Recipes often suggest that the meat, fish or vegetable element is best cooked on a barbecue. Can I get close to that result indoors?
Justin, Bournemouth
Well, yes and no. “How grilling works is that the fat drips on to the coals below and it smokes, which permeates the meat. So you can’t really recreate that, for obvious reasons,” says David Carter, chef-founder of Smokestak in London.
That said, there are a few tactics Justin can deploy to get close. The first and simplest, says Jack Stein, chef-director at Rick Stein Restaurants, is to use a griddle pan: “It gives you the ability to get those charred bar marks on whatever you’re cooking.” That’s the route Patrick Williams, chef-patron of Kudu Collective in south-east London, would take for meat: “If you’re cooking a T-bone or similar, get the pan raging hot, then, to get more flavour, put the meat in a tray with loads of garlic, rosemary, thyme and ember oil.” The oil, he says, is the key to instant smokiness, although, admittedly, that would require Justin to barbecue the meat at some point. “We take a leftover briquette [charcoal], chuck it in a pot of oil, cover and seal – it gives the oil an intense, smoky sweetness, and we then use it in dressings or sauces to baste fish, meat, or vegetables.”
