Northern Irish chef Jim Moore on his BBQ tips: ‘The fire isn’t controlling us’

Can you really barbecue absolutely anything and everything? Belfast-based BBQ expert Jim Moore believes we can.

“I haven’t found anything I can’t cook on the barbecue yet,” he says with a grin. Hence his new cookbook, How To BBQ Everything, a guide to doing just that. And this is from a man who has cold smoked cream on the barbecue for Irish coffee.

Known for his Instagram account @onlyslaggin, whether you’re a dab hand at grilling, or your fire-cooking curiosity is only just piquing, Moore’s debut recipe collection has got you covered. Just don’t expect 10 ways with hot dogs, or him waxing lyrical about the merits of the burgers most of us grew up eating at rain-stricken summer barbies.

“It was burgers and hot dogs, maybe a piece of steak or a piece of chicken if we were being really adventurous, and they wouldn’t always be barbecued the best; black on the outside and raw on the inside. I think we’ve moved on an awful lot from that,” says Moore.

“Barbecuing is an event. It’s not just cooking a meal. I love the social side of getting people round, having a bit of fun and a bit of craic,” he continues. “You don’t do the same thing with air fryers.”

He says crucial to the allure of grilling is being outdoors and the “immersive” experience of “harnessing fire”, which might sound daunting to some, but follow Moore’s top tips and you’ll be a pitmaster in no time…

Don’t buy a BBQ cover

“Most barbecues don’t need a cover on them. I think of a cover as almost a mental block to actually cooking,” says Moore. “People will look out and go, ‘The cover’s on,’ and it’s one more thing for them to take off. I always tell people, don’t buy a cover for barbecue. Mine sit outside, 24/7, 365, and there’s never any issues with them.”

Get to grips with charcoal

“People often think, ‘I’d love to cook on charcoal. It tastes way better, but gas is so much more convenient’. But there’s loads you can do to make starting charcoal much easier,” promises Moore. “Once you get that in your head, you never go back to gas.”

He suggests using a chimney starter. “You pour charcoal into it, put a fire lighter underneath, and it works like a turbo version of the barbecue itself,” and within 10 minutes, your charcoal is lit and ready to pour into your barbecue, and you’re ready to go. There’s no waiting around for an hour for things to heat up.

“Years ago, we would have thought about piling the charcoal in, heaven forbid, people would have put lighter fluid on it and all that to try and get it going,” says Moore. wincing. “There’s no requirement to do any of that these days.”

Barbecue whatever the weather

“I barbecue all year round,” says Moore, who often live-posts while cooking Christmas dinner on his grill. “Some of the winter months are actually better for barbecuing, because of the moisture and the air coming through that feeds the fire.”

Rain, he admits, can be a nuisance, “but if you have the BBQ on, you can nip out to check what you’re cooking, close the lid back down again and the barbecue will look after itself.”

Remember, BBQ is not a man’s world

The idea that only men man the barbecue is on its way out. “[Roughly] 30% of my audience is female, and I don’t think that’s just because of my dashing good looks,” says Moore wryly.  “My wife is involved in the barbecue and she can cook every bit just as well as I can.”

He flags writers Melissa Thompson and Genevieve Taylor, who both have exceptional grilling cookbooks of their own. “It shouldn’t be a male-dominated activity. I don’t know why it’s ever fallen into that,” says Moore. “It shouldn’t be that way. Everybody can muck in and get involved.”

Make the most of a meat probe

“I’m always telling people: cook to temperature, not time. A lot of people have fear and start the chicken in the oven and then move the chicken outside to the BBQ,” says Moore patiently. “You don’t need to do that because your barbecue is an oven.”

A meat thermometer will bring peace of mind and help eliminate food poisoning. “You can probe the chicken at several different points, and you know when you hit 75 degrees, that the chicken’s fully cooked the whole way through,” says Moore. “If the packet says, ‘Cook for an hour and a half at 180 degrees’, you don’t need to do that.”

Understand air flow

Moore says he receives messages from people saying, ‘I took my eye off the ball. The temperature got away from me, so I’ve opened the lid to let the heat out.’ “You have to say, ‘Well, you’re not actually letting the heat out. What you’re doing is counter-intuitive, you’re letting more oxygen in,” says Moore, which fuels the flames and the heat. “While you let more oxygen in, the fire is getting away from you. You need to close that lid and just let it settle, let that bring the heat back down again, and then you harness it back up.”

Get your head around zones

“People will put a lot of charcoal into their barbecue, or fire up every grill on their gas barbecue, and they’ve no safe zones to go to if they get a little bit of a flare up,” explains Moore. Having hotter and cooler zones, for direct and indirect cooking, gives you options and means “we’re controlling that fire. The fire’s not controlling us”.

Have a plan

“Take your time. Think about what it is you want to do, plan your cook. Think about where you want to serve your food, and then work backwards from there and have everything ready,” says Moore. “The more you can prep and have food ready before you put on the grill, the easier it’ll be for yourself.”

But be daring

“Try and elevate it and move on from just the burgers and hot dogs,” says Moore, who has been barbecuing a lot of lamb legs recently. “Once you’ve picked up one or two recipes in the book, you’ll be off and running, trying all manner of different things. Be a bit more adventurous.”

And one day, not too far down the line, he hopes more people get “to the point where they can cook everything on the barbecue in terms of their full dish, the sides, the dessert” – the whole delicious shebang.

How To BBQ Everything by Jim Moore is published in hardback by Ebury Press, priced £25. Photography by Liz and Max Haarala Hamilton. Available now