With a slew of Great British bank holidays incoming, BBQ season is officially upon us.

But before you stock up on your usual bangers and briquettes, we’ve been speaking to Stu Deeley, head chef at Smoke, about cooking over coals. Read on to find out how the estate’s fire master and his team make everything taste quite so delicious.

Not all charcoals are created equally…

We use a natural, charred wood rather than briquettes. When cooking over fire, you get a lot of your flavour from the fat or elements of whatever you are cooking that drip down and hit your coals. The resulting smoke that rises then infuses whatever ingredients you’ve got on the grill, adding bags of flavour. Plus, good quality charcoal burns hotter and for longer.

Little and often… 

Try to resist the temptation of adding all your coal in one go. At Smoke, we gradually top up our coals from the back, while we cook over the hot coals at the front. You’d be amazed how little fuel you need to grill substantial amounts of produce when you use this method, and you can keep more control over the temperature using a little and often approach. For the really committed among you, get your charcoal up to temp as quickly as possible by baking it in the oven before you BBQ to ensure it lights easily.

The bigger the meat, the slower the heat…

You know the classic BBQ scene, where your Dad serves up a plate of blackened sausages that are raw on the inside when you take a bite? Avoid that by treating your ingredients in the same way you would if you were using an oven or a frying pan. Rather than throwing your produce onto the hottest part of the grill, try cooking slower and for longer. Especially for larger fish and cuts of meat, which take longer for the heat to penetrate through to their core.

Be prepared…

Get your ingredients up to room temp and brush in some sort of fat before getting it on the grill. Then keep brushing! This will help with the heat and lock in flavour. We’ve experimented a lot but have found smoked pork fat to generally be the best option when you’re looking to intensify flavours.

Starting off with the best ingredients you can source is also going to make a huge impact on the final outcome. You can get much of the same meat we use at Smoke from Aubrey Allen’s butchers in Leamington, or speak to your local butchers. And in terms of fish and veggies, head to your local market—unless you’re on a fishing trip or a farm at harvest time, you won’t get fresher.

Eat your veggies… 

Cooking over coals can allow you to take the most mundane ingredients and turn them into a dish to get truly excited about. Take lettuce. Put it on the BBQ for a bit of a twist on a classic Caesar salad and it’ll blow your mind. Plus, barbecued veggies can have the pickiest of kids happily eating their five-a-day.

Dress to impress…

Grill anything, then finish with Smoke’s garlic and dill dressing. It will turn a humble sounding serve into a side dish to savour. Here’s a super simple make-at-home version of the emulsion we serve at Smoke. Enjoy!

Smoke’s garlic and dill dressing…

Confit garlic by peeling two garlic bulbs and immersing with oil in a small saucepan. Cook on the lowest heat possible until soft. Retain garlicky oil.
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Next, mix 40g of the confit garlic with 25g of water, stirring until smooth. Add to 25g of the oil the garlic was cooked in.
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Combine with 200g of Hellman’s mayo. Add a good pinch of chopped dill. Mix and prepare to impress your BBQ guests.

Prefer the eating part to the cooking? Smoke is open for dinner Mondays to Saturdays and for lunch Fridays to Sundays, with service continuing right through to 6pm on Sundays.