Last Updated on June 24, 2024
Are you for ready for summer cooking?
My BBQ lost its legs years ago since which time outdoor cooking has rather taken a backseat. So I was excited when a delivery man staggered up my path bearing an oversized box inside which was the Trolley Grill and Bake barbecue from the Bar-Be-Quick range I had been invited to review. I lost no time in inviting friends for Easter lunch and planned an afternoon in the garden. Those who live in the UK know full well that the moment one mentions the word BBQ it is definitely going to rain. I purposefully omitted to say that lunch would be cooked over fire and was delighted that on the assigned day the sun shone brilliantly. The following day it poured for hours.
The Trolley Grill and Bake Barbecue arrived in flatpack form and it looked to me like a two person job. I ‘rescued’ my son from his studies and together we got going on the assembly. All you need is a spanner and a Phillips screwdriver and once we had located those in the shed, we were off. I estimate that it took us a good hour to put together. Those with power tools might spend less time on this. It is possible that our time was extended also by not understanding how to put on the wheels which seemed to not correspond with the illustration in the instructions. Others may be more adept at DIY. Later, we made an error which had to be unscrewed and redone which also added on valuable minutes. Eventually we were done – I recommend that you assemble the BBQ the day before you wish to use it so as to admire your handiwork at your leisure. It looked really smart and I was keen to get cooking. Or at least to get my husband cooking. I know it is a very gendered thing to admit, but where I grew up, barbecuing was close to a religion and was passed down from father to son. While I learned how to prep the food to be cooked on the BBQ, I never had a chance to learn to cook it myself. Now, decades on it is a habit I find hard to unlearn.
My husband was less than impressed at first that our new BBQ was not one of those fancy gas cookers that is ready at the flip of a switch. I don’t care much for those partly because my late father would have choked on his beer had anyone suggested that BBQ and gas belonged in the same sentence. Secondly, I cook on gas everyday indoors so I don’t fancy doing the same outdoors. To me a BBQ is about logs of wood – at least it was in my childhood. Nowadays it is charcoal briquettes.
Although we rarely eat meat at home this was the Easter weekend so I bought the largest leg of lamb I could find, enough to feed 10 people. The Trolley Grill and Bake barbecue has a very good sized rectangular grill so there was plenty space for the meat. The recipe required a good 90 minutes of cooking and the charcoal tray was large enough to keep adding fresh coals to heat on the side so that the embers could be topped up as required. While the meat rested we cooked a large quantity of veg over the embers which were still very hot.
I also wanted to try out the oven feature of the Trolley Grill and Bake barbecue. As it is heated from above by the coals, it took a while to get to the temperature I needed and I lost confidence and decided to bake the sweet potatoes indoors. Later, the oven section became very hot indeed so I should perhaps have had more patience. However, by the time the oven section got piping hot, a strange thing happened. The door – which until then had shut perfectly well – popped open and refused to shut until we jammed it closed with a piece of scrunched up tin foil. This might well be the fault of those of us who assembled the BBQ, but the oven section is constructed as a unit so perhaps my son and I are not implicated in this. Either way, I will have to look into how to fix this because the open door gets in the way of standing close enough to the grill and furthermore, is piping hot and could cause a nasty burn emitting all that heat without the door closing. On the plus side, the spacious BBQ also has a small shelf to each side which is super helpful and practical for putting down bowls, marinades, tongs, BBQ forks and the like. There are also two levels on which to place the grill depending on how close to the coals you need your food to be. The grill and fire tray are removable for ease of cleaning.
After a very delicious lunch – top marks to the husband and the Trolley Grill and Bake barbecue – I expected that I would need to order a cover so that the new BBQ did not get exposed to the rain. However, once my husband had cleaned the BBQ – which he said was easy to do – he was able to fit it into our shed. We have a regular sized shed so I hadn’t expected the BBQ would fit in there. That is one of the advantages of a rectangular BBQ. The one that lost its legs was one of those famous brand, round ones. Never managed to store that anywhere. Being on wheels, the Trolley Grill and Bake barbecue is easy to move around your garden or patio as needs doing. Get ready for summer with a new BBQ, get your friends round and put the drinks on ice. Just remember not to mention the word BBQ and you may even be lucky with the weather.
Trolley Grill and Bake Barbecue is available from BarbeQuick for £161 including VAT with free delivery depending on shipping location.
Looking for something more compact? We have also reviewed the Sous Chef BBQ Smoker
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