UK BBQ Week (4th - 12th July) was set up in 2017 to encourage men and women of all ages to pick up the tongs and get cooking outside. Marcus Bawdon is one of the founders of this annual celebration of all things barbecue and, along with esteemed grill master, Ben Forte, he has been handing out some hot tips in recent days.

The general trend is towards a much more sophisticated level of outdoor cooking than used to be the case when British males habitually burned sausages and burgers over-hot fires. 

UK BBQ Week co-founder, Marcus Bawdon also runs Country Wood Smoke – a cookery school and barbecue forum from his home in Devon. He says, “I'd recently started eating meat and had just moved to the countryside - I was cooking burgers and sausages for ever-larger social gatherings - but realised I was missing out on a lot because I was stuck to the grill. I started researching other ways of cooking such as whole pigs on rotisseries, wood fired ovens, and low-n-slow American style barbecue, I soon realised I was hooked!

“UK BBQ Week has days for lots of different areas of barbecue, from burgers and roasts to tacos and veggie options… barbecue should be inclusive of everyone,” he added. 

Part of the drive to up the barbecue game has come to these shores in the guise of the kamado charcoal burning cooker - the word means “clay oven” and the modern kamados are based on 3,000 year-old wood-burning technology from Japan. 

Ben Forte is global marketing manager for an international company called Kamado Joe which manufactures the very latest high-tech charcoal cookers.

“It's all about the amazing efficiency and versatility,” he said. “The kamado is changing the way people are thinking about cooking outdoors. You can achieve such high temperatures that you can sear a big steak in a minute - but you can also control a low temperature and cook a piece of brisket very slowly in 18 hours. 

“The kamados also offer different levels of versatility because you can turn them into pizza ovens, and you can have a rotisserie on them to gently turn your free-range chicken.”

Ben's top tips for UK BBQ Week include finding top quality restaurant grade charcoal such as Kamado Joe's Big Block Charcoal. “It's called restaurant-grade because it has really big solid lumps that will burn hot for a very long time,” he said. 

“Another good tip is to divide your BBQ into a hot zone for searing and a safe zone for keeping things warm or slow-cooking. If your barbecue has a lid, then use it - they say if you're looking, then you're not cooking - and make sure you use a good food thermometer.”

Marcus added: “As a founder of UK BBQ Week, I love to find ways of making barbecue easier for people. I've been cooking on a Kamado Joe for eight years - it makes barbecuing and temperature control easy so you can get on with enjoying your cooking. And it makes everything from searing steaks to long slow brisket cooks so stress-free, and the food that comes out of the grill is delicious and smoky.”

To find out more about UK BBQ Week and see numerous recipes visit http://ukbbqweek.com/. Kamado Joe's full range is available at www.kamadojoe.co.uk/

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PR cheese contact: Scarlette Matthews – scarlette@rawfoodanddrinkpr.co.uk / 07855880758. Please contact for recipes, images, interviews or quotes.

About Kamado Joe

Kamado Joe's red ceramic grills is an ever-expanding range of the world's best grills, tools and accessories. Building on the success of their classic kamado, they have developed new sizes and advances that have inspired both grillers and competition within the ceramic grill market.

Kamado Joe sparked a revolution with the kamado category's first-ever slide-out ash drawer, the game changing 'divide and conquer' flexible cooking system, they pioneered a truly airtight grilling chamber with a fiberglass gasket and stainless steel latch, complete with a breakthrough piston-assisted articulating dome hinge.