How to make the most of your barbecue

Once you’ve set things up accordingly, all that’s left is to get cooking! We have a huge collection of barbecue recipes for you to get stuck into, and they all use barbecues in a variety of different ways. Whether you want to try your hand at a bit of smoking, start slow-roasting big joints of meat for a Sunday roast or turn your barbecue into a pizza oven, we’ve got something for everyone below, along with some handy hints on how to get the best out of your barbecue.

This is what most of us use barbecues for, and with good reason – it's one of its biggest advantages over a hob. Cooking a steak in a pan is all well and good but there’s no replacement for the lick of flame and the extreme heat of a barbecue. Good ceramic barbecues will get above 400ºC, and that takes the Maillard reaction – (the caramelisation of sugars on the surface of the meat which creates bags of flavour) to incredible new levels that you just can’t recreate in any other setting.

Naturally the first thing we think of searing on a barbecue is red meat, but you can apply this principle to all sorts of other things. Searing white meat and fish on the barbecue works equally well (though fish is delicate and requires a bit more care and a lower heat). Vegetables also respond well to this method; our green romesco sauce with barbecued nectarines and asparagus is a perfect example of this. Fruit is fantastic when seared over coals – all you’re doing is caramelising the natural sugars in the fruit, adding extra depth with notes of sweetness and bitterness. Some simply seared fruit with ice cream and nuts makes a great easy summer dessert.

One of the great advantages of a ceramic barbecue with a lid is that it allows you to hot-smoke your food. Once your barbecue is up and running and your coals are white, you can add wood to the embers – these will catch fire and create plumes of smoke, which rise and imbue your food with an amazing smoky flavour.

Different types of wood give you different flavours, too. Fruit woods like apple and cherry tend to be more delicate, whilst the likes of hardwood and hickory are more robust – perfect for smoking red meat. If you have good access to wood, go for freshly cut chunks – wood dries out after it has been chopped, and the higher moisture content in freshly chopped wood will help to keep your food moist.

The key to good smoking is low temperature – if you smoke above 120ºC, the smoke will be acrid rather than aromatic, and you’ll end up with an unpleasant bitter flavour in your food. Smoking is all about low and slow cooking – the barbecue essentially becomes a smoke oven – so set aside a day to enjoy the process. Try this classic Texas-style smoked brisket for starters, or if you want something a little quicker, this artichoke with smoked garlic mayonnaise is a simple crowdpleaser.

Because we associate barbecue with searing and grilling at high heat, we often worry about the idea of roasting food in a barbecue, thinking that it’ll overcook, burn and dry out. Fundamentally, barbecue is all about temperature control – good ceramic barbecues allow you to maintain a consistent temperature over a long period of time. By creating an indirect cooking zone, using a thermometer (ideally built-in) and closing the lid, you're effectively creating an oven – just one that uses charcoal rather than gas or electricity.

Indirect cooking on a barbecue opens so many doors to cooking a vast array of dishes. We like to leave a tray on top of the heat deflectors to catch any drips from whatever we’re roasting – you can also leave some water in the tray to make the barbecue into more of a steam oven.

A rotisserie attachment can turn your barbecue into something seriously swish – this take joints of meat and poultry to the next level, partly by ensuring a consistent caramelisation across the whole surface of the joint, but also by keeping the meat moist. As the meat rotates, the internal fat renders and melts through the meat, rather than simply dripping into the bottom of the roasting tray. Our rotisserie chicken with apricot, pine nut and freekeh stuffing is one of the most delicious roasts we’ve ever eaten, largely because of the transformative powers of the extra smoke and the consistency of the rotisserie.

You can also roast things directly in the coals if you like – it gives you more space to work with on the cooking grates above and lends extra smokiness to your food. It’s one of the best ways to cook aubergines, for example, but it also brings an amazing flavour to the smoked apple purée in this barbecued pork shoulder steaks recipe.