bbq

Cooking On The Norfolk Broads

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How To make Dinner without Blowing The Bloody Boat Up.

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BBQ's

It has been said, by me I think, that Women are good cooks, but Men are great chefs. Of course in these politically correct times that statement is obviously bollocks.

But you must admit that bbq'ing is a mans job. It requires the consumption of vast amounts of alcohol, a great deal of belching, farting and the scratching of body parts. In fact it's almost tribal with the various chants of "Light, you bastard, Light" , and "Honey, I burnt myself again".

It can be a fantastic day, the sun is shining, Michael Fish has predicted a beautiful weekend, but as soon as you get the charcoal out it's going to start pissing down.

The BBQ is arguably the best invention to come from America, after the "Happy Hour". Of course BBQ'ing on a boat is not the easiest thing in the world, hot coals don't go well with fiberglass and wood. Once I spent a couple of weeks sailing off the coast of California and after being at sea for five days we dropped anchor in a small cove where a couple of other boats had dropped their hooks. By this time we were mainly eating tinned stuff, but on the boat next to us they had installed a small bbq that had been clamped to the stern rail - nifty idea. Anyway this chap bought out this steak the size of which I have only ever seen on the Flintstone's cartoon series. Well he slapped this steak on the bbq and there was a wonderful sizzle and the smell of the cooking meat wafted towards our boat. Then this slight swell came in to the cove, just enough to alter the center of gravity of the bbq, and ever so slowly it rotated on its mounting dumping the steak and the coals in to 30 feet of water!

To be fair the BBQ isn't really an American invention, it probably started about 5 minutes after man discovered fire. In fact the name barbeque probably derives from the spanish "barbacoa", which itself was derived from somewhere in the South Americas to describe a smoking hut. The aforementioned hut being used to smoke meats to make them more tender and easier to eat, sadly the meat in question was often human.

Now the odds are that human sacrifice is probably not what you had planned for your holiday (apart from the sod who's been snoring all the time!). In fact the "BBQ" as we know it now is really grilling, although you will get some flavour from the smoke generated by the coals.

But your experience should be better than that - you will find that some staithes have bbq's set up for you to use, but I recommend using the disposable "one use" bbq's, if nothing else is available. They're just coals in a foil tin with a grid on top. Because of the size they are not great for doing large pieces of meat but perfect for steaks, chops, chicken breasts etc. Also their effective "useful cooking time" is low - about 45 minutes. This seems a lot but when it comes to bbq'ing it's a rather short time. In fact there's a standing joke at our house when I'm doing a barbeque that dinner will ready between 6 and 9.

Another option, assuming you have some spare space on the boat is to pick up a small kettle style bbq (Roys of Wroxham have them for about £15), you will get better results with this setup, but storage of the bbq and the charcoal might be a problem (maybe in the fore peck where the mudweight is stowed ?)

All of the recipes that I have listed have been modified to be used on a disposable bbq, but I would suggest that you always have an extra disposable bbq available in case you need more cooking time.

Follow the directions that come with the bbq, don't forget to wait until the coals have gone gray before putting anything on otherwise you'll not only burn the food but also pick up a flavour from the paraffin that's in the coals to get them lit. Disposable is also a problem.

NEVER leave them unattended - kids love to play with them, and they stay hot a long time after you've finished using them. The coals keep hot for a long time, not really hot enough to cook with, but hot enough to start a fire or to burn someone. On one occasion my wife was asking me why I was having "yet another beer", and I had to explain to her that I needed to extinguish the bbq, and that that I need to pass the beer through my kidneys first, before passing it on to the BBQ. Now I thought that she was going to buy into this excuse, until she pointed out the fact that our boat was floating on a river containing many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and that my six pints really was no comparison.

Don't put the bbq straight on the bank - not only will this burn and kill the grass you will also get some heat loss as you'll be heating up the earth. Just make sure that whatever it's sitting on is stable.

If you are using a public bbq you can easily clean the grill by scraping off the old crud with a crumpled piece of tin foil. Then use some cooking oil spray to season the grill so your stuff won't stick.

The Meat

You can bbq just about any sort of meat, but I would recommend that the piece be no more than 3/4" thick. That is unless you like your steaks rare to medium rare, in which case you can use something thicker. Pork for instance needs to be cooked all of the way through. For chicken boneless is best.

If you have looked at bbq recipe books they will often say such things as "cook over medium coals", well this is always rather subjective - like all bbq cooking. As a rule of thumb place your palm over the grill - about 6 inches above, and count how many seconds it takes your your hand to get warm. Hot - 2 seconds, medium - 4 seconds, low - 5 seconds. Now if you're not sure what 6 inches looks like I could offer a number of suggestions, but none that can be used on this web site. Just ask your wife.

Marinades, Rubs and Bastes

One of the most ghastly things that you can put on BBQ'd food is bbq sauce. Why would you want to cover the flavour of what you've just cooked with sauce ! - it's ok to have on the side or to help something that has no flavour but that's about it.

There's a lot of crap talked about marinades. The thing you need to bear in mind is that meat will absorb a marinade only a very short way into the meat. After about 4 hours you "might" get 1/8" into the meat. So for a tough piece of meat you want to give it a good stabbing with a sharp fork before marinating, this helps open up the fibers and is also a great way of taking out your aggression from the person on the boat who snores so much.

A marinade needs two basic components, oil and vinegar. The oil helps give the effect of making the meat "appear" juicier, and helps the marinade stick to the meat and the vinegar helps to break down some of the meat fibers - but if you just chuck a piece of meat in neat vinegar it will in effect cook the meat, which is a way to cook fish, but lousy for good meat.

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