Barbecues, the simplest and best way to cook meat...
A heat wave in the UK can be the only time that there is enough fine weather to dig out and dust off the old barbecue for a good old fashioned cook out. Of course we have sun, sometimes, and the temperature can stay high enough to allow the ‘men’ of Britain to brandish metallic tools to char flesh for the family. Usually though the beer takes over way before the cooking is done leading to under or over cooked food, potentially, ending in dangerously tepid or ruined food.
A heat wave gives the hardy among us a chance to develop our skills and improve on the blackened mess that we always start out with at the beginning of the barbecue season. I found myself for three days in a row cooking on our barbecue at home. Although we have a gas barbecue (at this point I hear the diehard chefs groan) and I barbecue more than most on my street I still have a lot to learn about turning the meat and making sure that steaks, burgers and chicken are cooked to perfection.
I think that there is no better way to cook meat. The lick of the flame, the tainting of the smoke and the experience of flash fires as the fat tries in vain to extinguish it’s adversary add something almost like a show for an audience. The cheers of the crowd are audible from several doors down as a sausage rolls in to the ash, to be brushed off and given to the dog, or the wife always questioning if the meat is properly cooked. Inevitably you hear the barbecue motto, ‘If it’s brown it’s cooked, if it’s black it’s fu...’
Can you get too much flame grilled meat? Not in my book. I’d cook it that way every night if it wasn’t so messy or time consuming. The preparation of the meal, as always, takes longer than the devouring of the end product. But what an end product and what a show to perform for your family and friends, as long as you don’t poison them of course.
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