Spec me a BBQ

Costco have got a cracking stainless steel barbie in at the moment for about £930. Its full stainless steel, 8 burners with lava rock and whilst I didn't measure it it must have been between 6 and 7 feet long. Pretty sure it had a rotisserie and burners as well. Well worth the £25 membership fee if you're going to buy one - looked like it would last a lifetime.

Charcoal does impart a slightly better flavour, but it works out very expensive when you've got a large barbeque so I've gone over to gas.
 
Gas BBQ's make me laugh. I went to a friend who rolled out this monolith of a gas burner. The thing is it was all over in 30 minutes. The BBQ was lite and the food cooked and the BBQ cleared away.. Tasted like it had come out of a George Foreman.

I believe half the fun with having a BBQ is lighting it, the smells, flavours and time taken to socialise.
 
Another vote for Costco here; they have a few gas burner types ranging from around £400 to £1200 or so ....
Don't forget that you will need somewhere to store it too so that the local theives don't borrow it. ;)
 
Well I went to Homebase and B&Q last night and wasn't overwhelmed by any of them. Came home with a firepit though (20% off at B&Q :cool: ).

That Weber looks promising Spie, thanks for that. All the charcoal ones I looked at last night were somewhat small or flimsy.

So far i'm leaning towards gas (purely for ease of use since we both work full time and have a six year old to look after too) but what I think I might do is get out the old gas one and a disposable charcoal (hardly a decent charcoal BBQ I know :p )and see which I prefer cooking the same things on the same day.
 
Yeah they had one and B&Q had two (different sizes). The problem I had with them was they're quite low and I wondered how long I could use them before my lower back started to ache (I dislocated my pelvis from my spine when I hit a tree on my mountain bike a few years ago so too much bending isn't so good for me).

The thing that also put me off the Webers was there was no shelves on the side (although that's obviously not an issue on the one Spie uses).
 
chimponarope said:
Yeah they had one and B&Q had two (different sizes). The problem I had with them was they're quite low and I wondered how long I could use them before my lower back started to ache (I dislocated my pelvis from my spine when I hit a tree on my mountain bike a few years ago so too much bending isn't so good for me).

The thing that also put me off the Webers was there was no shelves on the side (although that's obviously not an issue on the one Spie uses).
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Have a look at somewhere like worldofweber - lots of accessories for them including extra racks in the BBQ and shelves for the outside of the BBQ.
Some very nice BBQ tools as well prices for the set range from £23 to £35 depending on which site you look at.
 
dannyjo22 said:
Yes lava rock, does exactly the same thing as charcoal. Turns the food moisture to smoke as it hits it. Both impart zero flavour on their own.
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I disagree (too), having a gas BBQ is convenient but it's not as good as charcoal. I regard gas BBQs as outside cookers not BBQs tbh.
 
I used to have a gas bbq but like most I found the food to have nowhere near the taste of a normal charcoal BBQ, so that has now gone to the missus' parents and I've got a £14.99 charcoal BBQ with a lid that cooks to perfection. :) I plan on building a brick one soon after seeing some of the ones posted here.

The reason BBQ makers say that gas tastes the same is that they make far more profit selling gas bbqs than if someone does what I did and buys a perfectly usable cheap BBQ. The reason people with gas barbeques say they taste the same is because they don't like the thought that they have wasted their money on an expensive outdoor George Forman. :D

With regards to cleaning I also prefer charcoal. Just shovel/sweep out the charcoal and you're done. I find a lot of gas barbeques hold a lot of fat and it smells disgusting when you first turn them on and god knows how old fat starts melting and burning.
 
Sorry to go against the tide of opinion here, but I'm another of the 'gas is better' brigade. I use a Beefeater 3-burner gas BBQ ( like this )

I'm sorry - but those who are comparing a gas BBQ to an 'expensive outdoor George Forman' are just talking rubbish. Apart from anything else, the method of cooking is completely different - a George Forman cooks using conducted heat from the hot-plates, wheras a gas BBQ cooks using radiant heat from the burners/lava rock/vapourising plates (just like charcoal, funnily enough).

Other reasons for my preference:

- Convenience. If it's a nice weekday evening in the summer, then we can just fire up the gas BBQ and be cooking in 5 mins without the kids moaning that they're hungry whilst we wait 30-45 mins for the charcoal to be 'ready'. Once you've finished cooking the BBQ can be cooled, cleaned and covered up in 20 mins - unlike a charcoal one.

- Clean. Any fat remaining on the lava rock or vapourising plates or can be burned off by turning the heat up full for 5 mins after finishing cooking. Once cooled it just wipes down with a damp cloth. No messy ash to deal with.

- Cost. The cost of one or two gas bottle refills over the course of the summer is massively less than the cost of charcoal for the same number of BBQ's.

- Taste. Yes, taste. Food which resembles the charcoal which it's cooked over really doesn't do anything for me (which is often what we get when we go to friends BBQ's where they are using charcoal). Gas is more controllable, and enables you to easily cook the food through properly without cremating the outside. Or if you really like it that way, you can cremate it in a controlled fashion... :p
 
If your food resembles the charcoal it is cooked on then maybe you are right, you should maybe stick to the ease of use of a gas barbeque along with your tv dinners, microwave meals. :)

Make your own pasta? Why bother when you can have a pot noodle in 3 minutes!
 
Sorry for the thread revival.

I'm going to build the mother in-law a BBQ this weekend, and I wanted to know if someone has an "idiots guide" or a step-by-step guide, how to build a brick BBQ, like the one below

art_60223_bkbq1.jpg


EDIT: WHOOPS, sorry, found it :p
http://www.extremehowto.com/xh/article.asp?article_id=60223
 
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