About BBQFORTE
BBQ, but
louder.
Big flavours. Ridiculous ideas. Proper fire.
The bloke behind it
I’m Ben Forte.
I grew up in Devon, where some of my earliest memories of cooking outdoors came from watching my dad take charge of the BBQ at charity events. It was always where the action was. People gathered around the fire, food tasted better and everyone wanted to be part of it.
I definitely did.
What started as an obsession with cooking over fire has since taken me to TV studios, food festivals, events and BBQs around the world.
TV
Channel 4’s My Kitchen Rules
Podcast
UnitedQ — the number one barbecue podcast
Creator
The Great British BBQ Off
Author
Ben & Dan’s Alfresco Christmas — Amazon bestselling cookbook
But BBQFORTE has never really been about collecting BBQ credentials.
It’s about the food.
Big flavours. Ridiculous ideas. Proper fire. Recipes that make you want to invite people round and cook something outside.
The rule around here
No beige food.
I don’t believe BBQ has to mean endless plates of brown meat.
Some days I’ll spend hours cooking something low and slow. Other days I’ll throw a wok over screaming hot charcoal, make pizza, cook a curry, bake a dessert or come up with something that probably has no business being cooked on a BBQ.
That’s the fun of it.
BBQFORTE is about treating the BBQ as another way to cook, not something you drag out of the shed three weekends a year.
Big flavour.
No beige food.
If there’s one rule around here, it’s simple.
This website
The recipe obsession.
This website is the next chapter of BBQFORTE.
I’m building it to become one of the biggest and most useful collections of BBQ recipes in the UK, from quick midweek cooks and burgers to live fire feasts, smoking, rotisserie, pizza, desserts and everything in between.
Not recipes written for search engines and buried underneath somebody’s life story.
Recipes you can actually cook.
Whether you’ve just bought your first grill or you’ve been cooking over charcoal for years, hopefully you’ll find something here that makes you want to light it.
Every recipe gets
- Clear ingredients
- Proper instructions
- Fire setup
- Temperatures
- Tips learnt the hard way
And plenty of ideas you probably haven’t thought about putting on a BBQ before.
More than recipes
Everything else on the fire.
Guides
Know your fire. Temperatures, techniques and setups that actually work.
ExploreWatch
Cooks, experiments and conversations from the fire, on video.
ExploreStories
Experiments, people and the glorious disasters behind the recipes.
ExploreShop
Products worth owning, from the kit I actually cook with.
ExploreYou’ll also find product recommendations and conversations with some of the people doing interesting things with food and fire.
And occasionally, I’ll still turn up at events, festivals, on your TV, radio or wherever else somebody is foolish enough to hand me a microphone and a BBQ.
Get outside.
Light a fire.
Cook something brilliant.
Find a recipe Join the BBQFORTE club.
Fresh recipes, ridiculous ideas and everything worth cooking over fire — straight from me.