Summers are made for getting outdoors, setting up the grill and inviting family and friends around for a meal. Can’t you just smell the beef coking and imagine the joy to be had. Its easy to see why most people in outdoor cooking surveys say that they love grilling the most.

But wait, yes the grill is very important but if you’re serious about entertaining outdoors then its really important to set your grill within a well planned outdoor kitchen.

How big or small this will be will be down to you and the available funds. My advice, if the budget will take it, is to go for a simple but comprehensive set up including: a grill and a stove; a cabinet for storage; a work top, a sink; a refrigerator and a well positioned seating area.

Your outdoor kitchen will bring in its wake many benefits. you’ll be free of walking in and out of the house so many times you’re going dizzy, you’ll have everything to hand when you need it; your family will be seriously impressed and enjoy your entertaining and you’ll be far more relaxed…. that is of course, assuming you’ve planned it all well in advance of starting the project.

What is the force that is driving the move towards ever bigger, ever more technical, ever more sophisticated outdoor cooking equipment?

Yes, its true that outdoor cooking takes slightly more time than cooking indoors, but don’t you think theres something magical about it? Speaking for myself I think that its well worth the extra effort as nothing tastes better than food cooked outdoors!

We run the e-commerce Outdoor Cooking Equipment Store providing cooking equipment to people who enjoy outdoor cooking. The reason I’m writing is because I’m becoming evermore concerned about the technology, the scale and the gadgetry that comes with the latest outdoor cooking equipment. I have to ask whether its worth cooking outdoors given the fact that what they’re cooking on is a bigger scale and more technically sophisticated that that which they cook on indoors! What on earth is it that we are trying to create in our gardens?

The days of simple outdoor cooking are threatened by those who would have us believe that the next technology horizon is the patio! Even as a retailer of outdoor cooking equipment I have to ask, what is the point of cooking outdoors if technology has taken over? Where has the flair gone; where is the initiative; where has the creativity gone?