One of my favourite childhood memories is my family barbecues - every year around August my parents would host a barbecue which coincided with an event in my hometown called 'Gala Day' - this was a day filled with floats (people doing weird things on the back of a trailer), events like tug-a-war, bouncy castles, sheep shaving and the like.
My mum would invite all our family and close friends and put on a big spread! I mean a massive buffet of sausage rolls, cheese & onion rolls, sandwiches, chicken (all kinds - thigh, breast, wings), sausages, homemade potato salad and coleslaw, alcohol (obviously) and lots more that I'm struggling to think about.
The main source of food was the barbecue which my dad looked after ... he could cook everything to perfection.
Anyway enough about the past ... a few months ago - I was contacted by Mill Race Garden Centre and asked if I wanted to purchase something of my choice - and who could say 'no' to that?!
Now I've never owned a barbecue - I've been to barbecues at my parents (obviously) and to friends but never had my own. So I decided after much debate to get a barbecue!
I opted for the smaller range of barbecues because I planned to only cook for a couple of friends and myself - nothing crazy big!
For those that are interested - the barbecue is of steel construction and has a roasting lid for slow cooking and roasting, there is also an ash collecting tray underneath and 2 weather resistant wheels. It was very easy to assemble and took up about 10 minutes to build it.
So I wanted to cook something fast and easy and not too messy as to not mess up the barbecue on it's first run so I opted for my favourite sausages - cos who doesn't love a good sausage sarnie!?!
So a good barbecue starts with a good base ... so I got Dave (my unsuspecting boyfriend) to deal with that ... so we used chunky charcoal and some fire lighters and left that to burn away until the charcoals were ready.
I decided to go with 'Richmond's Irish Sausages' these are my favourites and I've eaten them for years now. I'd never eat anything else but these.
So we popped them on the barbecue (we put the top grate back on once the charcoals have calmed down).
We decided to go with finger rolls - as these work best with sausages. We purchased these from Tesco - the white rolls were £1 and you got 8, and the wholemeal sub-rolls were 80p for 4.
The Richmond Irish Sausages were £2 (special deal).
As you can see the sausages cooked amazingly on the barbecue - just looking at them now and typing them makes me want to eat more ...
The finished product ... I'll let you stare at them for a minute ...
So I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Mill Race Garden Centre for providing the funds for me to purchase the barbecue. You can check them out HERE. If you want to check out their range of barbecues - you can check that section of their website out HERE.
Let me know if the comments if you've recently had a barbecue?
Disclosure: I was not compensated for this post, however I did receive a sample for my review. All opinions are my own and not influenced in any way.