Summer 2024

Cook your way through the pages of this issue of BBQ magazine and that’s the summer sorted. Invite family and friends with no need to leave the backyard and, as decreed by the fire gods, the term ‘weather permitting’ is now outlawed. Just get on with it.

You can start with breakfast, with the rise in popularity of planchas, griddles and flat top grills fuelling the first meal of the day. Pizza seems to be ever evolving and revolving and experts share their slices of heaven. If the tables were turned on Saturday Kitchen host Matt Tebbutt, the renowned chef and broadcaster might well choose a BBQ feast for his Food Heaven as he shares his love of outdoor cooking.

We don’t like to get too technical in this magazine, read by anyone from pitmaster to beginner, but if you want to learn how to cook the best brisket and what temperature to cook those steaks at, look no further. Or, if you simply wish to up your grilling game, why not head to BBQ school.

Rock stars Paul Ainsworth and Matt Tebbutt provide delicious dishes for the recipe pages, alongside our brigade of outstanding, regular contributors, whose imagination and creativity know no bounds.

There are more gins out there these days than you can shake a cocktail stick at, and Andy Clarke has sampled and mixed most of them. All in the name of research for his wonderful new book House of Gin, which we review, while Roger Jones selects a Middle Eastern menu to pair with Lebanese wines.

If you haven’t watched the American version of The Office, we urge you to and we speak exclusively to one of the stars of the show and BBQ obsessive, Brian Baumgartner, who plays accountant Kevin Malone, as he launches his new cookbook.

Michael Lynagh is an Australian rugby legend. Of course he loves barbecue, but global travels mean this foodie family’s live-fire tastebuds are truly international.

Talking of Foodies, the festival season is in full swing, and we round up the best events out there. Now the magazine is in the USA, we’d love to hear more about food and drink celebrations Stateside. Meanwhile, have a read about what three UK fire chefs got up to in Texas.

Finally, football’s Euro 24 tournament is upon us, and England and Manchester City star Jack Grealish has got grilling, cooking up a signature burger. BBQ it like Grill-ish this summer.

Yours in live-fire cooking

Team BBQ Magazine