Hot over the coals

A barbecue, says Eve Jones, is as much a barometer to masculinity as it is a way to darken the dinner – though some novel approaches could give you the willies

Ahhh, the barbecue – classic vehicle for second-degree sunburn and salmonella poisoning, the defining qualities of a proper British summer. Oh now, don’t fret, I’m not going to sit here sarcastically rubbishing this beloved pillar of Britishness. It’s essentially a dinner party outside, where, not only is it completely acceptable to lie on the floor when you’re full or drunk without being told it might be time for bed but you can craftily eat at least three times the amount of food you could at a table without any interested parties realising what a total bloater you are. hooray, what’s not to like?

Far more interesting than all that, however, is blokes and their barbies. The style of a man’s barbecue is quite telling and its ignition a good testosterone barometer. The barbecue on my roof terrace is a bit disappointing size-wise: it’s a four-item-max, basic step-up from a disposable tray. however, it’s not fair to judge my housemate’s manhood on it because we did once have a better one but when he set fire to my geraniums I insisted we reduce the fire hazard.

On the note of disposable ones, they’re only acceptable on the hop – in a park or on the beach or as surplus when so many people have joined in that there’s overspill. Or for vegans, who, realistically, I think deserve them. Severe judgment befalls a man who invites guests to gather round his tinfoil tray (he’s probably the sort who also wears his socks and pants inside and out to halve the washing).

I always think enormous gas guzzlers are a bit of a cringe (pretty lazy and possibly verging on compensatory?) Not an awful lot of vigour goes into grappling with the on switch, the lack of manly coal-prodding and firelighter engineering required there is disappointing. Unless you’re in the throws of chaotic 2.4 children time or 50 years plus, in which case I think you’ve probably served your manhood stint via charcoal already so you get a reprieve. Yes, I do realise how desperately un-pc I’m being but that’s just the way of it when it comes to barbecues. Sorry. It’s standard at these things that men gather round the coals, advising, prodding and congratulating the chief prodder with beers in hand. Like this they demonstrate their fleeting culinary usefulness and masculinity by looking after the fire and meat, while women demonstrate their superior commonsense by remembering all the other bits you need actually to make a proper meal. I can safely say I know no girl who owns her own barbecue, nor wishes to. I know several who own a useful boyfriend though who they can direct to flip burgers while they happily mainline rosé and unwrap the cling film from a previously tossed salad with aplomb. I think many men thrive on it because they are officially “doing their bit” to claim that they cook. “Remember the great barbecue of 2016, though, Camilla? When I cooked 15 burgers, 23 chicken legs, a bloody shoal of mackerel and everyone loved it? Especially your mother. And no, they weren’t burned… they were authentic.”

Even the most relaxed of men seem to become aggressively resolute around a barbecue. If it rains, for example, instead of simply decamping to the pub for a session, invariably the host will stand doggedly on the decking sizzling his sausage under an umbrella in deck shoes, shorts and a rain mac, oblivious to the 16 guests crammed awkwardly into his first-floor flat kitchen carefully negotiating grilled asparagus spears and hoping they don’t get poked in the eye with a breadstick.

My un-pc barbecue attitude was, if not created, then cemented in Argentina. The Argies are superb at barbecues, or, rather, asados. With great seriousness they tend to great wooden stakes in dug-out pits fixed with whole goat and huge slabs of beef, then slathered in chimichurri or salsa criolla. All done with a look of devastatingly brooding concentration. The only problem is they will insist on making a show of offering you the sweetbreads and I’m afraid barbecued goat’s balls are simply not the aphrodisiac the gauchos claim them to be.

Barbecue of the moment, I’m told, is the Big Green Egg. My friend got one as a wedding present. It boasts “NASA inspired technology” and can cook at a constant temperature for hours. While I couldn’t say whether or not it reflects his manhood it well reflects his boozing abilities. The BGE sits proudly on the marital balcony in shiny, round, high-tech glory as though it’s about to hatch a shoulder of lamb.

I am not sure how it does what it does so well but if it’s rocket science you’re after, my Uncle Ian’s barbie speciality, beer-can chicken, ranks high. It involves taking one can of beer, sticking it up a chicken’s bottom and standing it upright in a barbecue with the lid on to steam and sizzle away. It is essential that the can is opened before insertion, as my cousin Alex can testify, or once heated you end up with a nuclear rocket that would give Kim Jong-un the willies.

I do apologise chaps if this has upped the barbecue pressure. If you’re at all in doubt about the size of yours, remember whether you’re slow burner or gas guzzler, when it boils down to it it’s not the size that really matters it’s the quality of your bangers that counts.

Even the most relaxed of men seem to become aggressively resolute around a barbecue