Barbecues, pizza ovens and the small kit that makes cooking outdoors easy rather than a project.
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The barbecue that gets used is the one you can light in five minutes. In a small garden that usually rules out the enormous charcoal trolley and points at gas, or at a compact charcoal grill you can actually store.
Ready in ten minutes, controllable, and it turns off. If you want to barbecue on a Tuesday rather than only at planned weekend events, buy gas. Look for a lid, a temperature gauge and a side burner if you have the width for it.
The Fire Mountain Cascade 7 Burner Gas BBQ has the lid, the gauge and the side burner. Measure the space before you commit to seven burners.
Better results and much better value, at the cost of forty minutes and a bag you have to store somewhere dry. A kettle grill with a lid gives you indirect cooking, which is where charcoal genuinely beats gas.
Does two jobs in the space of one, which is the small-garden test. Cooks unevenly compared with a proper grill, but it is still burning when everyone is sitting round it at ten o'clock.
Extremely good at one thing. Gets to temperature fast, cooks a pizza in ninety seconds, and needs somewhere heatproof and stable to sit. A portable one that lives in the shed suits a small garden far better than a built-in.
Almost nobody's barbecue is limited by the grill. It is limited by not knowing when the chicken is done.
The single best-value thing you can buy for outdoor cooking. Removes the guesswork, and removes the reason people overcook everything "to be safe".
A cool box or an outdoor drinks fridge stops the back-and-forth to the kitchen that ends most garden evenings early.
A folding table beside the grill. Without one you are cooking with the raw chicken balanced on the arm of a chair.
An IP-rated Bluetooth speaker survives being left out in a shower, which is what will happen to it.
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