The lovely people from Young’s brewery have been kind enough to share a great BBQ recipe with us that incorporates one of their range of Bitters.

The recipe is BBQ Spatchcocked Poussin and it not only tastes great but is also brilliantly easy to make. For those not familiar with how to spatchcock a chicken or poussin, we have done a handy spatchcock guide here.

To read more about Young’s range of bitters and where you can find your local supplier, visit their funky website.

Moving on, here is the recipe for BBQ Spatchcocked Poussin Recipe

Ingredients:
Serves 4

4 poussin (buy ready spatchcocked if preferred)

Marinade:
1 bottle Young’s Bitter
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp clear honey
1 tsp paprika
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger
2 star anise, crushed
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

Sauce:
3 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tsp soft brown sugar
1 tsp cornflour

To Prepare

place a poussin breast side down, on a board for raw meat use. Using poultry shears or strong kitchen scissors, cut along each side of the backbone and remove it. Either snip the wishbone with the shears, or push down on the wishbone to snap it. Snip of any excess bits of skin, the wing tips and any other ragged bits.

To keep them in shape insert wooden or short metal skewers through the bird, diagonally in a criss-cross shape. Place in a large glass or china dish.

For the marinade, pour the Young’s beer into a large jug, once it has settled, add the rest of the ingredients and whisk together. Pour half of the marinade over the poussin reserving the rest for the sauce. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Bring the poussin out of the fridge 1 hour before cooking. Pour the marinade into a pan, boil rapidly until reduced to about 100ml, this will be used to baste the poussin while cooking.

To finish the sauce, strain the reserved marinade into a clean pan, add the tomato ketchup and sugar, bring to the boil. Blend the cornflour with a little water, stir into the sauce and simmer to thicken.

Prepare the barbecue, lightly oil the rack and place the poussin bone side down first. Grill for 5 minutes, turning every 3-4 minutes and brushing with the baste. Time to cook through will depend on size of the birds and intensity of the heat from the barbecue, should be approximately 15-20 minutes. Test by inserting the point of a small knife. Transfer to a serving platter.

Reheat the sauce before serving.

Have you tried this recipe? If so, why not share your thoughts below?

Anyone who BBQ’s will know the importance of the “dips and chips” at the start. Weak people go for crudités (a range of chopped veg for dipping in sauces) but real BBQ’ers have to go for some serious crisps and nothing does the job better than Kettle Chips.

For us Kettle Chips are the Number One BBQ Crisp brand and we cannot recommend them enough… but enough of our love!

There is exciting news on the Kettle Chips front as they have enhanced a number of their existing flavours; Sweet Chilli, Sour Cream & Onion and Smoky Barbecue and also announced the launch of Sweet Red Pepper Salsa flavour that hit the shelves in mid April.

To help mark the launch of the new flavour of Kettle Chips the company has also come up a with a few cracking recipes for BBQ dips and we have been lucky enough to been sent them.

The first is Tomato and Red Pepper Dip

Ingredients:
1 Red Pepper
2 Plum Tomatoes
1 Small Red Onion
1 Red Chilli
Small Bunch of Chives
Pinch of Salt & Milled Black Pepper

How to make the Tomato & Red Pepper Dip

Rough cut the red onion and place in blender. De-seed the red chilli, rough cut and place in blender. Blend together till fine.

De-seed the red peppers, rough cut and add to blender. Quarter the plum tomatoes and add to blender. Blend altogether keeping the peppers and tomatoes fairly chunky.

Place into a small bowl, season with salt and milled black pepper, place in refrigerator.

When ready to serve snip a quantity of the chives into the mix, blend together.

Place in serving dish , snip a few pieces of chive on top, serve with a bowl of Sweet Red Pepper Salsa Kettle Chips.

Sour Cream and Sweet Chilli Dip:

Ingredients:
375g Jar of Pepperdew Sweet Peppers
2 Plum Tomatoes
2 Red Chillies
200g Sour Cream
200g Creme Fraiche
Salt & Milled Black Pepper

How to Make the Sour Cream and Chilli Dip:
De-seed the red chillies, rough cut. Quarter the plum tomatoes.

Drain the Pepperdew Sweet Peppers. Place the peppers, chillies and tomato in a blender and blend till fine. Place in a bowl, add the sour cream and crème fraiche and fold in together.

Season with salt and milled black pepper. Place in refrigerator.

Serve with a bowl of Sweet Red Pepper Salsa Kettle Chips.

For more information visit www.kettlechips.co.uk

This is an adaptation of a recipe a friend introduced me to last year using traditional cooking methods that we have finally been able to try on our own kettle BBQ.

This a really easy BBQ recipe and once again, it gives you a dish that not only tastes nice but also looks good, especially if you serve it on a a bed of salad leaves and alongside something like cous-cous.

It is best to use cooking baskets to cook these on the grill as you can more easily turn the thinly sliced salmon.

Tikka Masala BBQ Salmon Recipe - Ingredients for 4 People;
4 x Salmon fillets
1 jar tikka masala paste (we use Patak’s)
Bag of mixed salad
Flavoured cous cous
4 x Naan Bread

Step by Step Guide to BBQ Tikka Masala Salmon
1. Slice each fillet into three, length ways. This is a bit tricky, make sure you use a sharp knife
2. Smear 1/2 tbsp of the tikka masala paste onto each of the salmon fillets, make sure you do both side (1/2 tbsp each side!)
3. Leave to marinate for a few hours
4. About 5 mins before you are ready to BBQ your Barbecue Salmon Recipe, wrap the Naans in separate tin-foil parcels and place on the grill (we splash water on ours first to keep them soft and nice)
5. Place the Salmon in the BBQ Basket on a medium heat and cook for around 2 mins per side.
6. Serve on top of a bed of the salad leaves

These can be quite spicy and are best served with a nice chilled lager. At the minute we are loving Victoria Bitter (better known as VB) which is £24.00 from Majestic Wines.

Tried this recipe? What did you think? Post your comments about this or your own BBQ recipe below.

We have been making Garlic Bread on our BBQ now for years but I only realised this weekend that we don’t have our recipe on here, so here goes.

This Barbecue Recipe is for four people.

Ingredients:

1 x Baguette (ready baked)
3 x cloves of garlic (2 if you have a meeting the next day)
Handful of parsley, finely chopped
175g of butter (marge does not work so well with this recipe)
1 x deseeded, finely chopped red chilli (optional, for an extra kick)
Tin foil to wrap the baguette

Step by step recipe guide to making Garlic Bread on the BBQ:

1. Soften the bread (15secs in microwave should do the trick)
2. Add all the other ingredients to the butter and mix together well
3. Slice your baguette taking care not to cut all the way through
4. Use a butter knife to smear the butter between the slices, really go to town and use all the butter
5. Wrap the baguette in tin foil
6. Place onto a medium to hot grill and leave for 15 minutes - make sure the bread is hot throughout and the butter has melted
7. Tuck in!

This is a simple barbecue recipe we have been looking forward to trying out on the BBQ all winter. It has just the right amount of tang to become a real BBQ Recipe classic.

As ever, we start with the ingredients and then go through the step by step guide. Our ingredients are catering for 4 people.

1.25kg of boneless leg of Lamb

For the Marinate:
2 x 400g canned tomatoes
1 x onion, chopped
2 x cloves of garlic, finely sliced
2 tbsp paprika
2 tbsp Worcester sauce
1/2 tsp of Tabasco sauce
1 x stick of celery
4 tbsp brown sugar

Step By Step Guide to Making Sweet Tomato BBQ Lamb

1. Place all of your ingredients into a saucepan (apart from the Lamb), stir and bring to the boil
2. Leave to simmer on a low heat for 45 minutes
3. Leave to cool
4. Either in a blender, or by pressing with the back of a serving spoon, blend the sauce
5. Pour over the Lamb and leave to marinate ideally overnight, or for at least 1hr

Cook over a medium to hot grill for approx 1hr & 45mins to 2hrs.

Tuck in and enjoy…

NOTE: for recipes that need a longer cooking time like this you will need to top up your coals half way through to make sure they are keeping the meat at the right cooking temperature.

To make this more simple, you will need a Kettle Charcoal Starter. You can light your bag of charcoal in one of these about 10-15 mins before you need the charcoal and then just pour the hot and ready coal onto your BBQ.

Well, how was your winter? We had a manic one, what with the new addition to the family but hey, the new BBQ 2010 Season is nearly upon us and I am sure you are just as excited as we are.

This year we are planning to really take the site to new heights, largely because of the unprecedented success of last year. During the peak BBQ months of July, Aug and Sept we got over 1 million people coming to the site looking for the latest BBQ Tips, BBQ Tools, BBQ Recipes and basically, some BBQ fun.

We have spent much of the close season finding new and exciting BBQ recipes and BBQ gadgets and even found some really funky new meat providers who do a wide range of exotic meats…. but more of that to come.

This year we want to hear more about what you are getting up to with your BBQ’s, what BBQ recipes are your favourites and what BBQ tools are your favourites.

There are a few ways you can get in touch, hello@iLoveMyBBQ.com or http://twitter.com/ilovemybbq (@iLoveMyBBQ)

So come on, let us know what you want to see and how we can make the site (that has become the UK’s largest Independent BBQ site - meaning we can say what we want and are not tied to promoting any company!) even better.

Now this may a bit basic for some of you more experience BBQ grillers but I found a really funky basic cookery course that I wanted to give a little plug to.

One of the things that has really helped me get to grips with some of the more tricky BBQ recipes is the fact that I did a basica catering course and trained for several months under a really awesome grill chef.

When thinking about how this site can help people I thought it would be a good idea to try and find some funky basic cooking courses, not necessarily about BBQ’ing, but some of the general things you should know about food prep and recipes etc.

My favourite, and the UK’s best gift experience site, IntoTheBlue.co.uk has a load of cooking courses worth trying out but the Cooking for Fun Course in Suffolk looks a real bargain and a great laugh.

Here is the write up from the site:

These Cooking for Fun courses take place in a renowned cookery school in Hadleigh, near the Essex border of Suffolk and you’ll be learning from the owner and chef, Mark David.

Mark David has exceptionally wide experience, including hotel and outside catering and corporate events. He spent three years as an Egon Ronay inspector and a further year as restaurant manager at Robert Carrier’s acclaimed Hintlesham Hall hotel. He now runs his own cookery school and is a regular author and broadcaster on all matters culinary. His light-hearted, unpretentious approach has earned the description of being a cross between Tommy Cooper and Geoff Capes - but of course with much greater cooking skills than both those two characters combined!

At just £149.00 it represents a reallygood day.

Well, what a year it has been, not only in terms of awareness of this blog and its phenomenal and unexpected growth but also personally for Cairo and I.

2009 was a massive year for us personally that included getting married in early 09 (about time!) and also having our first child, Mini-Barr towards the end of the year - hopefully this explains why iLoveMyBBQ.com went so quiet towards the end of the year!

In terms of this site 2009 was huge. During the peak BBQ months we struggled to cope with the amount of traffic, questions from BBQ fans and companies getting in touch to ask us to review their products. The site featured in several national newspapers and magazines (website of the day in The Times being a notable highlight) and we were asked to give our opinion on various new BBQ gadgets by a few TV and news shows! Wow…

The two things that really made us both really sit up and take notice were; one, the fact we were asked about potentially selling the site on two seperate occasions and two, when we ran a competition towards the end of the last BBQ season we had hundreds and hundreds of entries - more than we could have ever imagined!  This tells us we must be doing something right.

So, here we are in early 2010 (very early!) and we are planning new ideas and recipes and BBQ related gadget stories for the site. As ever, if you have any ideas or suggestions, please let us know.

Thanks for everyone’s support in 2009 and we look forward to an action packed 2010 of BBQ’ing.

Andy & Jilly (AKA Cairo)

One of the best things about the BBQ season is that it kind of runs parallel to the Welsh Lamb Season, i.e. April through to October. We at iLoveMyBBQ.com are big fans of Welsh Lamb and would recommend that you go for this over any other kind of Lamb.

The lovely folks over at Welsh Lamb have been kind enough to send us a Step By Step Recipe Guide to Welsh Lamb Koftas, again, a big hit with the iLoveMyBBQ.com team. There is no better way to show off your BBQ skills than with this eastern themed dish of Wlesh Lamb Koftas. It is an easy but impressive dish that goes perfectly with a cool glass of beer and some warm pita bread and dip.

What you will need for 4 Large Welsh Lamb Koftas Recipe:

500g minced Welsh Lamb

1 large red chilli, finely chopped

2 large handfuls fresh mint and fresh coriander roughly chopped

1 small red onion finely chopped

Freshly milled sea salt and black pepper

1 egg

4 Skewers

Step by Step Guide to making Welsh Lamb Koftas BBQ Recipe

Welsh Lamb

Step One - Compabine all the ingredients in the bowl and season well

Step Two - Divide into 4 balls and squeeze each ball into a skewer to form a sausage shape

Step Three - Cover and rest in the fridge for 30 mins

Step Four - Fire up the BBQ and get it ready

Step Five - Cook for about 15 mins, turning every few minutes

Step Six - Tuck In!!!!

Have you tried the Welsh Lamb Kofta BBQ Recipe… if so, why not post a comment below or send your pics to hello@ilovemybbq.com

We were lucky enough to be sent a selection of Encona BBQ Sauces recently and also a few BBQ recipe ideas that we could try out and the first we went for was the BBQ Encona Hot and Fruit Chicken Kebab Skewer Recipe.

Ingredients needed for this BBQ Recipe Idea that serves 4:

For the Kebab -

6 chicken thighs, meat cut into 2.5cm pieces

2 red peppers cut into chunks

1 large sweet potato, peeled and boiled for 5 minutes cooled and cut into 2.5cm pieces

8 wooden skewers, soaked in water for 10 mins

5 tbsp Encona West Indian Papaya Hot Pepper Sauce

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp coriander, chopped

For the fruity salsa -

Encona Sauces

1 mango, cut into small pieces

1 papaya, cut into small pieces

1/2 tbsp Encona West Indian Papaya Hot Pepper Sauce

1 tsp chopped fresh coriander

1/4 cucumber, peeled and finely chopped (not the core)

Step by Step Guide to Making the BBQ Encona Hot and Fruity Chicken Skewers

Step One - pre-heat the BBQ

Step Two - thread the chicken onto the wooden skewers alternatively with the sweet potato and the red peppers and place the kebabs on a tray or plate

Step Three - Mix the Encona West Indian Papaya Hot Pepper Sauce with the honey and coriander and brush all over the kebabs

Step Four - Cook on the barbecue for around 15 minutes, turning every so often and brushing with any remaining marinade

Step Five - Mix all the salsa ingredients into a small bowl and then serve with the kebabs

Encona has a range of 11 sauces including, West Indian Original Pepper Sauce, Indian Swet Mango Chilli Sauce, West Indian Smooth Papaya How Pepper Sauce, Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce, Louisiana Cajun Hot Sauce, Barbados Creole Pepper Sauce, Jamaican Jerk BBQ Sauce, Thai Chilli and Giner Sauce, Thai Chilli and Garlic Sauce, Texan Chilli BBQ Sauce and American Chilli Kethcup (loads!).

Encona Sauces are available from all good supermarkets and prices start at 99p and go up to £1.89, depending on the sauce you choose.

Have you tried Encona sauces, if so, why not post your thoughts below in the comments box?