Great British BBQ
We love and admire the melting pot of countries, cultures, foods and flavours that make fire cooking what it is today, and assume the UK is simply playing catch up. Not according to Murf from The Beefy Boys. RUPERT BATES reports
I can hear the scoffing from the in-laws in Australia, the outlaws in Texas and my South African friends who have never tired of telling me it’s actually called Braai. How can there possibly be Great British barbecues?
Well, there are – and in the last six years alone I have consumed a lot of them, thankfully cooked by others, or you could certainly challenge the concept of great.
It is time to bury the cliché of the sausage cremated in the rain once and for all. We’d like to think British barbecue was invented in 2020 when we launched BBQ magazine – rather like football, according to Sky Sports, never existing in this country before the Premier League launched in 1992.
Anthony ‘Murf’ Murphy (above), one quarter of The Beefy Boys, has written a book called Great British BBQ and in the opening pages, before you get to the most eclectic collection of recipes, methods and back stories, delivered with a whimsical whisk of wit and wisdom, Murf gives us a history lesson. For those who believe the UK has no culture of BBQ, or cooking over fire, listen up.
“I’ve dragged my family to many a castle ruin around the UK on a wet Sunday. I’ve seen the giant kitchens and fire pits of medieval England,” says Murf.
“Of course, we have a history of cooking over fire. From the banquets of Henry VIII to the chop houses of Victorian London, our skills in roasting meat were legendary across the world. It’s just that the rich history has been forgotten and lost to the ages.”
Murf takes us back 400,000 years to that Suffolk archaeological find of charcoal, flint and charred animal bones.
“Kind of mad to think that almost half a million years ago a couple of cavemen had a BBQ, didn’t tidy up and 400 millennia later some bloke in Hereford is writing about them. Messy bastards,” writes Murf.
He tells us of Iron Age cook-offs, of ‘the champion’s portion’ with the choicest cut going to the strongest knight. Sir Lunchalot eat your hearth out. We move through the centuries – we were nicknamed ‘les rosbifs’ long before the electric oven – and Murf thinks the open fire culture lost its way in the 20th century as kitchens became ‘convenience led’, world wars saw rationing and ‘skills weren’t passed down; recipes were forgotten, and we lost our lust for fire.’
The renaissance, he believes, has been in the last 20 years and Murf’s goal from the book, the second from The Beefy Boys, is to ‘reclaim British BBQ.’
But he is quick to point out that with national pride comes inspiration from around the globe, with multiculturalism contributing massively to what and how we cook over fire. Food and fire have no boundaries.
Backyard barbecues were where it all started for The Beefy Boys “And, yes,” says Murf, “like many, my earliest BBQ memories were dad burning those sausages in the rain.”
Burgers might still headline in their ever-expanding collection of restaurants across the country, but the cookbook showreel takes in anything from rib of beef to pork belly, and lamb lollipops to BBQ fish and chips with char tartare sauce. And a special mention for the gloriously inventive cottage pie with bone marrow mash, using braised beef chuck, while not forgetting vegetables. Pass the fire-roasted carrots and smoked beetroot.
The Beefy Boys book hits the shelves at the same time as Jamie Oliver’s Ultimate BBQ (see p12) and Murf believes that Jamie doesn’t get the credit he deserves for championing live fire cooking.
“With Barbecoa, Jamie was ahead of the game and his TV series is fantastic profile for BBQ. Us nerds are all over the fire, but it is so important to make the general public more aware of how great a way it is to cook and entertain, bringing people together.”
The Hereford restaurant runs a weekly Beefy BBQ, led by pitmaster Ashley Tunley, whose pop up Big Smoke BBQ business, born out of lockdown, so impressed Murf and fellow Beefy Boy Dan Mayo-Evans, that they have brought him in to add that Texas smoker vibe and the art of low and slow – think beef cheeks and marmalade-glazed lamb ribs.
The book takes inspiration from The Beefy Boys international team too. Step forward Ezeke, hailing from Nigeria, with his BBQ beef suya, Joe from Portugal’s Piri Piri marinated chicken recipe, Nathan, originally from Mexico, with carne asada tacos, and Dmytro’s Ukrainian shashlik (marinated meat skewers) with adjika. The book also pays homage to the influence of American BBQ and pitmasters from across the pond, while explaining why, for instance, it is so difficult to replicate a US brisket in the UK. And, if you want to learn about cooking sausages, there are banger tips from Sosij.
The latest restaurant opening is Nottingham, The Beefy Boys’ sixth, joining Hereford, Shrewsbury, Cheltenham, Bath and Oxford. Meanwhile, the second edition of the Beef Stock food and music festival takes place on 22–23 August in Bromyard, Hereford, with chefs including DJ BBQ, Lagom Chef, Sam & Shauna, Matty’s Chop Shop, Under the Nut Tree and Genevieve Taylor.
The Beefy Boys, endlessly innovative, recently started a YouTube series called BBQ Cribbz, looking at various chefs and cooks setups at home, inspecting the backyards, testing the grills and tasting the food, with episode one Murf’s very own shack, complete with a Weber Summit and Master-Touch, as well as a pizza oven from The Fire Brick Co, an asado cage from Firepits UK and a Kadai firebowl, with Murf’s crib where many recipes were created for the book, designed by Murf’s wife, Jo.
It is a book that educates, inspires and entertains, personality marinating every page. And just when you think you’ve finished, there is a chapter on sauces – my guilty pleasure. Of course, the hero is the meat, but I can think of no better squires for the knights of the table than smoked orange ketchup, or a Dirty Diane sauce.
I leave you with a top tip, which I have never heard before; I doubt there is a chef anywhere in the world who has ever offered up such a nugget. But, if, having flambéed the Dirty Diane with brandy, you should accidentally set your eyebrows on fire, ‘redraw your eyebrows on with a piece of coal from the BBQ, making sure it has cooled down first.’ Genius.
The Beefy Boys Great British BBQ (Quadrille). Photography: Peter Lowbridge.
