Weird BBQ recipes this Australia Day long weekend

January 25th, 2013

Appliance Talk BBQs Humour

I’m pretty confident in guessing that a significant percentage of Australians will be attending or hosting a barbeque this Australia Day long weekend.

If you’re stuck for barbeque recipe ideas, or need some advice for getting the best results from your barbeque, you may want to check out Best Home Chef, where some of Australia’s most dedicated home cooks have been pooling their talents and comparing notes.  You may learn something, and that something may just make you barbeque a bit better.

But even if you’ve already organised the traditional barbeque elements – steaks (to be cooked perfectly), snags, assorted veggies, bread, sauce and drinks – you may still be lacking something special to make your barbeque something special; something that people are going to look back on fondly in their winter years.

Here are five quick ideas for unusual barbeque meals this Australia Day long weekend (though for the sake your safety and health, we don’t recommend them):

Brick chicken

If you’re too impatient to carve a chicken into individual pieces for cooking, but can never get a perfectly even roast out of a whole bird, this trick may be for you.

Source: Lifehacker

All you need is a couple of house bricks (if your house is made of the things, hopefully you’ll have some spares lying around – just don’t take any out of the wall!) and some foil to flatten out half a chicken each, thus spreading out its surface area for more even cooking, even if presentation is going to suffer a bit.

Beer can chicken

This isn’t a new trick, having been passed down from bbq cook to bbq cook for generations, but it is an alternative way to make your chicken a bit interesting if you can’t find a brick.

Simon’s Beer Butt Chicken

Just insert half a can of the amber fluid into your chicken and position standing up.  The heat from the barbeque should theoretically evaporate your beer into steam, infusing your chicken with flavour from the inside.  Just don’t show your more sensitive guests how it’s made – not everyone will approve.

Bacon Explosion

You may like bacon.  You may have some friends that like bacon.  Time to put that love to the test with this hideously over-the-top means of eating more bacon than anyone could ever want.

The pre-cooked, pre-assembled Explosion

The full recipe can be found at bbqaddicts.com, but the short version is weaving together a net of bacon pieces and using it to wrap up a log of mince, cheese, and whatever else you feel like, before barbequing the lot.

The completed Explosion

After just looking at these pictures, you may wish to consult a cardiologist.

Meat cake

“Whoa, cake?” I hear you exclaim, spluttering your Australian-made beer across the room.  “I thought this was a barbeque, not a bake-off!”

Calm down.  While this notorious internet recipe does call for two layers of meatloaf that would involve oven baking, before covering them in a “frosting” of mashed potato, I reckon you could adapt this recipe to use hamburger patties instead.  Sure, the cakes will be smaller and flatter, but everyone will get one of their own!

Plus, cupcakes are very trendy these days – make sure that your barbeque rides the wave of popular culture.

Car steak

This is cheating a bit, as it’s not quite proper barbequing, but it’s a fun little trick to pull if you plan on travelling to visit the barbeque of your family and friends this long weekend.

Back when we first explored the strange cooking ideas of putting fish in the dishwasher, one of our creative readers gave us this little gem:

“I wrap a steak, butter and a little bit of Cup’o’Soup in tin foil and wire to exhaust manifold…drive at 100km for 20 km and turn….yum.” – Warren

So if you’re heading up the coast or out to the country this long weekend, stick a steak under the car and have something to contribute to the meal when you arrive.  Talke about “bring a plate”…

Though even if you’re not travelling, you can still get a car-cooked meal if you’ve something like this handy:

Source: All Over Albany

Happy Australia Day everyone!  Have a great, safe long weekend!