BBQ

I can make an anti-recommendation. Don't buy an Outback. Ours is a PoS.

Go for charcoal not gas. Tastes much better.

Get a charcoal starter - speeds things up no end;

Dave, we had charcoal BBQs for years but decided about 8 years ago to change to gas, mainly for the convenience. I agree that the food takes better with charcoal but we just use it now to cook sausages, burgers and the occasional steak; these cook quite well on gas. Still have a small charcoal BBQ but never use it. Thanks all the same.

Go for charcoal not gas. Tastes much better.

Get a charcoal starter - speeds things up no end;

Checkout Aldi next thursday, they are selling a 2 burner for £49.99.

On 18 May 2014, The Medway Handyman grunted:

Yeah. Never really understood the point of gas barbecues... you may as well just cook the food in the kitchen and bring it outside to eat al fresco

but cooking at a Barbeque is "a real man's job".

On 18 May 2014, The Medway Handyman grunted:

Just had a look at that - keep meaning to get one. But - the one reviewer of the above Asda item says that his chimney melted

-??!?

I've never really understood the point of barbecues.

Colin Bignell

You get to cook whilst pissed and sitting in a deckchair.

There are no saucepans to wash as you just blast-furnace the grid before cooking next time :)

Strikes me as a sheple thing designed to annoy your neighbours with plumes of smoke and stench of burning dead animal.

Absolutely - there's nothing worse on a fine summers evening than the unpleasant stench of fire-lighters/charcoal burning/acrid smoke. I'll bet if you lit a garden bonfire on the same balmy evening the barbecuers would bitch like hell about it.

The idea is the fat and juices drip onto a plate of hot metal (aromizer bar) and the smoke infuses the food (meat) with a tang.

My gas barbie has a tray of lava rocks which the gas is supposed to heat up, which then cooks the food. It's an Outback of some description and it's a PoS. It never gets hot enough, the gas blows out in the merest zephyr, the cooking area is too small. I wish we'd never bought it. The charcoal one which preceded it was far superior.

You also get to eat food that is charred on the outside and half-cooked on the inside.

Saucepans just go into the dishwasher.

Colin Bignell

I don't need a BBQ to do that ;)

It says it's made of steel, so what was the bloke using to start his bbq, thermite?

Not if you know how to cook on a barbeque....

I've used mine twice so far, paint has melted off, but that's all.

If that is the case (and I am not convinced) I have yet to go to a barbecue where the person cooking knows how to cook on a barbecue.

Colin Bignell