The bbq party
You can’t barbecue without a grill, and while you get all kinds of fancy gas ones, we’ll stick with a really smart charcoal one: the Napoleon
Rodeo Professional (£ 259.99, napoleongrills.co.uk). The hinged iron cooking grids make it easy to add more fuel, the temperature gauge helps you know when it’s time to cook, the ash catcher makes cleaning up much easier, and a diffuser makes sure that more of the heat is directed towards the food.
To get the heat going quickly in the first place, invest in Weber’s Chimney Starter Set (£ 22.99, webergrills.co.uk)‚ it gets your first set of briquettes hot much faster by enclosing them in a chimney, then you add them to the barbecue, and can add more on top, which benefit from the heat boost.
Now it’s time for cooking, so make sure your tools are handy. The Grillslinger (£39.99, prezzybox.com) is a holster belt for keeping your tongs, spatula and fork ready to draw at any time. Yes, it will make you That Guy, but That Guy cooks a damn fine t-bone. Also make sure you’ve got your iGrill 2 (£80.99, weberbbq.com) wireless thermometer ready to go. It takes a rapid reading from food and sends it to your phone, so you know whether things are cooking through properly (and can stop them getting overdone). For the vegetables, make sure you’ve got a Weber Style Vegetable Basket (from £ 17.99, weberbbq.com) for popping on the grill and getting that good smoky heat on the non-meat option.
Then it’s time to get fancy. A Himalayan Salt Cooking Block (£ 20, salthouseand peppermongers.com) is just the thing to elevate your kebabs over the neighbours. It’s a big slab of pink salt, which you place on your grill, so it heats through. Then stick meat on it like you would on a griddle. It lightly seasons while it cooks to add a unique tastes, and is just wipe- clean afterwards. Easy and different.
And as the barbecue goes on into the evening, and light fades (and the beer bottles get emptied), make sure you’ve got some MIPOW PlayBulb Garden lights (£32.72, playbulb.com) or the new PlayBulb Solar lights to help people avoid the pond or your rose bush with their gentle app- controlled multi- colour lighting.