Hi all,
It might not seem like a lot in this age of information overload, but I have reached double figures in my blogging ‘career’ – so a very small milestone of sorts! Why not then celebrate it with a blog about the best time of the week and one of my favourite things – The Saturday Night Barbeque.
The key ingredients are:
- Chimney fire starter & Home-made firelighters
- A Primo (or other) ceramic kettle Barbeque
- Quality steak ideally from a local butcher
- Some craft beers during cooking followed by a quality glass of red to go with the steak
- Last of all the most important ingredient, someone to share with – family or friends
Chimney Fire Starter – how come nobody told me about you?
I have owned a kettle Barbeque for 8 years, it being a 40th birthday present. I love the concept, the cooking style and the character, but struggled for years to light it and get it up to temperature in a decent length of time. This basically ruled out any weeknight barbeques which sucked a bit! I probably should have done my research at this point…
Enter the chimney fire starter! 45 minutes has become 20 minutes! This combined with some home-made firelighters has been a truly life-changing discovery for me. Now it’s only a one-beer process to light the BBQ.
I love my Primo Barbeque
Armed with the tools to get up and going quickly, there really is nothing better than a kettle BBQ for flavour and tenderness whatever is on the menu. Doubling as a wood-fired pizza oven, the options are virtually unlimited. Apart from the steak, tiny ‘tatoes and corn are a couple of favs of my family.
Quality steak from a butcher
An essential ingredient for a perfect steak is a quality piece of meat. The flavour might be the same but if you want that ‘melt in your mouth’ meal the quality makes all the difference in the world. I don’t have any bias here but sometimes the local butcher is the place to go, particularly at this time to support local business.
(For the vego’s out there I have also cooked veggie patties and schnitzels)
The lost art of cooking a steak
At some point in time people started to want their steaks to be cooked underdone, with anything more than a medium steak being untrendy to order. In my (far from) expert opinion this coincided with chefs losing the art of cooking a steak properly. Also overnight, eating rare meat was now okay and healthy. The latest opinions are that you if you order a steak medium-well or (the dreaded) well-done, then you are missing out on the taste and experience. But I call BS on that idea as my steaks always end up tender and tasty, no matter the level of doneness.
I generally never order steak when I go out to a restaurant – because I feel like I can cook it better at home!
A couple of beers
As made famous by the Tongmaster many moons ago (see following link) you just can’t cook a BBQ without a couple of ice cold beers. You need to crack the first one to light the BBQ and then you can progressively down a few at regular intervals from there. So, an essential preparation tip would be to have a few on ice from about lunchtime. I often get asked what type of beer do you like, but I like to try all different beers from stouts to lagers to craft beer and sours there is no shortage of options. As a Queenslander I am required to always have a few XXXX Gold in the fridge, so that’s a good standby, but hey anything is good.
https://www.beesnees.com.au/2009/08/the-tongmaster/
A choice red wine to accompany the meal
Online shopping has been hugely popular during the COVID lockdown, and surely wine was a star performer over those months. A Barossa Shiraz from any of the vineyards is great but just like beers, I am always wanting to try different things from the plethora of vineyards around. I recently saw a documentary on Sam Neill and his Two Paddocks vineyard in Central Otago – would be cool to try this next.
https://www.barossa.com/wine/our_wineries
Family or friends
Here we are with the final ingredient to a great Saturday night BBQ. We are lucky in Queensland to have very few COVID restrictions on social gatherings now. But there was a while there that you couldn’t have anyone around for a BBQ, which was pretty tough for a lot of folks. Still now, many countries around the world are still not allowing it.
But there really is nothing quite like it! Here’s looking forward to family, friends and the next Saturday night Barbeque.
(writers note: It also works on a Friday or Sunday as well).
