I don't understand the appeal of the BBQ

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There, I've said it.

I understand that it's an excuse for day drinking and being outdoors with friends on a nice day. I get that bit. But why does the food have to be cooked over a fire? Someone has to stand over a fire on the hottest day of the year.

It's not even easy. Cleaning the grill is worse than any washing up, you can't have all the food ready at once and there's all the "bits" that have to go with it.

I'm sure BBQs weren't a thing when I was young in the 1970s, but maybe that was just my family. We'd have similar gatherings, but they'd be a picnic or picnic type food in the garden.

I still think that's much nicer and for any summer entertaining at our house, it will be an afternoon tea type spread in the garden. Just me? Do my friends (who always make appreciative noises) think I'm weird not to fire up the barbie for outdoor entertaining?

Halloumi marinaded is lovely as a veggie burger.

I do this for nibbles with drinks and we can't keep up demand as they are so morish.

Large packet of Tortias.
I drizzle liberally with olive oil and then sprinkle with a middle eastern spice mix called Zatar.

Plonk them on the BBQ for a minute and they crisp up.
I cut them into wedges and pass them around.
They are hoovered up.

I thinly slice zucchini and aubergine and lick the slices with olive oil.
They taste delicious with a on a burger or with anything.

I personally don't have one, but the appeal growing up was it was the only way to get my dad cooking.

I am not a fan either. Was invited to a posh one a few weeks ago, and fully expected to have my opinion changed. Nope, it was the same old undercooked chicken and overcooked burgers.

I don't get the fad for fire pits either. All that "Oooh it's hot, let's start a fire!" Just why?

Love em, it's how we ate 90% of the time when backpacking. I'd eat outside every single day if I wasn't permanently cold in this country.
No need for paper plates or plastic cutlery or trying to wash up the grill.

Like fantastaballs we spend time doing a bbq. A metal starter thing makes it so much easier to light the charcoal, we low temperature smoke different things, brisket, pork, sausages, chicken etc. Its absolutely delicious, but it does the time and effort.

Its so worth it imo!!!!

@veeeeh

BBQs are popular because it is mostly men in charge of the cooking performance.

No. BBQs are not a gendered thing. Many, many women and girls enjoy both cooking on the bbq, and having. Bbq.

YANBU. I completely agree and thankfully so does DH. A picnic is far nicer than sweating over a bbq and then being told that we are about to break out into a "meat sweat" from eating the ridiculous amount of burgers, etc being grilled..actually, no we're not going to get any such thing as we always just have one burger or one hotdog and that's all!
So imo, bbqs can go into room 101.

For veggies, Artichoke is delicious olive oil salt &.pepper & sprinkle with toasted pistachios. Eggplant holds up really well & can take a lot of spices. Stuffed mushrooms, stuffed peppers. My favorite is ceaser salad made with chard romaine, garlic croutons & big caper berries. Oh or just a big wedge of chared lettuce with blue cheese dressing.

I don’t like bbq’s. Tbh I don’t like eating outside at all. There are insects and I get cold and it’s awkward.

I don’t mind a bag of chips on a bench at the seaside or cheesy chips on the way home from a night out but that’s it.

YANBU….

I don't get the fad for fire pits either. All that "Oooh it's hot, let's start a fire!" Just why?

We also have a fire pit 😂

I’m not the biggest fan as generally I’m thinking about the clean up, but I have to say our friends all love it. We light it when it gets to dusk and it starts to get chilly. It gives out an astonishing amount of heat, and we can literally sit out there till the wee small hours chatting and not even need a jacket, some music on, some drinks, it is nice, ther is something quite mesmerising and relaxing about it.

I’ve never seen someone light one in th daylight or when it’s hot though, generally they are used in the late evening when it starts to get chilly Ie after ten pm.

And as said, we aren’t close to neighbours. But they do smell and I can smell it on my clothes and hair the next day, which is fine as generally I wash and change daily 😃

Many of you should get yourself some South African friends. Here a BBQ (braai) is not just a meal, it's an event.

And I doubt you will find a burger in sight.

Agree. Too much bloody faffing about. Not a fan here

We rarely cook indoors once Easter arrives, unless it's really cold and wet. Even then we sometimes cook outside and eat inside .

We have gone a bit OTT with our outside 'kitchen' and have both a gas and charcoal BBQ, a pizza oven and a gas paella burner! I'm not sure why as most of the time it's only the two of us...

Thankfully for me DP and our DS are bloody obsessed with BBQ's. Therefore they dont let me pitch in and I just get to enjoy it rather than help

There are bbqs and bbqs! There is so much you can do when it comes to cooking in/with flames, charcoal, smoke and ash and there are certain foods and recipes which really benefit from one or all of these elements. My dad was half-Cypriot and I really think that outdoor cooking was hardwired into his DNA. Growing up, we probably cooked and ate outdoors every dry day from April - September and he made the most amazing food on the bbq. He had three different bbqs with different sizes and accessories - one was for rotisserie cooking, one for grilling and one for long, slow, covered cooking. We had lots of different salads and dips alongside. We cooked this way as a family but also frequently invited others to join us at weekends. I think we were definitely an oddity for cooking and eating this way in the 80s and I remember the disappointment of being invited to another family's bbq for the first time - burgers and sausages only; I was looking for the sea bream . I also remember though, my mum's friend spitting out her first taste of feta cheese, others looking horrified at the taramasalata and lot of folk unable to get their heads around the idea of barbecued corn cobs.

I've tried to follow my dad's lead and we do bbq fairly frequently but there are some recipes I wish I had paid more attention to when he was still around. He did the most amazing dish of a whole squid which I think was put into some kind of covered pot/vessel with red wine and buried amongst the coals. It would sit there for about 3 hours and ended up being the most tender and flavourful thing you could imagine. I'm neither brave nor patient enough to experiment with re-creating that so it remains in my memories. In a similar vein, he used to bury foil wrapped potatoes in the ash after cooking the main meal and it would be an additional treat for us an hour or so later - the ash-cooked potatoes had the most incredible flavour and were so good topped with lashings of butter.

It is such alot of work. Before DS and occasionally when he was small we would have a bbq tea mainly fish and that was delicious but just bbq in the yard and inside to eat. Not all the production that goes with a party or loud music and cheap burgers and sausages.

I find them a bit of a pain tbh. This is mainly because people never seem to provide enough seating, and trying to juggle a loaded plate (especially if cutlery is needed) and keep track of your drink, all while standing up, can turn into a logistical nightmare. Or is it just the barbecues I've been to?

I didn’t think much of them till we bought a chiminea that can be BBQ on plus DH bought this amazing smokeless charcoal stuff. I also hate smoke from BBQ.

We have a patio area with a dining table and the rattan furniture that seems to be hated on MN. I don’t use paper plates.
My favourite dish is salmon cooked in foil with baby sweetcorn and leeks with a little soy sauce. Or belly pork on skewers with peppers, onions and mushrooms.

So glad I’ve found this thread. I think BBQs are totally overrated. I love having lots of green veg with my meals, and the typical BBQ accompaniment of salad just doesn’t fill me up, plus I hate spiky leaves.

My husband typically cooks the BBQ, whilst I’m stuck inside preparing the side dishes, desperately trying to tie in with each other’s timings 😂

We bbq often (several times a week) and in the Autumn early winter. Love a bbq, so much simpler than cooking indoors. As for cleaning it, we burn it off and clean with a brush and it takes little time or effort. Eat with salads or local grown veg, if guests are coming they bring a side or we make a bit more food but it’s not a faff. DH built our bbq near to the pizza oven and incorporated a small portable gas job into for the veg. We both use it too.

Nope, I've never liked BBQ. I can't stand chargrilled food full stop. Even the griddles that you use on hobs to chargrill burgers etc. All I taste is smoke. I can't buy chicken curry ready meals because of the chargrilled fad - the whole meal tastes smoky. Not much I can do about it - I suppose it's like people who don't like any particular flavour of food. If it's in there, I can taste it and it's horrible.

I just use my oven when we have a meal in the garden. I've cooked for 30 plus people before. Cold salmon, a couple of vegetarian options, roasting tins of chicken. Put the timer on, grab a glass and wait for the ping. Bung some good quality hot dogs on the hob to simmer for five minutes whilst dishing the chicken up. Lots of salads and fresh breads/rolls. Then a 'do it yourself' pavlova for dessert. Berries in one large bowl, meringues piled up, pots of ice cream, jugs of cream and some sauces in a bottle like strawberry or chocolate. Have meringue/don't have meringue. Have berries or leave them out. That way everyone's happy, even the kids with a big bowl of ice cream and some sauces. And, as my sister and her family are coeliac, no fear of cross contamination as the bread is kept well away from all the other food stuff and the hot dogs are cooked on the hob.

Easy and no standing over a grill for ages.

Oh I've found my type of people.

I HATE BBQs, I've been to many over the years, there was one that was nice but they cooked everything in the oven and just gave it a quick blast on the bbq and their salads were like something out of a top deli. Probably why I liked it as it was every type of food and much more tender as cooked in oven.

I've a sil and bil who would bbq every day if they could 🙄 their bbqs are just awful, I mean there's nothing tasty. They just do burgers which do be black and hard and dry and raw in the middle and sometimes sausages, they buy tubs of that hard tasteless coleslaw and the buns are always rock hard and dry. I'm not a big eater of burgers so usually eat before visiting their big bbq parties. They just can't understand me.

I hate trying to put food in my mouth that is dry and breaking, trying to stand there or perch on the edge of someone's chair. The last bbq I went at sil she said she got me hot dogs, I like hot dogs but when they cooked mine I had gone to the bathroom and when I came out they had loaded them with ketchup, mustard and coleslaw, the sausage was cold in the middle 🤢

We've gone to alot of other bbqs, it does seem to be just burgers, bits of fatty chicken on a skewer with big chunks of pepper 🤢

@LoveandHalloumi

There are bbqs and bbqs! There is so much you can do when it comes to cooking in/with flames, charcoal, smoke and ash and there are certain foods and recipes which really benefit from one or all of these elements. My dad was half-Cypriot and I really think that outdoor cooking was hardwired into his DNA. Growing up, we probably cooked and ate outdoors every dry day from April - September and he made the most amazing food on the bbq. He had three different bbqs with different sizes and accessories - one was for rotisserie cooking, one for grilling and one for long, slow, covered cooking. We had lots of different salads and dips alongside. We cooked this way as a family but also frequently invited others to join us at weekends. I think we were definitely an oddity for cooking and eating this way in the 80s and I remember the disappointment of being invited to another family's bbq for the first time - burgers and sausages only; I was looking for the sea bream . I also remember though, my mum's friend spitting out her first taste of feta cheese, others looking horrified at the taramasalata and lot of folk unable to get their heads around the idea of barbecued corn cobs.

I've tried to follow my dad's lead and we do bbq fairly frequently but there are some recipes I wish I had paid more attention to when he was still around. He did the most amazing dish of a whole squid which I think was put into some kind of covered pot/vessel with red wine and buried amongst the coals. It would sit there for about 3 hours and ended up being the most tender and flavourful thing you could imagine. I'm neither brave nor patient enough to experiment with re-creating that so it remains in my memories. In a similar vein, he used to bury foil wrapped potatoes in the ash after cooking the main meal and it would be an additional treat for us an hour or so later - the ash-cooked potatoes had the most incredible flavour and were so good topped with lashings of butter.

That sounds wonderful 😍

I like BBQs, better than being stuck in the kitchen. I only buy decent meats anyway and they are better if there's avrange of other foods and salads to go with them.