiration behind the first BBQ of Season 10 and although he does not know it yet, will be helping me to build the clay oven later this year… something I have always wanted.

Granny BS is in fine form, now retired and enjoying the prime of life.

So there we have the micro update… Now, start your griddles please!

Rainbow Trout

Friday  night, start of the weekend… Gentlemen, start your griddles please!

Here we go then… Game four of Season 9 and we followed yesterday’s Seabass with 2 filleted Trout. Yum!

Did not do much different to the Seabass Recipe last night, just stuffed the trout full of citrus fruit, whacked it into the fish basket and put it on te grill.

20 mins later we chowed on down and had some salad with it. Weather permitting we will be BBQ’ing some more on Sunday as well.

Accompanying drinks were; Bierre D’Or and Montana Sauvignon Blanc.

If you are BBQ’ing this weekend, have fun!

Seabass BBQ recipe

What a lovely evening…

Despite it only being April it has been really really warm. So warm in fact that we decided to fire up the BBQ. On the way home from the office we dove into the supermarket of choice and grabbed some Seabass and some Trout, a load of citrus fruits, salad ingredients and the all important Biere D’Or (case of 42 bottles)!

Got in, fired up the Barbecue and went off to prep the Seabass.

For the recipe I just cut up a load of slices of lime, lemon and oranges and packed them inside the filleted Seabass.

I then popped them into the BBQ Fish baskets and bunge them into the kettle BBQ.

Shut the lid and gave them about 10-12 mins each side and hey presto done!

Cairo made a nice Pine Nut salad, we cracked open the Sauvignon Blanc and gotted merrily toasted whilst sitting on the decking.

If the weather holds up we will have Game 3 of Season 9 tomorrow, complete with trout!

Woooo.

Moroccan Marinade

Today we are going for some, in theory, Moroccan style Lamb… here is how I made the Morrocan style BBQ rub or marinade and I will let you know what it tastes like later on;

4 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp ground turmeric
½tbsp paprika
2 tspn lazy garlic from a jar Salt and freshly ground black pepper

I basically banged all the above ingredients into a bowl, mixed them all up and then put in the lamb and made sure it was all covered in the Morrocan BBQ Marinade Rub.

It is now in the fridge and I will leave it over night ready to be grilled tomorrow.

Chicken Tikka

Well, here it is, our Ninth season of BBQ’s begin and this was the earliest we have ever had one in the year.

The weather brigade predicted snow, hail, rain and sleet, but instead it was warm-ish and so the coals were lit.

In attendance were Cairo, Granny BS, The Clims, Mollster and Hugo. This was the first time I had ever used our new Kettle BBQ and boy it was good. It cooked the chicken tikka BBQ recipe in no time at all and was darn hot.

This year we are trying to go a bit lighter on our BBQ meat consumption and trying to a bit more healthy so there were no dips and chips to start with, just the Chicken Tikka Recipe and a nice salad that Cairo prepped.

Here is how I did the Chicken Tikka BBQ Marinade recipe:

For 5 people

5 chicken breasts

Pint of natural yoghurt

100ml of double cream

1x tablespoon of the following spices/herbs;

Garam Masala, Paprika, Cayenne Pepper, Cumin, Coriander,

1x teaspoon of the following:

Chilli from one of those lazy chilli jars

Garlic from the lazy garlic jars

2 dollops (just over a tablespoon is one dollop!) of tomato puree

Juice of 2 lemons

• I then mixed all the ingredients, apart from the chicken, into a mixing bowl and stirred it all up.
• I then put the 5 butterflied chicken breasts into a big plastic food bag and poured the mixture over it and into the bag.
• I then massaged the chicken in the bag to ensure all of the butterflied chicken breasts were covered.
• I left the chicken tikka BBQ marinade in the fridge for about 2 hours, but you can leave for longer or overnight and then popped them onto the grill.

Anyway, on the red hot grill they were cooked in probably around 15-20 mins and tasted great. Everyone commented on how nice they were and even the spare breast was wolfed by Clim Tim.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we also tried the new batch of Red Wine Flavour BBQ Woodchips and crikey they rock! They gave the BBQ a really nice rich fruity smell that Clim Claire said was a bit like hot ribena… nice!

Cannot wait to try the beer can chicken next… maybe on Cairo’s birthday. Will probably pop some Cajun rub all over and use some of our Beer Flavour BBQ Woodchips with it.

Cooking At Granny BS's

Exciting times!

Exciting month in ILoveMyBBQ.com world. We have been developing our BBQ Recipe Testing Zone (yes, fancy words for “the patio bit outside our cottage”) and decided to get cracking with some big changes to section of the garden where the majority of our Barbecues take place.

First up I put treated log rolls around the edge of the BBQ zone and that was a massive job in its own right. I then removed all the turf from that section and tried to level as best I could. Unfortunately, the bit of the Cotswold’s we live in seems to be solidly built on clods of clay. My god it is heavy work, even with a wheelbarrow and a helpful Duggle who insisted on sniffing every bit of mud and trying to put his nose where the shovel should be.

Once all the turf was cleared it was time for the gravel. What gravel did we go for? You guessed it, Gloucestershire Stone courtesy of Hales.

9 tonnes of gravel later The Clims were called to see if they wanted to help us move it down the hill from the drive and onto the BBQ section.

Granny BS had her one good idea of the century (turns out it was not hers, but still, she said it and that is good enough for me) and said we should hire a rubble shoot to position at the top of the garden and pour the gravel down the chute into a wheelbarrow that could then be more easily take to the section required. Genius… In no time at all Clim Tim and I had got it sorted.

The new BBQ table and brand new BBQ look fantastic in their new dedicated BBQ spot. All we need to do now is go to our favourite catering shop to make sure we have all the right equipment.

BBQ

The dark mornings and even darker nights can lead to doom and gloom as very few barbecues can take place.

At ILoveMyBBQ.com we see it as a great time to do a bit research into new Barbecue recipes and rubs along with trying to develop more BBQ Smoking Woodchip flavours.

Fear not, the BBQ season is now nearly upon us and we will have even more recipes for you to test and try.

Cola Steak Recipe

This is simple as they come.

We had a surprise last minute decision to hold an impromptu BBQ and freezer supplies were at a low point so we had to dash out and get some grub.

On the run into Gloucester we remembered that the Farmers Market comes to visit on a Friday and decided to get our meat from there.

We got there so late there was little left to choose from so we were left with the tough decision to buy fillet steak or fillet steak.

Cairo remembered reading about a Coca Cola Steak recipe so we got everything we needed, erm, a few cans of coke and dashed back home.

We left the steaks to marinade for a few hours and then people started arriving. There were a few raised eyebrows at the thought of the coca cola steak recipe but as soon as the meat hit the grill the combined smell of the coca cola and the red wine smoking chips was hella nice.

Steaks only need a few minutes per side on a nice hot grill so in no time whatsoever we were ready to go.

BBQ Coca Cola Steaks Recipe -

Just to clear things up, here is how we did the steaks… simple as anything. Pop the butterfly steaks into a watertight bag and pour coca cola over them. Leave them for up to an hour and then bang them onto the BBQ grill. Bosh