Annabel Langbein

Get ready for barbecue season

As we step into the long weekend — our first since way back in June, when the days were short and cold — we know exactly what to do. Yes, Labour Weekend, it’s time to drag out the barbecue.

Throughout the country, the tantalising smoky waft of barbecue cooking drifts on the wind, the alchemy of wood, smoke and meat infusing our thoughts with ideas of holidays, freedom, lazy long evenings and relaxed outdoor gatherings. We’ve been dreaming about this moment. Summer is coming.

No other device symbolises summer’s freedoms quite like a barbecue. But, for all the speed and ease of a gas barbecue, it’s often difficult to get that highly desirable smoky flavour into the food.

Inject an authentic barbecue taste to gas-cooked barbecue food simply by placing a small metal dish with a couple of tablespoons of untreated wet woodchips or smoker sawdust on the grill over the heat before you start cooking the food. Once it starts to smoke, add the food, cover the barbecue and, after just a few minutes, the resulting smoke and aroma will permeate whatever you are cooking to add that wonderful “real barbecue” flavour.

If there’s one thing home barbecuers often manage to get wrong, it’s cooking their food at too high a temperature. Yes, the barbecue needs to be hot before you start cooking but not so hot that the meat chars on the outside before it’s cooked in the middle. If I’m cooking a butterfly chicken or a butterfly leg of lamb, I will often set it on a thick bed of rosemary (this acts as a heat buffer and also achieves the same effect in delivering a smoky aromatic barbecue flavour as woodchips and sawdust).

Fattier cuts of meat and things like chicken wings often cause flare-ups when their hot fat drips down on to the heat source, so for these it’s best to use a lower heat. Managing heat is the key to preventing flare-ups and charring.

If you are working over coals, stack the hot coals to one side or around the edge of the barbecue and cook the food in the indirect heat on the other side or the middle. On a gas barbecue with a cover, light the hobs on the outside and leave the middle element unlit.

Sear your meats over the hot direct heat and then move over away from direct heat and cover with the lid. In this way, you can treat the barbecue more like an oven and cook large tougher cuts of meat long and slow.