That's Not A BBQ!!

When I barbecue I'm somewhat of a purist, I think it should be over hot charcoal (locally sourced of course), so the meat takes on the taste of the smoke. So the thought of buying a gas BBQ has never entered my mind. 

But this was an offer too good to turn down. 

A friend's parents had a gas BBQ that they hadn't used in a few years so they've lent it to us for the summer. 

Like I said I've never used a gas one so I'm a little dubious, but I am looking forward to being able to quickly cook outside without having to plan to light the BBQ half an hour or so before I need it, I'm thinking it'll give me a quick an easy outdoor cooking area for this year and keep me out of the kitchen in the (hopefully) hot summer. It also has a gas hob which I think would be good for stir fries with veggies straight out of the garden. 

What's your opinion on gas BBQ's? 

Do you own one and use it very much? 

Patio Progress - Stone Down

Stone down, pipes hidden! 

This feels like a major milestone for the patio, it's looked a mess for a long time so it's nice to have moved forward with it. Dad's helped me every step of the way with this, he's my expert digger driver and he's always pushing me to get more done in a day, he'll think nothing of starting to concrete something at nine at night!

Here's what's gone on in the last week or so with the patio, most of it over last weekend ( I also had my brother help me one night to get the stone down, I'd be lost without my family on jobs like this!)

Before picture - it's looked like this since November last year! 

Pipe work and ducting to the boiler

Drainage pipe in to pick up from the extension

Levelling the ground before adding the top layer of stone

Grading off

Adding some concrete against the retaining wall for extra strenght

Concrete added to the edges 

Weed membrane down then stone added to the top 

As usual we had a little bit of digger trouble! Track tensioner broke, not a difficult fix luckily!  

Stone then scalpings added and wackered down  to give us a firm base to lay the slabs on

Another view of how far we've got with the patio

We can only get half of the patio in at the moment as the extension needs to go in before we can do the other half, but at least this way we can get somewhere to eat outside again, we've really missed out outside meal times! 

What do you think to our progress so far? What type of slabs or finish would you go for up on our patio?

Outdoor Cooking

I know that this is the wrong time of year to be talking about this, but with the garden wall nearing completion it's made me think about what I can use this area for. 

Ideally I'd love a nice outdoor cooking area which would include a brick BBQ and some worktop area to prepare and keep food. Whilst I have my brick layer coming on odd days I might get him to put a few brick piers up so I can make this and cut some large slat slabs for a worktop. 

I'm also toying with the idea of building a tandoor, which in essence is a rocket stove. I've got an old chimney pot I can use to be the cooking chimney, I'll just need to build a base with some fire bricks to allow a fire under it then the chimney up the middle with a slab around the top. I might even make a metal plate to fit on top of the chimney so it can be used as a hot plate as well. 

The third and final thing I'd like to build is a pizza oven, although I've no plans of doing that now as it's a big project. I've been looking at different designs and can see that you can roughly choose between a brick one or a clay one, although it seems the clay one needs a roof of some description as you need to keep it covered when it's not in use. 

Who has experience of building an outdoor cooking area and what would you recommend I take into account?

Has anyone else reading this built either a tandoor or a pizza oven, and how successful were they? Any good links I might have missed?

First BBQ of the year

Like many Brits today we had an impromptu BBQ to make the most of the sunshine we were due.

I decided yesterday when the guy I was working for said that they were having one due to the forecast - the seed had been sown! I phoned up some friends to see if they wanted to come over. They were all keen - but Justin asked the fatal question - "Do you want me to bring anything?"

"Er... A barbecue maybe." was my reply.

Ours had cooked it's last meal back in the summer. It had become so rusty and wobbly that the slightest movement on the grill meant it would lurch about like a drunk man making you fear for the safety of your meat!

 In the end he brought two barbecues with him and we set ourselves up a little "toddler proof" area to cook in.

The "mans" area behind the mesh! No toddlers aloud!

 The second, smaller, barbecue was his idea, it was to smoke a whole chicken. filled with white hot coals and then layered with massive amounts of  rosemary and bay leaves, the lid was placed back on and the chicken smoked away happily for two hours.

Smoked chicken - it was good!

When we got it out the meat was beautifully juicy and the skin tasted amazing, we'll be smoking food again that's for sure.

We slowly cooked and ate all afternoon and had a really nice lazy day with the children running around and having fun.

Having this barbecue has made me really determined to cook outside more this year and I want to build myself a really good cooking area and grill.

Has anyone got themselves a good cooking and eating area outside? The Americans seem to be kings of this and whenever I google it I'm always amazed at what they come up with.