Barbecuing (or live-fire cooking, as it’s increasingly known in trendy food circles) has traditionally been a masculine-fuelled subgenre of cookery, with the stereotype of big bearded men standing over flames while huge pieces of meat sizzle away. But many of today’s most exciting dishes being cooked over coals come from female chefs and food writers – meet them and re-create their recipes at home this summer
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YOUR GUIDE TO CHOOSING CHARCOAL
• Charcoal is your number one ingredient in barbecue, so choose with care. Open a bag of fuel and give it a sniff. It shouldn’t smell of anything much – if it does it will contain chemicals that you may not want to be cooking with.
• Using pure charcoal, or carbon, means you don’t have to wait for it to turn white and ashy before cooking – you can light it and grill straightaway. It’s a more environmentally friendly choice and will save you money, too.
• The internet is often the best place to buy charcoal from sustainable makers. Look for the ‘Grown in Britain’ logo to guarantee the wood is of British origin. Try whittleandflame.com or charlieoven.com.
CONTROLLING TEMPERATURE
• Use the air vents and your barbecue’s lid to control the temperature. Remember, more air and the lid off gives you more heat and a quicker burn to your charcoal, while less air and/or the lid on will slow the burn and give you a gentler heat.
• Closing the lid and using indirect heat (with the food not directly over the coals) creates an oven effect, heating the top of whatever it is you’re cooking – but to achieve this, you do need to keep the lid closed and not open it every minute or so.
• Using a thermometer can help you get more confident when barbecuing meat in particular, as you’ll know exactly the ferocity of heat you’re working with.
HOW TO RELOAD
• If you’re barbecuing for a long time it can be difficult to add extra charcoal without disrupting the cooking process as the new coals take time to come up to full heat. An easy way to do it is to use a chimney starter. You can light the coals in the chimney, let them come to the right temperature, then just add them to the barbecue. A chimney starter is also the quickest way to light a barbecue in the first place. →
Leyli Homayoonfar’s spatchcock chicken ‘joojeh’ with dates, charred courgettes and labneh
Serves 4-6 Hands-on time 40 min, plus 12 hours marinating and resting Cook time 1 hour 5 min Specialist kit Muslin; charcoal barbecue;
