This isn’t turning into the grilled meat blog, I promise. It’s just, well, it’s summer isn’t it and I’m either having or getting invited to a lot of barbecues. Wings always fit the bill because they’re cheap, cook quickly and have a lot of fat for their size, which means loads of crisp, charred skin. Tick, tick and tick.

Thinking about it, this is probably the unhealthiest of all ways to cook wings without deep frying them first.* They’re hot wings you see, which means they’re bathed in hot sauce cut with a load of melted butter.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It begins the night before with a marinade made from onion, garlic, thyme, oregano and paprika. Then right before cooking you melt the butter with the hot sauce, dunk the wings in half of it and grill them, reserving the other half for later. When they are charred and cooked through, you dunk each once again in the sauce, leaving a sweet-spicy coating, silken with butter, which stains your fingers and face bright orange.

These went down well at the BBQ but they weren’t hot enough because I ran out of hot sauce. Traditionally you would use Frank’s to make hot wings; I didn’t as I needed to use up my homemade scotch bonnet sauce but I didn’t realise quite how much the butter would tame it. Still, easily remedied in future. I served them, as is traditional, with celery sticks and a blue cheese dip, which make for a cooling interlude between each sticky wing.

* I would very much like to try deep frying them first then charring them on the BBQ. Sick.

If you like this recipe you may also like:

Sticky rum and scotch bonnet chicken wings
Piri piri chicken
Jerk chicken
Cherry beer can duck

Hot wings with blue cheese dip

For the marinade

30 chicken wings
1 tablespoon salt
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 onion
3 teaspoons thyme leaves
3 teaspoons dried oregano
1.5 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon paprika

For the sauce

250g butter
Hot sauce

Sticks of celery and blue cheese dip, to serve.

Process the onion and garlic in a blender with 1 tablespoon water until you have a puree. Put this puree in a bowl with the salt, thyme, oregano, pepper and paprika. Put the chicken wings in a large dish and rub the marinade all over them, giving them a good rub to make sure each wing is well coated. Refrigerate overnight.

When you want to cook the wings, remove them from the fridge to come to room temperature and start your BBQ. When the BBQ is ready, melt the butter in a small pan and stir in hot sauce to taste. You’ll want it nice and spicy. I only had half this kilner jar of sauce and if you’re using a shop bought sauce you’ll need to experiment. Don’t worry though, it’s not exactly rocket science. Split this sauce into two bowls.

Dump the wings in one of the bowls and mix to cover with the sauce. Grill the wings until charred all over and cooked through. When cooked, dip each into the remaining bowl of sauce.

Serve with sticks of celery and the blue cheese dip.

I just love how the Americans cut a big wedge of iceberg, drench it in blue cheese dressing and then call it a salad. Respect.

I’m rather fond of the poor old iceberg. It doesn’t have any flavour to speak of but as a big ol’ wedge of crunch, no lettuce does it better. So, you take a quarter of the lettuce and drench it; yes, drench it, in a blue cheese and sour cream dressing. Dribble. You’ll need something to offset all that richness and tang though, so why not sprinkle on a handful of sweet ‘n salty pig-candy pieces? Oh yes indeedy. Picture this: kerrrunch down through that wedge; creamy, salty; nuggets of blue cheese sneaking into every layer but then, hang on what’s this? Chewy shards of sticky, streaky candied bacon, that’s what. Salad garnish crack.

Caramelised walnuts would make a lovely alternative to the bacon but I wasn’t allowed to make those because that would have taken up time I could have been using to make more candied bacon.

Wedge salad with blue cheese dressing and candied bacon (serves 4)

1 iceberg lettuce (try to get a nice round one so your wedges look good)
150g blue cheese (I used Roquefort)
200ml sour cream
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon lemon juice (plus extra just in case; I found I wanted a little more)
1 teaspoon mustard (I used Dijon)
1 tablespoon chives, snipped with scissors

For the candied bacon

8 rashers streaky bacon
1-2 teaspoons of sugar per bacon rasher, depending on size

First candy the bacon by laying the rashers out on a baking tray and sprinkling the sugar evenly over them. Whack them under a hot grill until crisp and caramelised. Wipe the rashers around in the stick juices that have accumulated in the tray, turn them over and cook the other side. Watch them like a hawk once you’ve turned them as they will caramelise extremely fast. Once cooked, remove and let cool on a wire rack. Don’t let the pieces touch each other as they will stick together.

Crush the garlic with a teeny pinch of salt in a pestle and mortar until creamy. Blend the garlic with all the other dressing ingredients together in a bowl. You can do this with a blender if you like but I like my blue cheese dressing quite chunky so I mash it in a bowl to achieve the right consistency; it’s nice to get the odd nugget of cheese. Taste and add salt and pepper if you like; the cheese will already be quite salty. Taste again and add a little more lemon juice if you think it needs it.

Remove any manky outer leaves from your iceberg and quarter it. Wash it. Arrange each wedge on a plate, dollop on the blue cheese dressing. Cut the bacon into pieces and sprinkle over. Serve.

The first time I tried making these it was a disaster. I came across the idea in a book about American BBQ and decided to bust it out at a mate’s shindig last weekend having given the recipe next to no thought whatsoever; pretty much the opposite of the way I usually approach things. This, combined with the fact we were extremely full from ploughing through a plate of summer rolls, a pile of razor clams and two gigantic bone in rib eyes meant my poor dawgs didn’t stand a chance. We didn’t even get around to tackling my tub of Boston baked beans. Criminal.

I never give up on a recipe though unless I know it’s a total dud. This could never be a dud because THE SAUSAGES ARE SIMMERED IN BEER. Last night, I decided, was the night to conquer the wurst so I went out, bought 2 kinds of sausage, hooked up my umbrella over the BBQ and started paying some damn good attention to detail.

The first time, I’d used bratwurst from LIDL (recommendation from Twitter) and, although I’m no stranger to the delights of Mystery Meat, I think it’s fair to say they weren’t for me. I decided to settle on a comparison of a different bratwurst (Sainsbury’s, still mysterious but somehow tastier) and traditional hot dog – the wurst emerging as clear winner for it’s ability to suck up much more beer. A standard hot dog tastes the same no matter what you do to it, apparently. It needs to be dark beer, by the way, no lager or cider; the latter I tried the first time, with rubbish results. I used Newcastle Brown as that’s all they had in the local shop; you don’t need to go using Brewdog Tokyo or anything, but it would be fun to experiment.

Sauerkraut and onions flavour the sausage and are then strained and caramelised, themselves sticky and saturated with booze. The snap of the wurst is followed by their delicious sweet and sharp balance. A bobbing scotch bonnet left a tantalising tingle on the lips; the Peckham influence. An artful squeeze of mild French’s mustard to finish. Unless you want to add ketchup too of course – I did and I highly recommend it.

BBQ brats simmered with beer and sauerkraut

4 bratwurst (I found the ones available in Sainsbury’s to be perfectly acceptable but I’m sure there’s a whole world of wurst waiting to be discovered)
1 onion, sliced in half moons
6-8 tablespoons sauerkraut
3 tablespoons brown sugar
A splash of white wine vinegar or other vinegar
1 bottle dark beer of your choice (I used Newcastle Brown Ale but be as adventurous as you like)

To serve

Hot dog buns
French’s mild and sweet or similar American-style mustard
Ketchup

You will need a disposable foil tray to cook the brats on the BBQ; these are available in supermarkets or hardware shops.

Get your BBQ hot. When the flames have died down and the coals are grey, it’s time to cook your brats. Prick them several times to allow the beer to penetrate. Put them in the tray with 2 tablespoons of the sugar, the sauerkraut, onion and beer. Put the tray on the BBQ then put the lid on and let cook for 15 minutes, turning them halfway through if not completely submerged in the beer mixture.

After this time, remove the brats from the liquid and put them directly on the BBQ grill to get some char. While they are charring, carefully remove the tray and strain the liquid into a bowl. At this point I tried to caramelise the onions and sauerkraut back in the tray on the BBQ but then gave up as it took too long (and it was raining). I chucked them in a saucepan with the remaining tablespoon of sugar and the vinegar and let them sizzle while I toasted the buns. I got the boyfriend to watch the brats on the BBQ. Makes them feel useful, innit.

To serve, dollop a heap of sauerkraut and onions into each bun, followed by a brat. Squeeze mustard and ketchup on top. Stuff into face.

Visiting Pitt Cue Co. got me thinking about American BBQ and specifically, pulled pork. I don’t have a smoker at home but I do have a decent Weber, which is more than capable of housing a big ol’ hunk of pig shoulder for 4 hours. In she went and out she came, alarmingly black after the allotted cooking time. This is normal. The caramelised crust or ’bark’ is sealing in the moist, fat-bathed meat.

I gave the shoulder a good rubbing 24 hours before with a shed-load of sugar, smoky chipotle flakes, orange zest and garlic plus some ground cloves and allspice because neither ever do any wrong on the grill and they sling things off in another direction. I was pleasantly surprised by how much the rub penetrated the meat and also by how edible that crust turned out to be; crunchy umami-pork-bark.

As the meat was going to take so long on the BBQ, I made use of the oven for 4 hours too, cooking Boston baked beans. They are time consuming as the beans need soaking overnight but wow, the results are worth it.

It starts, as all the best things do, with pork. I bought a piece of smoked pork belly (readily available in Peckham but smoked bacon or pancetta would substitute well), chopped it into chunks (including the rind for extra flavour) and combined it with the beans, Worcestershire sauce, spices and molasses. The molasses is the defining feature of Boston baked beans, Boston being apparently famous for producing loads of the stuff, a fact which led to the ‘Great Molasses Disaster’ in 1919. A 2,300,000 gallon storage tank collapsed, flooding the city with a black slick, killing 21 people. Wikipedia tells us the residents claim you can still catch a whiff of molasses on a hot summers’ day.

Anyway, I can’t recommend these beans enough. They have a very ‘BBQ’  flavour from the pork fat and spices and the malty sweetness of unrefined sugars means it melds into one of the most rich and satisfying dishes I’ve ever eaten; up there with rendang and Marmite on the umami scale.

Ready to go in the oven.

At the end of cooking time, a slightly scary crust has formed on top of the beans.

Breaking through the crust to a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘aaahhhs’.

The leftovers on toast the next day. So porky. So smoky.

That white blob in the background is the pickled fennel I made to accompany the meal. Steeped in a mixture of pink peppercorns and citrus zests, it was very welcome alongside the richness of meat n beans. We wiped the plates clean with chunks of sourdough.

This was probably my favourite BBQ of the year so far, even though it rained. There’s no need to give up hope when this happens by the way, just get yourself a chair and an umbrella…

Pulled Pork (serves 2-4, depending on appetite; mine fed 4 but we had beans)

1 x bone-in pork shoulder weighing approximately 2kg
2 tablespoons chipotle flakes
Zest of 1 orange, finely chopped
200g dark brown sugar like muscovado
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground allspice
1 tablespoon salt

Mix all the ingredients for the rub together well, using your hands. The night before you want to cook the meat, rub it all over, liberally with the rub. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove the meat from the fridge about an hour before you want to cook it. Light the BBQ and when the coals are white, bank them to one side of the grill. Place the meat on the other side so that it is not sitting directly over any coals.

Cook the meat for 4 hours. Each hour, add 8-12 more coals to the pile. This should keep the temperature fairly constant. The meat will be completely black on the outside after this time; don’t worry. Remove the meat to a plate and start pulling it apart to reveal the meat within. Use two forks to shred it. Serve.

Boston Baked Beans (serves 4 with leftovers)

500g dried white beans (I used cannelini but white kidney or haricot beans would also work)
450g piece smoked pork belly (or smoked bacon or pancetta; you want it in one piece so you can cut nice chunks), cut into chunks, including the rind.
2 tablespoons tomato puree
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
Salt and pepper

In a large bowl, cover the beans with plenty of cold water, leaving room for them to double in size. Leave to soak overnight. The next day, drain and rinse the beans.

Place them in a large pan or heavy casserole dish if you have one (so you won’t have to transfer the beans when you want to put them in the oven). Cover them with water. This needs to reach 2 inches above the top of the beans. Bring to the boil and boil hard for 10 minutes, skimming off the scum. Reduce to a gentle simmer and cook for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 140C/275F/Gas 1

If using a saucepan, now transfer to an ovenproof casserole. Add all the other ingredients but NO salt at this point. Cover and cook for 3 hours. After this time, taste and season carefully with salt (the pork will be salty). Cook, uncovered for a further hour.

Pickled Fennel

4 bulbs fennel
500ml white wine vinegar
3 teaspoons salt
5 tablespoons sugar (or more to taste)
1 orange
1 lemon
1 scant teaspoon pink peppercorns
5 black peppercorns
1 teaspoon coriander seeds

Cut the fennel in half lengthways and remove the core. Slice horizontally into thin strips. Place in a colander, mix well with the salt and leave to drain for 1 hour.

Remove the zest from the lemon and orange and juice the fruits. After the fennel has finished draining, mix in the zests and pack the mix into a sterilised jar.

In a small pan combine the citrus juices, vinegar, sugar, coriander seeds and peppercorns. Heat the mixture almost to boiling point, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Pour this over the fennel, making sure that it is all covered. Seal and allow to cool.

I sharpened my elbows and scythed through the hoards of tourists lining the South Bank, eyes firmly on the prize: Pitt Cue Co. Stationed underneath Hungerford Bridge, a purpose built van is serving up American-style BBQ for the next four glorious months; be still my beating heart. A friend and I have been waiting for this place to open for weeks, following their every move on Twitter, waiting for that call. As said friend is currently living it up in Japan eating warm cod’s sperm (I’m told), I took it upon myself to check it out and report back.

This food is different to the BBQ style we are used to in the UK; Americans, as far as I can tell, tend to dry rub large pieces of meat then smoke them for a long time, cooking indirectly, before finishing with sauce. Pulled pork with slaw and pickles anyone? Brisket with beans and more pickles? Ribs? Rotisserie chicken? Smoked corn? Hello!

No woman should plunge into a meat feast without lining her stomach appropriately; we ordered two ‘picklebacks’, which come either with, or without, ‘skin’. A pickleback for those of you who don’t know (I didn’t), is well popular in the Deep South, and consists of a shot of Bourbon (never too early) followed by an equal-sized shot of pickle brine. The ‘skin’ is strips of pork crackling. You drink the bourbon first, its peaty warmth shooting down your throat, soothing anaesthetic; you follow quick smart with the brine, sweet and really pleasant, extinguishing the effects of the bourbon like it never happened. I felt momentarily sad and empty until a little pot of bubbly pork crackling arrived; we demolished the salty pig snacks in seconds.

Attention turned to the brisket, billed as a special. Cooked for 12 hours plus, the meat was, in the words of my boyfriend, ‘so tender it’s like beef spaghetti’. See for yourself below…

Each bite exploded with juice, sauce and all round BOOM, flavour. Wearing white trousers while eating this = major error. It came with slaw (you can choose between beans and slaw) and sweet, crunchy, spiced pickles: inhalable. On the side, two slices of rye, made by Bridget who runs Wild Caper deli in Brixton; she bakes it every morning in the burning furnace of Franco Manca’s pizza oven, before they start service.

The pulled Gloucester Old Spot pork had also benefited from 12 hours plus in the smoker. I marvelled at the tender strands which swerved any danger of claggyness. Beans too; baby-food comfort with bite. A hunk of bread is necessary to soak up juices but doesn’t dominate; a wise decision not to serve the meat in buns in my opinion.

We chat to Zeren Wilson as we eat, perching on stools out front. He tells us that  Tom Adams, the chef behind the show has worked at the Blueprint Cafe before embarking on this and he’s only 22. He cheers as we order two picklebacks, “the first two of the day!” and he seems bursting with excitement, as he should be. There are drinks too, Brew Dog’s Punk IPA, now in cans (one of my all time favourite beers); The Kernel, a London pale ale; Sambrook’s Wandle; Burrow Hill cider. We are strongly encouraged to think about picklebacking ‘Fighting Cock’ bourbon next time we visit. These people are talking my language. Go.

Pitt Cue Co.
Under Hungerford Bridge from 1pm to about 10pm, Wednesday-Sunday.

I’m always thinking about the next thing I can sling on the BBQ. This weekend I fancied flavours of the Caribbean and my thoughts, naturally, turned to RUM. I used that as a boozy base for a marinade, then added a mixture of marmalade and honey, which caramelised on the grill and gave the stickiness I was after. Lime juice provided astringency, garlic and thyme fragrance and a scotch bonnet chilli, proper heat. A hint of allspice muddled nicely with the rum.

After playing around with a few variations, I’ve arrived at this recipe which makes a rather sexy pile of wings. The depth of a pirate-sized slug of Captain Morgan, sweet fruit, lip-tingling heat. Mmmm. Wings are excellent on the BBQ as they’re cheap, have a lot of surface area to hold marinade and they cook quickly, so you can get them nice and charred outside and juicy within.

I served this with a bowl of pineapple salsa, which compliments the booze, and a large kitchen roll. Sticky…

Sticky rum and scotch bonnet chicken wings (makes enough marinade for 10 wings)

10 chicken wings

2 tablespoons runny honey
2 tablespoons orange marmalade
A thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated
50ml dark rum (I used Captain Morgan)
Zest and juice of 1 large lime plus 1 more for serving
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 scotch bonnet, de-seeded and finely chopped
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
Salt

Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a bowl, stirring until well mixed and the marmalade is no longer lumpy. Pour about 3/4 of the marinade over the wings, mix to make sure they are well coated then cover and refrigerate overnight. During the day time, try and move the wings around in the marinade a few times if you can, it helps to get them nicely coated.

Preheat your BBQ and cook the wings, turning them often and brushing regularly with the remaining 1/4 of the marinade. Do this until all the marinade is gone, the wings are sticky, charred and cooked through.

The grilling season is upon us. I’m excited. The summer stretches out in front of me like one long BBQ sizzling with stuffed squid, beer-can duck, tikka, grilled pineapple salsa, sardines, smoky baba and of course, plenty of jerk (top tips for great jerk here).

Portuguese piri piri chicken is something I’ve been meaning to experiment with for a while. We’ve survived the winter by ordering from Na Pura in Nunhead. The chicken there has a good flavour and is cooked well but I do wish they’d use better quality birds. They also take forever to cook them. After a batch of wings and a chicken or two I’ve hammered down my own recipe and the time has come to say that I’m sorry, Na Pura, but your services are no longer required.

My piri piri sauce is a combination of shed-loads of fierce little chillies, oregano, paprika, garlic, vinegar, oil and sugar; the sweet/sharp balance makes it perfect for the BBQ and BBQ’d it must be because char is very important for this recipe. The skin should be blackened in places. The vinegar in the marinade tenderises the meat keeping it juicy and moist inside. The other important thing to remember is to keep a pot of marinade and a brush to hand when grilling; brush the bird liberally and often. When she’s done, give her a final coat before serving with wedges of lemon and a big salad. And a beer.

It’s nice to serve a pot of the sauce at the table with a little brush, like Restaurante Bonjardim in Lisbon.

Piri Piri Chicken (makes enough for 2 chickens)

30 piri piri or other small red chillies (obviously you may need to adjust the amount according to the chillies you have available)
3 teaspoons dried oregano (fresh would be lovely but it’s quite hard to find around here)
2 level tablespoons paprika
150ml red wine vinegar
200ml olive oil
6 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar
Salt
Chicken (see instructions on spatchcocking at the end)

Whack everything in a blender until smooth. Pour half of the marinade over your meat, cover and refrigerate overnight. Turn the bird around in the marinade every now and then. When it comes to grilling your bird/s, get the coals white hot then move them to the edges of the BBQ and put your chicken in the middle. Brush regularly with the marinade. Cook until the skin is blackened in places and the bird is cooked through (about 15-20 mins per side for a spatchcocked chicken).

Brush again with the marinade before serving.

If you’re cooking a whole bird on the BBQ, spatchcock (butterfly) it to ensure it cooks fast and evenly. To do this, place the bird breast-side down on a board, with the tail towards you. Using scissors, cut along each side of the backbone to remove it (this requires a little welly as you’re cutting through the ribs but it’s not that difficult). Turn the bird over and use the heel of your hand to push down on the breastbone so that it’s all one thickness. Use skewers to secure the legs and keep the shape of the chicken by pushing them through the thigh and then diagonally through the breast. A bird will take 15-20 minutes per side. If you want to see someone doing it there are some good vids on youtube.