Experiments
Can you cook a cheesecake over charcoal?
A Basque cheesecake, a kettle BBQ and three weekends of trial and mostly error. The answer surprised us.
Ben Forte
BBQFORTE storyPeople
The cooks changing what British BBQ looks like
Away from the competitions and the social feeds, a new generation of British cooks is rebuilding BBQ in its own image.
By Ben Forte
British BBQ used to mean one thing: brisket, smoke rings and American accents. Not anymore. In back gardens, on allotments and over borrowed grills, a new wave of cooks is cooking their own food, their own way — and it is much more interesting for it.
From borrowed traditions to borrowed grills
Spend any weekend on UK social media and you will find it: Korean gochujang wings done on a kettle, a Sunday roast finished over charcoal, a Pakistani-inspired lamb shoulder cooked low and slow in a Yorkshire garden. British BBQ has stopped imitating and started innovating.
The shift did not happen overnight. Lockdown put a grill in millions of gardens. A decade of food TV made technique normal. And a generation of cooks who grew up on dishes from their own families realised the fire does not care where the marinade comes from.
“The fire is the great leveller. It does not care about your heritage, your budget or your garden size — only whether the food tastes good.”
— Ben Forte
What this new wave has in common
Three things keep coming up when you talk to these cooks. First, ingredients from actual British shops, not specialist imports. Second, respect for technique without worship of it — no one is weighing wood chips to the gram. Third, generosity: recipes published for free, methods explained without gatekeeping.
It is BBQ built for how Britain actually cooks now — smaller gardens, unpredictable weather, mixed families, big appetites.
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