Father’s Day BBQ - Dad’s ‘on fire’!

What better way to celebrate June 17^th

Thinking of getting family and friends around to celebrate Father’s Day on Sunday 17^th June with a barbecue, and wanting dad to step back from the controls so that he can enjoy his day? Looking for ways to distract him from his ‘burning’ desire to grab the barbecue tongs and take over the grilling?

Let’s stop and think about that… it just might not be that easy…

The age old ritual of male grilling

Cooking outside over the coals goes back to the Stone Age when our hunter-gatherer male ancestors would have hunted their prey and roasted and smoked it inside holes in the ground with hot cinders. Quite a few years have moved on, and our barbecue technology too – such as the Cinders reliable, durable, and handcrafted range, however, men still love to sit around a live fire. It seems to bring to the surface that primal, caveman instinct we’ve been burying.

But who is most skilled?

A 2015 survey revealed that 7 in 10 British males took charge of the grill at the last barbecue they hosted. And one-fifth of women felt pressurised not to cook, while 34 per cent said that they would actually like to. However, another survey showed that, despite the fact that nearly twice as many men staked their claim as masters of the grill, 62 per cent of women reported that they were more adventurous, experimenting with different foods and grilling techniques, as opposed to 50 per cent of the males. It seems that women are much more skilled at preparing, marinating and seasoning food. One top chef in London has even said that men… “rush! They want a barbecue and they want it straight away. They pick really small cuts of meat, lamb, beef, pork and chicken and they end up dry and even slightly burned.”

What the historians think

And yet, when 70 per cent of UK women now work and the number of women at Board level has risen by 17 per cent in ten years, we seem to have lost our grip on the barbecue! How did this happen? One Canadian historian takes it back to the 1950s when suburbanisation happened, every home now had a backyard and we saw the rising trend of backyard barbecues. Around the same time, he says there was a shift in male parenting. Before, men would spend most of their leisure time socialising with other men in bars and pubs. Then parenting books began talking about the importance of family time. But what was the suburban dad to do at home in his backyard with his wife and kids… barbecue, of course!

Some top tips for a top Father’s Day BBQ

So, if you really can’t get dad to break with years of tradition, and he really wants to get stuck in on the day, give him these top tips to help create a great Father’s Day barbecue:

1. Salting the meat – for bit cuts and ribs, make a brine and soak the meat in it for at least six hours. Smaller cuts can be salted with rock salt an hour before cooking
2. Make sure the grill is hot enough before you start. Try to keep things that require different cooking times in different areas
3. For larger cuts of meat, cover them and let them rest in a warm place before you carve them up

But most importantly, get a nice, cold celebratory beer in his hand while he carries out the age old ritual!