BBQs are just perfect for a new era of living outside

Martin Hesp says barbecues have come a long way from burnt sausages on wire racks

People used to have business meetings or even working lunches, now there’s team barbecues. At least, that was the scene for me this week when I ventured out of my Exmoor valley for the first work appointment away from home in many months. And why not tweak a work commitment and make it fun, especially after the loneliness of lockdown? After all, the British barbecue season is well and truly with us now...

There really were genuine excuses for me and my colleagues to turn our meeting into a barbecue this week. For a start, one of RAW Food and Drink’s clients is the famous Kamado Joe BBQ brand and the company’s head of global marketing, Ben Forte, wanted to show us a totally new product in action. And is there a better way of showing off what a barbecue can do than by actually cooking on it?

And Ben is a top expert when it comes to cooking over a live flame – so I knew we were in for a delicious working lunch the moment I saw the menu, which included a whole fish, barbecued Thai style. This would be followed by La Galbi – thinly sliced short-rib, cooked Korean style. There would also be Cochinita Pibil, a Mexican pork dish. I can’t recall when I’ve looked forward to a business meeting more!

And then, if you’ve gone to all the trouble of creating fabulous dishes in order to show off your latest model – why not get one of the best food photographers in the UK to capture some memorable images? This all seemed to make perfect sense as I left the motorway at Exeter to reach my colleague Harry Wilde’s garden in Topsham. Harry is a key member of the RAW team, but she also happens to be the partner of photographer Nick Hook, who has an extremely impressive list of clients across the South West.

I’ve been wanting to meet Nick and talk about his rather unique career and talents for some time. So between the cooking and the shots, while Ben was busy with the new Masterbuilt barbecue (and what an appliance that is), I asked Nick how he had first become involved with photography.

“My dad used to have a darkroom in our garage and I remember being fascinated by the process of developing photographs when I was growing up,” he told me. “I studied photography as part of media studies, but it was years later that I started capturing food and drink for a living. I still pinch myself that it has become my career.” And why food? What in particular floats Nick’s boat when it comes to capturing images of the stuff we eat?

“As a child, I remember studying lobsters through the tank on holiday in Portugal – excited at the prospect of an unknown meal. Food occupies my every other thought,” admitted Nick. “I love cooking and I’m at my happiest when talking about food with people who also love to eat.”

And I bet there’s one question he’s asked a lot – does he get to sample the food he shoots?

“I’d be lying if I said I abstained,” he laughed. “Diving in to a dish afterwards is the greatest reward.”

I could see by the way he was working with Ben that Nick was capturing some great shots – but were there any types of food which were more difficult than others when it came to making a dish look good? “Curry is challenging,” he replied. “But, then, choosing the right props and deciding on the concept and the styling is all part of the fun.”

Of course, no other area of everyday life has changed as much as the food which fuels us, so I asked Nick if he’d witnessed this remarkable evolution in his work.

“Food is much more relaxed than it has ever been, often combining influences from different food cultures. We’re embracing smaller sharing plates, street food and finishing dishes with herbs and colourful garnishes,” Nick told me. “It will be interesting to see how Covid affects the dining scene and its presentation. Of course, Instagram has also influenced food presentation enormously.”

I put it to him that the social media platform must have been a game changer – and one that not everyone in the trade loves.

“Instagram is a great tool,” Nick shrugged. “It’s an incredibly creative resource and I love the supportive community that it creates. I’d even say our regular consumption of mouth-watering food images has contributed to us learning about each other’s cuisines, expanding our palates and improving our cooking game.

“Thanks to social media, we’re rolling up our sleeves to bake sourdough, banana loaves, and of course there’s the famous avocado

toast. Instagram proves we all just want to share our food and I say go for it.”

The WMN has spoken to Brixham’s Ben Forte before about the Kamado Joe range of barbecues, but in Nick’s garden he was cooking with the new Masterbuilt Gravity Series. “The brand is now in the UK but well established in the USA – and they are really trying to make barbecue easier,” explained Ben.

“The aim of the Gravity Series is to show people how simple barbecue is, and also give that authentic charcoal flavour – but with the convenience and hassle-free cooking that you get with gas. It is as easy as that. You load up the hopper on the side with charcoal, light it and then there is a little dial where you set the temperature and it does everything for you.

“So it can be used as an oven, as a grill – it’s even got a rotisserie attachment. Essentially, there’s a fan controlling how much oxygen you get into your fire – if you need it to be hotter, the fan simply blows more oxygen.”

Looking at the remarkable black cooker, I put it to Ben that barbecue had come an awful long way in Britain since the days when the word meant a few blackened sausages on a wire rack perched between two rocks. Indeed, you could say that outdoor cooking has evolved even more than people’s indoor kitchens.

“You are right. But people tend to be unsure about charcoal,” replied Ben. “When is it hot enough? How much charcoal do I need? Everyone knows they love the smell and the flavour that charcoal gives food, but there’s always that doubt, so people go with gas because they can just turn the control up. What we’ve done with the Masterbuilt is we’ve made a barbecue you can control to an exact heat. You can even check it on your phone – it has meat probes, so if you have a big piece of brisket you can have a probe at either end and it will tell you when it’s ready. The hopper can hold enough charcoal to cook all day long, so you can do those low and slow cuts – 110 degrees is the magic temperature for low and slow – so you set it to that and it will run all day, so you get that juicy tender brisket you crave.”

Imagine that. It takes Texan BBQ-masters a lifetime to learn how to cook the perfect piece of brisket over a live flame – now this appliance will do it for you.

“We want to show you can do anything over charcoal. I’ve just cooked you a nice breakfast bap and you’ve got everything in it, but with that nice edge of charcoal. There’s no flavour like it,” said the evangelistic Ben. “For example, my kids won’t eat broccoli if I steam it – but if I grill it, they love it. That smoked flavour works on everything and it is brilliant with veg.” He added: “With this Gravity Series 800 you can add smoke by putting in woodchips or a lump of wood – it is endlessly variable. Think of smoke like a seasoning; and you have different smokes – from the lighter fruitwoods down to something like hickory, which is a much stronger flavour.”

Looking at Nick snapping away at a large piece of Dart’s Farm pork, I began to wish all business meetings could be like this...