The perfect barbeque – Secrets to releasing the best flavours for the most incredibly succulent meat.

When warm sunny evenings arrive, often the first thing we think of with excitement is dusting off the barbeque. There is nothing quite like a fantastic barbeque, one of the highlights of summer. Perhaps it is the caveman instinct, or it’s the fact that food just tastes better outdoors, that nothing beats the taste of perfectly caramelised meat, and of course it is the perfect way to spend time with friends whilst cooking.

At the Dorset Meat Company we firmly believe that the finest possible quality meat we rear, butcher and sell just has to be cooked properly. It is only fitting that meat prepared with such care should also be cooked in the same way. We have all experienced overcooked burgers in the past, either with supermarket meat, or burned on the barbeque.

So what are the secrets for truly successful barbequing? It is of course not difficult, being one of the most primitive forms of cooking, but to do the meat justice, there are a few simple steps you should take.

There are different types of barbeque, direct cooking, where the meat is exposed to the flame directly on grill, cooked hot and fast, and indirect cooking, where the heat is enclosed with a lid. We are going to focus on the most traditional and simple method of direct cooking, simply because it is the most easily accessible method.

The right barbeque

In simple terms, you need a grill, somewhere to contain a fire, with enough airflow to keep the embers glowing hot. This could be a purpose made top-of-the-range barbeque, a chimenea, a bucket BBQ, or even a few bricks and a grill. The principles and results are the same if you follow a few simple rules.

One thing you should try to avoid though is the instant or ’disposable’ barbeques. As well as being very bad for the environment, they never reach the right temperatures for long enough, and contain chemicals to light the fuel, which will taint the food.

The right fuel

Try to think of the fuel as another ingredient in whatever recipe you are cooking. When you think about the simplicity of a steak or burger, a lot of the flavour comes form the smoky wood of the charcoal itself. The best thing you can do is keep things as natural as possible – avoid ‘instant’ charcoal, as this contains chemicals and fuels to help it light and burn longer, which will add a certain unwanted flavour to the food. Buy the best charcoal you can, and this will reward you with a much more consistent, longer and hotter burn, which will actually mean using less charcoal. Small companies such as The Dorset Charcoal Company (https://www.dorsetcharcoal.co.uk) make traditional high quality sustainable charcoal, which is the best type of fuel you can use. Likewise, choose natural firelighters, such as those by Lekto Woodfuels, to get things going effortlessly.

You can of course cook over wood, with different woods adding different flavours to the meat, the main reason we don’t tend to though is because wood creates smoke, which is less desirable in the garden environment. Out in the wild however, it is a different story, and wood is often plentiful.

Build your fire with the firelighters spread out below the charcoal, with enough airspace all around for the fire to breathe as it gets going, and to generate heat evenly.

Lighting the barbeque, and knowing when to cook

Once assembled, you are ready to light. It may be tempting to move the coals to spread the heat more, but in fact they are best left in place, as fire is a delicate chemical reaction between fuel, air and heat. Watch for the coals turning red, then white. When the flames have died down, and the coals are glowing red and turning ashy white, you are ready to go.

Temperature

To manage the temperature for different pieces of meat, you can either raise or lower the grill, or have lit the fire to one side, to give an area which will have more indirect heat for slower cooking. As you add the meat, you should hear it sizzle and start to caremalise. If there are flames, it may be that the coals are still to hot, so wait a few minutes longer.

Keep things moving!

One of the key principles of cooking on the barbeque is to keep things moving. Not only does the allow you to check nothing is burning, it also regulates the heat transfer for more even cooking. The bars of the grill are a barrier to the direct cooking heat, so keep moving the meat around, and turning regularly.

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