Chef’s choice: my favourite barbecue
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Gordon Ramsay, Gordon Ramsay Restaurants
The Big Green Egg is an oven, BBQ and smoker all in one. The indirect heat means it’s easy to cook low and slow – I made amazing pulled pork just the other week – and with a wide temperature range, it’s perfect for high searing a stunning ribeye steak too. It’s also a great fire pit.
Large Big Green Egg, £1,045
Marcus Samuelsson, Red Rooster
A small, simple and portable charcoal grill is all you need to jumpstart a summer barbecue. I love nothing more than pork ribs or a whole chicken, but I’ve also been cooking up cauliflower, which gets a nice smoky flavour. Cuisinart makes a super-affordable barbecue.
Cuisinart 14in Portable Charcoal Grill, $29, qvc.com
Nuno Mendes, Chiltern Firehouse
At home I use a drum-barrel grill built for me by a friend. It’s literally a barrel cut in half with two tiers on it. On the bottom tier you can cook on the grill bars directly against the red embers and there’s a shelf where you can work with smoking or slow grilling.
Drum Smoker, £650, drumbecue.co.uk
Clare Smyth, Core
The OFYR is fun to cook on and looks great. I love to cook whole fish such as turbot over the flames; the wood adds a lovely flavour. It is extremely versatile for cooking smaller items and searing on the plate around the outside. It is a real party piece.
OFYR Classic Storage 100, £1,795
Michael Caines, Lympstone Manor
The Kamado Joe is brilliant for slow cooking, smoking and working with coal and wood chippings, which really add extra flavour. Recently I wrapped a fantastic piece of turbot in foil. The meaty texture combined with the chargrilled smoky flavour worked brilliantly.
Kamado Joe Classic III, £1,899
Sam and Sam Clark, Moro
While researching for Moro, we travelled a lot around Turkey. We fell in love with the “ocakbasi” style of grilling and barbecuing – think the wonderful Mangal restaurants in Stoke Newington. Our ideal barbecue is a small, simple one in galvanised steel.
Thüros B2 Shashlik Tabletop barbecue, €189
Atul Kochhar, Kanishka
I’m a big fan of barbecues – I have four. My most recent is a Japanese konro. Its walls are made from blocks of fossilised plankton, so the heat retention is really amazing, and it is so small you can put it on the tabletop to cook. It’s perfect for grilling little skewers.
Small Konro Grill, £419, sousvidetools.com
Angela Hartnett, Murano
I use a clay barbecue imported from Myanmar years ago. It has one level only for the grill and it’s big enough to do a whole piece of fish. We also use it as a fire pit. You can’t buy it any more, but there are similarly simple barbecue/fire-pit alternatives.
Solex Fire Pit, from £370, firepitsuk.co.uk
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