...but beware of the barbecue police!
RECKLESS barbecuers risk being hauled over the coals by police if they do not properly dispose of grills.
After a number of Scots – including children – suffered burns and a series of wildfires broke out, officers have set up ‘barbecue patrols’ to crack down on unsafe alfresco dining.
The patrols will be carried out with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and will take place along the Nairn coastline during the school holidays.
Police Scotland’s Inspector Mike Middlehurst said: ‘Recklessly setting fires is incredibly dangerous – you have no idea how it may develop, especially given the very dry weather.
‘What starts out as piece of fun could quickly develop into a serious situation, putting people and property at risk as well as causing significant, long-lasting environmental damage.
‘Anyone planning to have a barbecue in the beach area should know how to do so safely then dispose of them properly.’
The move follows a gorse fire in Buckpool, Moray, at the weekend and a wildfire in Hopeman, Moray, last month. There have also been wildfires in Fauldhouse, West Lothian, and Alness, Ross-shire.
A seven-year-old boy was left scarred after mistaking hot lumps of charcoal for stones while playing on the beach at Luss, Loch Lomond, last week.
Carly Lawlor had to be taken to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and needed his hands wrapped in bandages.
Three-year-old Emily Shaw suffered agonising burns to her feet after stepping on sand at Granton Beach, Edinburgh. It is believed the sand was burning because someone had a barbecue at the spot.
On Saturday, medics and a Coastguard crew were called to Belhaven Beach, East Lothian, after a man burnt his feet on sand that had been heated by his barbecue.
A Dunbar inshore lifeboat spokesman said: ‘Even when a barbecue has cooled, the heat of the sand underneath can be considerable, as this man’s injuries demonstrated.’
It is a summer such as we have not, in Scotland, celebrated in decades – day upon day of clear cerulean skies, blazing mornings, blossom and birdsong and long, balmy evenings.
And, as our duties permit, we laze in the garden with a good book, or dash to the beach, perhaps throw a few things together for a picnic by wooded glade and languid burn, or invite a few people round for a barbecue.
We all have a barbecue fantasy. the sun toasty but not oppressive; the children serene, not on a sugar high.
Chilled bottles of Chardonnay and craft ale and cider, beaded and misty with condensation; slices of strawberry and cucumber as chilled gems in the great iced jug of Pimm’s.
Notes of hickory and applewood in the gentle plumes drifting over the delphiniums, as with grace we grill and flip and turn, biting into immaculate burgers bright with relish as the plunk of distant tennis balls can be heard on this pellucid, perfect evening.
No one is burnt and nothing is scorched. Choice steak does not slip from our tongs into hopeless cremation and not as much as a wasp shall enter this sizzling Eden.
But this, of course, is Scotland – with its own peculiar cultural and environmental challenges.
Given that in a typical Glasgow July most of us still keep prudently to hand raiment better becoming reykjavik in February, barbecue is an art at which we have scant practice.
It’s odds-on you haven’t dug out the grill, the mighty forks and those weird racquet-like things for burgers since that flukey week in September 2015.
THAT it’s all jammed in the shed under venerable garden tools, a badminton net, yards and yards of Flymo cable, a tired artificial Christmas tree and the sack of Maris Pipers you forgot about. All is, at length, disinterred and the sullen 15-year-old child set to cleaning it from dust and mouse wee.
Bottles of warm Soave and Irn-Bru are hastily wedged in the deep freeze as the shopping patrol returns to announce not a stick of hardwood charcoal or pack of aromatic woodchips can be found in miles. they proffer but cheap charcoal and lighting fluid looking suspiciously like white spirit, save three times dearer.
All is assembled, the stage set. the 15-year-old must then be sent out to buy matches.
the eventide weather meanwhile teeters between close and clammy, which means midges, or bright and breezy, when the cleggs may come out for their all-you-can-eat banquet on pallid Scottish limbs.
or the gentle calm of evening might cease as your neighbour suddenly decides this is a perfect evening to creosote his fence or have at the Leylandii with his roaring chainsaw.
there is another dark truth. Barbecues are the one occasion men are apt to insist on doing the cooking. Even those who do not cook. And especially those who cannot cook.
Unlike those who prepare meals every day, they know not that good cooking begins with good shopping. that every meal calls for the ability to keep in mind several different elements at once, mentally stacking – in their stages – potatoes and meat, chicken and salad, buttered baps and oozing marshmallows like an air traffic controller of the skies over heathrow.
that if meat be not seasoned before or during cooking, it cannot effectively be seasoned afterwards; and that you barbecue not upon coals in hot, high flame but when they are calm, intense and ashy.
And that uncooked chicken will probably be thrown from surface to surface in a seeming bid to kill you all before, at great length, and with frayed temper, chunks of dead animal are served that are simultaneously charred and raw.
Yet there are but a handful of simple rules that will ensure happy garden grilling and that dad – if he can be stripped of the novelty PVC apron – is the host with the most.
For one thing, keep it simple. As the late, great Elizabeth David observed, the reputation of many a successful cook has been founded on the ability to prepare just two or three dishes to perfection.
A joyous barbecue can consist of nothing but sausages – or burgers – or chops, alongside buttered bread and salads and ketchup and abundant cool drinks. If you insist, instead, on baking potatoes and toasting marshmallows and sizzling a mixed grill of everything from black pudding to line-caught sea bass, the chances of all going horribly wrong increase exponentially.
Second, don’t be afraid to use the kitchen as your backstop. tatties are much better baked in the oven and chicken should be substantially pre-cooked then finished over the coals, rather than brought to your barbecue so pink and fresh that, with oxygen and jump leads, a vet would have a fighting chance of restoring life.
BE patient. Be sure your grill is at full heat – between 350F and 450F – before bringing any food within sight of it. the grill itself must be scrupulously clean and this should be done about half an hour after every single use, unless you want flavours of soot and death that would make Marcus Waring frown and Monica Galetti turn sarcastic.
think about food safety. Wash hands after each contact with raw meat and make sure no plates or utensils it has touched make subsequent contact with anything else you will eat.
raw meat should not be left out uncovered or for more than two hours – or one, if the day’s a scorcher. Some kitchen rules must be inverted when grilling over an open fire. Steak should be barbecued straight out of the fridge, not left to reach room temperature; you will then have far better control and a perfectly cooked cut.
Shun marinades thick with fruit and sugar that will only burn on the grill. Good meat should not need a long dismal soak; a ‘dry rub’ works better and there is no shame in nothing but a little oil, sea salt and fresh-ground pepper.
Never grease the grill; instead, lightly oil the food. remember meat is 75 per cent water, and will shrink. to avoid the lustrous patty on your worktop emerging as a tragic little biscuit, allow 6oz of mince per burger. Leave at least a quarter of the grill clear at all times to allow swift movement of this and that when things get excessively exciting.
If you have a meat thermometer, use it. And do let things rest. Grilled meat needs time to relax after cooking, to unfold and let the juices spread. Five minutes flat on a plate, every time, before serving.
And – please – relax and be happy yourself. this is summer. real, proper south-of-France summer, but in Scotland. how often does that happen? take photographs: enjoy it, have a rare feed, make some memories. You are making some succulent grub for family and friends – not entertaining a Moghul emperor.