The big Outdoor BBQ Kitchen Buyers Guide

So you’d love to invest in a beautiful, hard-working, feature-rich outdoor BBQ kitchen? What an excellent idea! Whether you buy one of our large or XL models or choose something smaller and neater for your garden, there’s plenty to think about before you make a decision.

Welcome to our Outdoor BBQ Kitchen Buyers Guide. By the end of this article you’ll know everything about making a great decision that’ll see you cooking up a storm for years to come conveniently, with confidence, in comfort. We’ve illustrated it with lots of treats from our collection to inspire you. Let’s go.

First – Check the size of your outdoor BBQ kitchen

Size matters. You need space outdoors for more than the cooker itself. So we’ll kick off our Outdoor BBQ Kitchen Buyers Guide with advice about choosing the best sized garden oven for your home.

You might have room for a whopper of a BBQ, but it’s about a lot more than cooking. People will want to stand around chatting, so you need to allow space for that. They’ll want a seating area to relax in, or at least a few comfy garden chairs to sink into while you cook up the magic. And where will people eat? On plates standing up, at one big outdoor dining table seating 4, 6, or 8-12, or at a series of smaller bistro table and chair sets scattered around the area like a funky cafe?

As the chef, you’ll need enough room around the BBQ to comfortably do your magic without falling over people or furniture. And how many folk are you most likely to feed at any one time? Four of you, or more like fourteen? It’s easy to get carried away by the sheer excitement of cooking outdoors, and there’s such a cool choice of outdoor kitchens, but there’s no real need to buy something massive if you’ll be feeding just a few people most of the time.

Tip: think about a warming rack

If you’ll be making food for a lot of people, you might want to pick a BBQ with a warming rack so you can keep already-prepared food toasty while you cook more. It’s a sensible move when you like to feed everyone at once.

Tip: make a shortlist

You could spend all day exploring, but how about making a shortlist of the models you like best before delving any deeper? It’ll help you narrow things down and stop you getting overwhelmed, an easy pitfall when there’s so much choice.

Tip: measure first, buy second

We recommend you do some careful measuring before you buy. You might want to grab a pen and some graph paper, or do it digitally using a simple Computer Aided Design tool like the free version of SketchUp.

• Measure the entire area you’ll be using for alfresco entertainment
• Note the measurements of the outdoor BBQ kitchen choices you’ve lined up in your shortlist, removing any that turn out to be too big or too small
• Choose the perfect placing for the BBQ within the space, somewhere with enough room around it to do everything you need to do in safety and comfort – and where it also looks good
• Think practically – will you need to walk behind and around the BBQ itself for any reason, or will it make more sense to place it with its back to a wall?
• Go through the exact same process with your outdoor dining set or bistro set, garden chairs, and other exciting garden entertainment things like a chiminea, a fire pit, or patio heaters to keep things cosy

What if your space is teeny? Maybe go portable?

Small city gardens and patios can be a challenge for lovers of alfresco food. But there’s a solution in the shape of a top performing portable BBQ like this one, the Hartford. Isn’t it gorgeous? It takes up hardly any space and also happens to be a stunner of a design.

Outdoor BBQ Kitchen Buyers Guide – The look

Next, the look. Are you more of a traditional brick or stone-look person, or are you into the sleek good looks of modern steel and black powder coated metal? Do you love that fabulous silvery shine or prefer a subtle black finish that blends into the background?

Modern-look BBQs fit perfectly in contemporary gardens, but there’s no reason why you can’t add a beautiful South American style outdoor oven to a sleek modern space, or buy a shiny modern metal outdoor cooker to go in an Old English style flower garden filled with lush colour and greenery. You make your own look, and that’s always cool. While the first part of the decision process is all about the practical side of things – will it fit, will it cook for enough people? – the appearance is a matter for your heart. Just go for the right-sized and shaped model you most like the look of.

The fuel – Wood, charcoal, gas?

What will you cook on? Many of the choices we sell cook on gas and charcoal, or gas and wood. A gas outdoor BBQ kitchen runs cleanly and heats up really fast. Wood or charcoal take longer to heat up and get to the state they need to reach to cook.

If you live in a built-up area where smoke might drive your neighbours nuts, making their washing smell smoky or getting in their eyes, gas might be the considerate choice. On the other hand all the best barbies are designed to minimise smoke. They’ll send any smoke you do make safely up into the air… but it’s another thing worth thinking about.

Choose a model running on both gas and charcoal / wood to give yourself much more flexibility around the dishes you can create. Whichever you go for, the flavour will give you that amazing cooked-outdoors pleasure that’s so hard to beat.

A simple BBQ oven or one with exciting features?

Sometimes all you want to do is buy something simple and clean-lined, a BBQ that does exactly what it says on the tin. Others love nothing more than a BBQ stacked with gadgets and extra functionality. Both come with adantages and disadvantages.

Tip: choose a BBQ that will see you into the future as well as now

You might think you want something super-easy and straightforward. But what if you’re so inspired by outdoor cooking you end up wanting more? If that’s not likely, make a nice, simple choice that’ll cook beautifully for years to come, like the excellent Tepro Lambada, below. If you suspect you’ll get hooked on outdoor cuisine, you might want to invest in something with more versatility, and more cooking potential.

Here’s a model with a wealth of features, below, great for people who like to take alfresco cooking to the max. There’s not much you can’t cook on something like the Indianapolis, which smokes food beautifully as well as BBQing and grilling to perfection. It looks amazing too – what a fantastic thing.

What does it cost?

The price is also important, of course. You know what you can afford and what you can’t. Luckily every model in our store is a quality item. There’s nothing cheap and nasty. It’s all carefully chosen by our team, all rugged and well-built. So even if you pick a smaller, less expensive model, it’ll be an excellent choice.

Tip: we offer free UK delivery

The heavier items we sell, for example our fabulous masonry outdoor BBQ kitchens, arrive on their own pallet direct from the manufacturer. Even though they’re super-heavy, delivery is still free. You might or might not need help taking everything off the pallet. Many of them come in pieces for easy self-assembly, and when we say ‘easy self assembly’, we mean exactly that.

If you can’t stand messing around with screws, try the super-easy non-screw Toronto model we pictured earlier in this post.

Now you’re ready to go for it!

That was our Outdoor BBQ Kitchen Buyers Guide. We’d like to wish you an awesome time creating tasty food for the people you love. What a great way to make the most of your garden.