Barbecues: do's & don'ts

Blimey. A heat wave.

I see that the NHS has issued a helpful leaflet about what to do in a heatwave.

Here are a few helpful highlights (and I quote):

KEEP OUT OF THE HEAT. Really? Why?

STAY COOL. I could write this. Gissa job


So in the same public spirited effort to be helpful, here are a few do's and don'ts if you somehow find yourself stupid enough to be tricked into inviting the neighbours round for a barbecue.

Incidentally, I have never understood the logic of having a barbecue in the summer.

It's hot. The sun is baking down. NHS advises you to keep cool, and keep out of the sun. So what do you do? You start a blisteringly hot charcoal brazier that has to be tended to outside, and once it has approached the temperature of the surface of the sun, you have to lean over it in order to produce billows of noxious fumes from charred meat falling into the coals.


Leave me! Save the bluefin tuna steaks before they overcook!!

Surely the time to have a barbecue is the middle of winter? It'll warm you up, and there's no chance of sunburn


I don't care what the room mate agreement says Sheldon, I think we should turn up the thermostat

OK, we'll assume you have lost your mind and intend to go ahead with the barbecue party.


 

Moroccan spiced lamb and chargrilled aubergine kebabs are ready!!


DO make sure you have a new bottle of that great squirty barbecue fluid handy, so you can squirt it into the glowing coals under the pretence of “just getting an even heat”, thus producing that satisfying WWHUMMMPHHHH noise and setting fire to the neighbour’s overhanging ornamental fig tree, the big poof.


Stand back Jocasta. Mummie's just going to get the briquettes started

DO make sure you deliberately drip steak juices onto the beige dog turd masquerading as a veggie sausage sulking in the corner of the barbecue that your daughter insisted you cook for her new goateed self righteous smug wet lettuce of a vegetarian boyfriend holding forth on the attractions of aduki beanburgers

DO make sure the bottle of Bicks Corn Relish that you use once a year for barbecues has the gunk from last year removed from the top. You don’t want to have to buy a new one you know. Remember for all bottled barbecue relishes, the use by dates are only accurate to +/- 20 years.

 DON’T forget to put out the set of five mini assorted granary mustards some mean lazy oaf gave you for last Christmas. Why didn't they just have the courage to not get you anything at all, which would have been immeasurably preferable, and would have saved you the torment of coming across the pack twenty five years later mouldering away at the back of the cupboard and like a fool you opened one and dipped the end of a bit of cheese in it, and it tasted of carpet tiles. In fact they all tasted of carpet tiles the day you were given them. You knew it was going to taste of carpet tiles. That was why you put them at the back of the cupboard. Why didn't you just throw them away when you got them?

Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes:

And finally and most importantly, DO remember to leave the middle of the chicken legs nice ‘n’ raw. Warm, but nice ‘n’ raw. That way when the invites go out next year for your annual street barbecue, with any luck everyone will politely decline, remembering their night of horror shouting into the Great White Telephone,



and you can have a lovely steak under the grill. Just you, the missus, and a nice bottle of Rioja.