Barbecue Cooking Is Becoming Popular

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28776, 23 December 1958, Page 2

Barbecue Cooking Is Becoming Popular

The craze for barbecue cooking outdoors which swept the United States several years ago is becoming more popular every summer in New Zealand. Auckland people have been barbecuing for some time and gradually the custom has crept south. Christchurch has enough warm days and mild evenings in a good summer for families to enjoy eating outdoors without leaving their homes. Some handy men have dug their own barbecue pits in a sheltered corner of their gardens and laid crazy-paving patios. A person from Fiji with long experience in outdoor cooking says it is the ideal way to entertain 20 or more persons. For a large group he advises digging a pit about 18 inches deep, two feet wide and about a yard long. Pits for a family dinner can be much smaller. Male Cooks From a woman’s point of view, meals on the barbecue have several advantages. The first attraction is that it lets her out of the hot kichen and gives the man of the house a chance to take over the meal preparation. Many a husband who could not be cajoled into boiling an egg indoors, falls for the charm Qf being “boss man” at an outdoor meal. He feels he is well within masculine territory building a fire and supervising a picnic meal. Dressed in a sack apron or old clothes he takes pride in turning over juicy steaks, prodding corn cobs with a long fork and pricking the sausages. What a relief for the housewife to hand over the domestic reins to her husband and escape from the kitchen stove on a hot night Children, too, enjoy helping with barbecue meals. It is an easy way of entertaining a group of them without fuss or mess, and everybody enjoys the special flavour of food cooked outdoors. China plates and formal dinner ware can be abandoned for paper or aluminium foil dishes, so that there is a minimum of washing

up . . The barbecue craze in America inspired a new set of gadgets and barbecue accessories. Gift and novelty shops there now specialise in manly aprons with pockets . specially labelled for bottle-openers, matches, forks and other picnic implements; gay cardboard plates have been designed with paper napkins to

match; comical ■ chefs’ caps with amusing remarks and prints identify the host at a picnic party. Giant pepper and salt shakers, long-handled forks and tongs, and barbecue gloves for handling hot food are also sold.

Those who improvise with home-made pits and spare wood can throw old branches and small blocks of wood into the hole about half an hour before the meal, and kindle a good fire. Logs should not be used because they create smoke. When the fire has died down to embers, sufficient heat will rise from the earth to cook meats, fish and vegetables placed on a grill over the pit. As the fat drips through the grill on to the embers it will help to keep the fire going. Wood washed up from the sea makes good fuel for barbecuing as long as it is-thoroughly dry. Home-made One Fendalton housewife, the mother of several boys, has made her own barbecue oven (with the boys’ help) from a kerosene tin. They cut out the top, replaced it with a steel wire frame and cut a small opening low on one side of the tin for feeding the wood fire. The tin is placed at least 30ft from the house in an attractive spot in the garden and chops are placed on the frame when the wood fire glows with red embers. Split sausages are also very tasy grilled and served with a barbecue sauce, Worcester or tomato sauce, according to taste. This simple barbecue oven is very easy to make. For any family with a garden well away from the house it is a good idea to make one for entertaining young friends on summer evenings during the long holidays. For those who do not want to bother with digging pits and designing their own equipment, barbecue grills are on sale in Christchurch. Foods which are delicious broiled on charcoal barbecues are chops, steaks, potatoes, sausages and frankfurters, pork bones and pipis. Good accompaniments for a barbecued meal are bread rolls (to hold sausages), barbecue sauce, french mustard and cold potato salad.