When barbecued food is the pits...

SOME years ago when I was working in North Carolina, a friend suggested we finish the day in a barbecue shack.

Sitting down at a communal bench with a plateful of pulled pork and hush puppies was a transformative moment; the first mouthful made me realise how appallingly badly we do barbecue at home.

Carolina barbecue is a thing of smoky romance, producing outrageously juicy, flavourful joints that have been cooked slowly in fiery pits.

Scottish barbecue is simply the pits, with mechanically recovered slurry burgers, sausages made from fat and sawdust, and steaks like meaty face flannels.

This bank holiday weekend, my neighbours were out in force, grimly gathering around rusty grills to render food carcinogenic, one sausage at a time. Perhaps it is the importance of the social ritual that keeps us barbecuing, and I’m all for events that bring families and friends together.

But where’s the allure of Scottish barbecue, where people gather like lions around a carcass to make paraffin-flavoured food, while carbonising the neighbourhood’s enjoyment of a sunny day?

Those who resort to huge gas-fired grills defeat any remaining point.

If open-air cooking is so important, why not get an extension lead and drag the microwave out on to the patio?

Have your friends round by all means. Eat in the garden, if the weather holds, but remember that there is nothing you can barbecue that wouldn’t taste infinitely better from the kitchen.