Whatever your cooking medium it’s time to get your grill going now

Liam Gallagher, lead singer with rock band Oasis was in the papers last week.

Not for what you might expect – rock stars can be prone to wrecking hotel rooms or smashing up their guitars.

In fact, he was complaining that it took seven hours to assemble a barbecue. How times have changed. But the good news is Liam will have his barbecue all ready to celebrate next week’s National Barbecue Week.

The lockdown has given lots of us the chance to grill outside more. Before social isolation it was hard to find the time to do some cooking in the great outdoors. I went back to cooking on coal a couple of years ago and while it gives your food a smoky edge there’s a lot of bother setting a fire, waiting for the “sweet spot” when the coals are perfect and then all the cleaning and disposing of charcoal afterwards. Gas barbecues are much less maintenance and the one that I unpacked this week , whilst initially intimidating was surprisingly straight forward thanks to a bit of help from YouTube. And I’m happy to report it took one hour and not seven to put together.

Whatever your cooking medium get your grill going now. If it’s raining use an umbrella because nothing beats the smell and taste of cooking outside. My first recipe is for spatchcock chicken. Spatchcocking a chicken isn’t hard, just flip it upside down and remove the back bone with a pair of kitchen scissors. Flatten it and you’re ready to go. The recipe calls for a mustard and smoked paprika marinade and if you can leave this in the fridge overnight it will be all the better for it.

English asparagus is readily available now. Make the most of the short season – it is infinitely better than any South American varieties that you get the rest of the year. I’ve added a pasta and asparagus salad to accompany the chicken or you could just grill some of the green spears on their own.

Pork chops really benefit from being cooked on the grill. The fat sizzles and you get a lovely sear from the cooked natural sugars in the meat. They also love a marinade and mine has garlic, fennel seeds, rosemary and a toot of vinegar.

Pork and apple sauce is a classic combination. I’ve taken the sauce to another taste level by cooking the apples slowly on the barbecue and then blending with butter and a little sugar.

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