British BBQ Society Forums

I thought I would share this with the forum although I am certain some members will already know about this.

On Friday I was asked to do a company BBQ for one of our sponsors (Bar-be-quick) at their factory in Burnley. Bar-be-quick do a range of different charcoal types which include briquettes, self lighting lump, lump and restaurant lump as well as BBQ Equipment.

Now most of you will have seen the Restaurant Grade Lump in the Blue bag from Bookers and I dare say a fair amount of you will have used it. I'm also sure like me you will have had enviro conscious people asking how it can be good for the environment when they chop trees down to make this product.

Well it's simple, this charcoal is made from "invader weeds" such as Acacia Trees which grow at tremendous rates and overtake the farm lands of their Namibian farmer hosts. The farmers would need to dispose of the weeds regardless of it's charcoal use anyway just to maintain the use if their land for arable or dairy use.

Although this is a supplementary income for the farmers Bar-be-quick buy their charcoal at 3 times above the price at which it is valued at and in the name of fair trade invested in schools, mobile health clinics, doctors surgeries, education support and many other initiatives to help improve the standard of living for these farmers and their families, workers and dependants.

Aside from a day of cooking ribs, salmon, chicken, peppers, pizza's etc I learned a hell of a lot about a product I thought was just good charcoal.

Thanks for reading,

Adie

Here are some pics that bar-be-quick sent to me today:





I found it slightly odd BBQ'ing in a high vis vest but we were in a Charcoal FACTORY!!! The barriers are the test area perimeters and we Q'd within these areas.

Nice one, I have used Bar-Be- Quick many times and it's always been good and consistent.

I wish we could source british lump in bulk, i am concerned about the "food" miles

The national trust do it also a couple of Devon based woodsmen were on TV a while back doing it. I have to be honest though, the national trust stuff I had was pretty poor by comparison. I think now I know more about the fair trade element and the benefit to the farmers I am more at ease with the lump, as for cocoshell, well until we can get coconut husks grown here I will not have so much of a problem.

I have had bags of lump from richmond park, which was beautiful, but costs a fortune