All About Barbecues
from Italian Traditional Food

General advice on barbecues

Check out these great Italian ideas at Amazon for Italian food and kitchen ideas.

Discovering barbecues

The equipment available today means that outdoor cooking no longer demands the skill to make a hunter's fire (built in a hollow between two logs, end-open to the wind), or any other type of camp fire. A pity, since there is no substitute for experience when it comes to barbecue cooking, and people who have cooked on camp fires have learnt the hard way that you don't cook satisfactorily on briskly burning fuel - you have to let your fire burn down until all that is left is a bed of red-hot embers.

Equipment for outdoor cooking ranges from simple portable barbecues costing very little to elaborate barbecue trolleys. Portable camping equipment has been revolutionised by bottled gas and there is a wide choice between single burners, clamped to cylinders or disposable cartridges of gas, and fold-away two-burner stoves with various barbecue attachments.

Almost any sort of meat or fish can be grilled on barbecues outdoors, direct on the bars of the grill, on skewers or a griddle, in a frying pan, or in little parcels of foil. One dish that tastes delicious grilled on barbecues over charcoal is lamb loin chops. In general, meat and fish grilled over a fire need to be basted frequently or they will dry out. Since falling fat splutters on the fire in a barbecue and makes it flame, the baste is usually a sauce.

Barbecue meals do not need a lot of expensive equipment, although the paraphernalia is part of the fun. Tongs or gloves for handling the food, a long-handled spoon or paint brush for basting, a bulb syringe filled with water to damp down flames from dripping fat are a great help.

Home-made barbecue

A simple, inexpensive and effective barbecue can be built from about 18 bricks, preferably laid on bare earth, concrete or stone. Put the bricks together flat on the ground in two rows of five. Then build up two opposite ends, each with four bricks placed on their sides. This structure will support an ordinary oven shelf or metal bars which can then be used as a grill.

The fuel to use is charcoal, which can be bought or ordered from most ironmongers. Lay the fire in the usual way with newspaper, small dry sticks and then charcoal. Solid fuel tablets, packets of 20, are obtainable from most chemists, and are a great help in starting a fire. (Firelighters are inclined to leave a rather unpleasant lingering paraffin smell.)

If there is a great deal of draught, block up the third side of the barbecue with four more bricks until the charcoal is well and truly alight, then remove them. Keep the fire fairly flat over the surface of the bricks - a bed of embers, about 3 inches thick, is what most people find right for grilling - putting on more charcoal as necessary with a pair of tongs. Don't begin cooking until the charcoal glows, which will take about 30-40 minutes.

Barbecue equipment

When you come to buy barbecue equipment, the choice is improving each season. Most of the more elaborate equipment is imported, home-produced types being inexpensive and simple, consisting usually of a metal fire box on legs, with a grill, and provision for a hand-turned spit.

The grill should be capable of being fixed in at least two positions to give different heats, and there should be a windshield. However, it is worth paying for cast-iron fire boxes, and for easy assembly, if a portable barbecue is what you want. Rectangular barbecues give more useful space than round ones.

Some barbecues have battery-operated spits, and they are also made to operate off bottled gas, but, of course, this involves "griddle" cooking, not searing over glowing charcoal, which imparts its own subtle flavour to the food being cooked. However, solid griddles are useful for outdoor cooking and can be bought separately and used over the grill bars, when needed, on bottled gas and charcoal versions.

Read more Italian traditional food related articles here

Tweet

• herbs
• cook
• vegetables
• dessert
• italian traditional food
• recipes
• meat
• olive oil
• fish
• bread
• sauce
• italian
• traditional
• meal
• dish
• recipe
• pasta
• cheese
• food
• cooking

Copyright © 2009 - . All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Italian Traditional Food

You may not reprint articles from this website without the written permission of the site owner.

Disclaimer: Articles on this Website are provided for information purposes only. Italiantraditionalfood.com does not accept any responsibility or liability for the use or misuse of the article content on this site or reliance by any person on the site's contents.