the times Saturday April 30 20228Weekend
Go away, I’m grilling I never let
Genevieve Taylor is an expert on outdoor
cooking. Tony Turnbull learns her tricks
Y
ou need three things to
create fire — fuel, ignition
and oxygen — but when it
comes to barbecuing, the
fourth law of thermody-
namics comes into play,
which states that in addi-
tion you need men, preferably beer in
hand, jokey apron optional, to take charge.
Without them to tinker, boss and generally
make a big deal of it, nothing’s getting
cooked in the garden this summer.
What is it about blokes and barbecues?
Happy not to get involved in the drudgery
of cooking for the rest of the year, we rush
to take charge at the first whiff of charcoal
smoke, as if only we possess the know-how
and general fearlessness necessary to
master the flame.
“In my world it’s not a man’s thing at all.
I don’t let my husband touch my barbe-
cue,” says Genevieve Taylor, who runs the
Bristol Fire School cookery classes from
her garden. “Fire is the beginning of what
made us human beings, but the guys were
out shooting the antelopes and it was the
women who did the cooking.” Besides, if
you want to play up the sexist stereotypes,
women are naturally good at multitasking,
she says, which is probably the most
important skill that cooking on a barbecue
requires. Otherwise it is simply a question
of practice.
“Like any skill in life, the more you do it
the more natural and instinctive it feels,”
says Taylor, 48. “If you only use your
barbecue twice a year it will always feel like
a challenge.” She uses hers every day, “and
every time I light a fire I gain a little more
confidence and understanding”.
Her main challenge is probably choos-
ing which barbecue to use. She thinks she
has 17 or 18 in her garden, ranging from a
Big Green Egg to small portable jobs.
“They are born of an obsession with
cooking and with lighting fires — I’m
probably a bit of a pyromaniac — and a
desire to spend as much time outdoors as
possible. In my former life I’m a biologist
so outside is my happy space.”
You can cook pretty much anything
over anything once you understand a little
of the physics of the fire, she says, but it’s
the Weber kettle barbecue she couldn’t do
without. She says she can be cooking on it
within five minutes of lighting, which is
twice as quick as heating up a gas barbe-
cue, but the starting point must always be
the charcoal. “The vast majority of fuel we
buy, sadly, is from the supermarket or
garage forecourt. That will have been
predominantly sourced from hardwoods
in the tropics, so it’s bad news environmen-
tally, and then, because charcoal is flam-
mable, it will have been impregnated with
fire-suppressant chemicals for transport
and then impregnated with more chemi-
cals so we can light it once it’s here. That
makes it terrible for cooking with.”
Sustainable British lumpwood charcoal,
on the other hand, is easy to light and
burns very hot and very clean. “A lump of
good charcoal should smell of nothing
because it is 95 per cent pure carbon, which
has no smell, no taste, no smoke and
produces barely any flame.”
Once your charcoal is lit, you need tolearn to control the heat. There are two
main ways to do this — by controlling the
flow of oxygen and, most important, learn-
ing the difference between direct and indi-
rect heat. Too many of us simply position
everything on a rack over the coals. “In the
vast majority of cases you are better off
cooking to the side of the heat, with the lid
on, and taking it more slowly.” The tem-
perature above the lit charcoal will be as
high as 500-550C — way too hot for every-
thing except burgers and steak, where you
want a well-seared outside and less-
cooked interior. These should be cooked
with the lid off as otherwise they’d be over-
cooked in the middle before the outside
was charred. For pretty much everything
else you need to create different zones by
raking the coals to one side. This way you
can graduate the temperature down to
about 100C at the end furthest from the
coals. With the lid closed this creates a
convection heat and means you can cook
things far more gently, for better results.
Beyond that, her other tip is to be “a bit
Boy Scouty” (Girl Guidy?) and get all your
prepping, sauces, seasoning, plates and
cutlery ready and take it all outside at the
same time, so you can stay there with the
fire and concentrate instead of running
back in the kitchen all the time.
There’s nothing Taylor won’t cook out-
doors. Every class she holds includes bak-
ing of some sort, she’ll cook Yorkshire pud-
dings, Christmas dinner... “Don’t be afraid
to take pots and pans outside. One of my
favourite things is what I call ‘smoke plus
braise’. I’ll smoke a cheap cut and then cut
it up and braise it in a pot, using the barbe-
cue as a regular oven. For vegetables the
rule is that the heavier and denser it is, the
slower it needs to cook. Butternut squash
or cauliflower need a long time in indirect
heat, whereas courgettes or peppers can be
seared more quickly over direct heat.Fish requires more delicate treatment
than other protein. “I love cooking fish on
the barbecue because the smell instantly
reminds me of being on holiday.” Oily fish
such as sardines and mackerel can go
straight on the grill bars — the hotter and
cleaner they are the less likely the fish is to
stick. Scallops can be cooked in the shell, or
mussels placed in a shallow pan so as not to
lose their liquor to the flames. For white
fish it’s useful to have a fish cage so you can
turn it easily. “Or sometimes I’ll add bran-
ches of herbs such as thyme, rosemary or
bay and place the fish on top, not just to
flavour the fish but to stop it sticking to
the grill bars.”
Beyond that, there is only one rule that
Taylor always sticks to: her husband does
the washing-up.
Seared by Genevieve Taylor is published
by Quadrille at £20I have an obsession
with cooking and
lighting fires. It’s not a
man’s thing at all
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