There's a new BBQ in town

The day after my monster (near thirty person) cook, my wife went to stay with a friend and took the children with her. Apart from it being really hot, I had a great day home alone. For lunch I had a go at nachos. I’ve never tried them on the BBQ before and was pretty happy with how they came out, I just need to experiment with some different cheeses. Then for dinner I had some left over burgers from the BBQ the pervious day so I cooked them with some corn on the Kamado Joe junior. I’ve really started to notice just how good the Kamado Joe junior is. I love how quick it is light and how little fuel is needed for a cook. I can cook most of our main meals on it, such as a whole chicken, no problem at all.

We’ve been getting some spice pots for a while from a company called simply cook - we find it keeps us cooking different things that we wouldn’t think of ourselves, and it helps us make up our minds on what to have for dinner without too much effort. We had a new box delivered so I adapted some of the recipes for the BBQ. First was a tandoori paneer which I substituted for halloumi. I cut into blocks and put it on skewers with peppers and red onion, then covered them with the spice mix and some yoghurt. The second simply cook recipe was Louisiana linguine, well Louisiana spaghetti and that’s all we had! I started by grilling the chicken then placing the dutch oven in the Egg. Once hot, I added the sliced onion, peppers and cherry tomatoes, then once the veg was soft I added the chicken and the pre cooked pasta and mixed it all together. Another easy meal for a weeknight.

I had been looking into getting some extras for my Big Green Egg as I want to start expanding the ways in which I cook. The problem I’ve found is the cost involved with Big Green Egg, I know they have been around for a long time and are up there with the best Kamado style BBQ manufactures, but I couldn’t justify the costs. As I said in my first blog, I got my Egg for a good price, but knowing what I know now I wouldn’t buy one at full price. I had been looking at a company called Grden Grills for a while and I noticed they did a full set up with their Kamado+ package. It includes everything I had planned to get to go with my Egg and much, much more! Including a rotisserie (which Big Green Egg do not currently make). So I pre ordered the Kamado+ and waited as patiently as I could. This wasn’t helped by the ship getting stuck on the Suez Canal which delayed delivery by over 6 weeks. So was delighted to hear the news that they had landed in the UK and were being prepared for delivery. The only downside to this was that the delivery day was the day we went on holiday so I have to wait even longer to try it out. Upon delivery I was so impressed with the quality of all of the products that arrived and I’m really excited to try them all out. There were boxes everywhere! Hopefully the weather holds so I can get some cooks in over the next week.

And in other news, my sticker packs have arrived. I’m so happy with how they came out. BBQ sticker swaps was another part of the BBQ community that I wanted to be a part of. There’s a huge following on instagram already so I’m pretty excited to get involved. If you’d like to be part of it head over to my instagram page and send me a message.

I’ve also started to plan my locally sourced meal. As I’ve previously said, my idea is to cook an entire meal from items and ingredients bought from my home town of Saffron Walden. So far I’ve gone for a prawn and monkfish starter, a pork and cider main and (baked by my wife) a vanilla porter chocolate cake. I have also got some beers to go with each course which I was more than happy to sample. I need to iron out some details but its all coming together.

Stuart - Bbqfestu