Why is Britain so terrible at BBQs?

When some countries get it so right, Sean Russell can’t understand how we always get it so, so wrong

Made in Britain (Getty/iStock)

When it comes to food there are few things I dread more than being invited to a BBQ in Britain. Every summer, when the temperature reaches 23C, people around the country decide it’s time to cook outdoors and eat burnt burgers with a slice of plastic cheese and a dry sausage.

Oh, and do you know what I want as a side to my sausage? A plain hot dog in a bun and sweaty shop-bought coleslaw with some warm but not cooked veggie skewers. While we’re at it, I would also love a plain chicken breast cooked dry while I run away from wasps and fail to cut it up with plastic cutlery and drop my soggy paper plate in the process.

Really the best thing that ever goes on at most BBQs, at least the ones I go to, are bananas and chocolate cooked in foil as a dessert. Those are delicious, quite frankly. What’s not to love about oozing chocolate melted over a banana? But then there’s not a lot that can go wrong with that.

Then there’s that one friend who does a BBQ right. There will be caramelised onions for the hot dogs, a fresh salad with homemade dressing, meat from the local butcher cooked to perfection, maybe some marinated pork skewers and even the kind of spiral Italian sausage Tony Soprano would be proud of. These grilling gods are an anomaly in Britain.

There are nations that can barbecue incredibly well. The Australians are pretty good at it, for example – it’s basically an art form there – and so are the South Africans, where it’s called a “braai”. I recently passed by a Filipino food van called Bongbong’s Manila Kitchen (near Southbank) that used to be called “BBQ dreamz”, at which I ate gorgeously crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside satay chicken skewer on rice and salad – the perfect accompanient to a chilled beer on a hot summer’s day.

But my favourite, perhaps, are the American “pitmasters”, particularly in the southeastern states. The American BBQ has a long history; even George Washington mentions “barbicue” in his writings of 1769. It owes a lot to African Americans who helped develop and popularise the grill over generations. Originally grilling over fire was just used as a way of slow roasting tough joints of meat – humble beginnings which are still reflected in modern BBQs to this day.

Recently I went to an American-Mexican BBQ joint in Hackney Wick called Scoundrels. I had a deliciously over-the-top and filthy brisket burger, which was tenderly cooked, ever so slightly red on the inside, and topped with bacon, pickles, chipotle mayo and two types of cheese, served oozing out the sides of a brioche bun. The week after, I was in a garden at a family BBQ with a stale, recently defrosted bun filled with charred meat and a soggy bit of warm lettuce.

I’m not saying that everyone should be aiming to meet the standards of a pop-up restaurant – after all, cooking over an open flame is one of the hardest ways to cook – but is it too much to ask that we eat something… well, nice?

And if we must insist on barbecuing in this country, can we at least all agree not to burn everything?