Family BBQ Ideas

The weather is unreal at the moment and what makes a sunny day better, than ending it with a family BBQ! You may be looking for a a little something extra to take your BBQ to the next level so we have come up with some BBQ ideas suitable for the whole family.

Family BBQ Ideas

Mains

Everyone has they standard meats they like for their bbq, whether it’s red meat, burgers, chicken or pork. However you can always try out some fish on a bbq. You can make fish skewers with salmon or shrimp, or use s whole fish. Stuffing a whole fish and grilling it on lemon slices is such a nice bbq add on for those non meat eaters. You can also grill meat substitutes such as quorn or homemade veggie burgers.

Skewers:

• Pork, pineapple and green pepper
• Sesame honey chicken
• Traffic lights – layer the meat of choice with different coloured peppers i.e. green peppers, meat, yellow pepper, meat, red pepper

Sides

• Potatoes on the BBQ  – if you have a coal BBQ, wrap the potatoes in tinfoil and pop them on the coals while they are heating up. Make sure to keep turning the potatoes. Once you are ready to start cooking the food, you can take them and put the, in the oven to stay warm.
• Vegetable skewers – cut up some peppers, use whole cherry tomatoes and mushrooms. You can use a marinade if you would like are just leave them plain. Put them on skewers and bbq them. The peppers are amazing the next day and turn all sweet from being char grilled.
• Corn on the cob
• Potato salad
• Couscous salad
• Cucumber salad – chop up cucumber, tomatoes and onion. Chop up some parsley, drizzle olive oil, squeeze some lemon juice and pop on some salt and pepper to taste.
• Pickled cucumber – 100 grams of sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt, 75 ml of white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar. Thinly slice one whole cucumber, add to pickling liquid and leave for a few hours.
• Coleslaw – shred white or red cabbage, carrots and onion. Add to taste, white vinegar, sprinkling of sugar and salt, and mix in mayonnaise. For added taste drizzle in some garlic mayo.
• Fried pickles

Deserts

• Roasted marshmallows (but did we really have to remind you of that one!)
• Chocolate bananas – cut the banana longways in the middle and put in slices of chocolate. Wrap in tinfoil and put on the bbq for 10 mins or just until the chocolate has melted.
• Fresh fruit salad
• Cheesecake – check out this super simple recipe from keelings. We made this the other day without the strawberries in it and it came out so well. You can drizzle some dark chocolate on top and have a berry compote in the side as an optional topping. For the compote simmer some frozen berries, with some sugar over medium heat for around 15 minutes or until it has thickened slightly.
• Ice cream sandwiches – make homemade chocolate chip cookies and spoon some ice cream in between 2 cookies.
• Eton mess – make or buy meringues. Make a strawberry compote same as above from the cheesecake. While that is cooling, whip up some cream and crush up the meringue into pieces. Cut up some fresh strawberries and mix altogether.

For some other fun ideas to get your kids to eat check out how to make your meal times fun! Also why not cool down with some DIY homemade popsicles.