Breakfast of champions
... but we also allow brunch, if you get up late. Whether it’s a traditional fry up, or other morning meals from around the world, planchas, griddles and flat top grills are elevating breakfast to sizzling new heights. Jemima Nelson reports.
The most important meal of the day – a full English or something more exotic from lands afar – and yet breakfast can often get overlooked when it comes to a barbecue.
Maybe the issue is it’s invariably the most rushed meal of the day. Whether dashing out the door to get to work or throwing cereal at recalcitrant children already late for school, the clock barely gives you time to switch on the kettle and push down the toaster.
It is time breakfast woke up – egg, bacon, sausage are you listening? – and fought for its space on the BBQ. While winter weekdays might be a stretch, the summer months, allowing for those ‘hurry up, your cricket match/dance class starts in half an hour’ constraints, are perfect to start the way you mean to carry on – in other words, a full day over the fire. I’m sure someone out there has done breakfast, lunch and dinner, subtitled My Perfect Day. And, hey, you can always cheat and get a lie-in by making the first one brunch.
There is a book about it called Brunch Life, written by Canada-based chef Matt Basile. A line on the opening page reads: ‘Breakfast is a meal; brunch is a culture.’ The book talks of buttermilk pancakes, coconut fried chicken and pineapple waffles, mascarpone soft scrambled eggs, or chimichurri steak and egg tacos. Basile even used to run a brunch restaurant Bar Lisa Marie in Toronto.
Basile is the co-founder of Alchemy Grills, which has brunch written all over the Alchemy Pro’s 1900 square inches of cook space.
“It’s a live-fire simultaneous smoker and grill that allows you to cook low and slow and hot and fast at the same time in one place,” says Basile. “The lower unit has two air flow controls and is designed to cook vertically as a smoker or oven-like space. The upper unit powered by an open fire pit is half flat top stainless-steel griddle and half diamond patterned open-fire charcoal grill.”
Think huevos rancheros where the sausages are smoked and cooked over fire and the eggs are cooked directly on the flattop, while the ingredients used to make the salsa are cooked over the rear fire pit.
“Or a big brunch spread, where corn bread muffins, pit beans, and a brie frittata are cooked in the Alchemy’s lower smoker unit, at the same time as pancakes, bacon, hash browns and toast are cooked on the upper unit. The design of the Alchemy makes creating this type of backyard experience less challenging because everything can be done in one spot.”
“Or a big brunch spread, where corn bread muffins, pit beans, and a brie frittata are cooked in the Alchemy’s lower smoker unit, at the same time as pancakes, bacon, hash browns and toast are cooked on the upper unit. The design of the Alchemy makes creating this type of backyard experience less challenging because everything can be done in one spot.”
Kadai, the authentic Indian fire bowl, is perfectly suited to a BBQ breakfast too, complemented by over 40 cookware accessories, including the Holi grill, hot plate, warming rack and cooking tripod – literally different-level breakfast. Fry or grill your toast, cook eggs in the tripod skillet, sear meat on the hot plate, season beans in the skillet and flame cook tomatoes and mushrooms on the grill trays.
When in India, Christo Mckinnon-Wood, founder of Kadai, starts his day by brewing sweet chai tea in the cooking bowl and frying a spicy masala omelette in the frying pan.
“After a late night with friends, sometimes a more substantial brunch is needed, so reach for the Kadai paella pan. Try scaling up the Middle Eastern shakshuka from our cookbook – a rich tomato dish with gooey poached eggs. Serve up with crusty bread and butter slowly warmed up on the warming rack,” says Mckinnon-Wood, adding that pancakes cook perfectly in the chapati pan, with bacon in the grill trays and topped off with sticky maple syrup.
The Blackstone griddle is another breakfast titan, cooking up eggs, sausages, tomatoes, beans, mushrooms, black pudding and hash browns all on the same piece of equipment and with no holes for food to fall through. With its flat plates, there is no direct heat on the surface, with the heat spread evenly across the whole area, making it more forgiving, with no direct flame to burn your food and flexibility over one cooking surface. And, if you’re really hungry, the 36-inch griddle allows you to cook 18 large pancakes at a time.
The Vulcanus plancha is a versatile powerhouse, with its cooking grid extension and adaptable griddle. Its large, flat cooking surface ensures even heat distribution, cooking bacon, eggs, sausages and tomatoes simultaneously without burning and without sticking. There is variety in the cooking methods too, from frying and grilling to sauteing and searing. The plancha is lined with heavy-duty ceramics, stopping heat escaping from the side panels, keeping the cooking surface hot for longer.
“My central firepit at High Grange, Devon, the piece of kit that I use most often, is the Vulcanus,” says live-fire chef and Maison Flair ambassador Luke Vandore-Mackay, who runs a live-fire cookery school. “There is the huge surface area of the plancha, the different hot and cool spots that you can create, the way you can have a pot bubbling away on the grill, directly over the flames, while simultaneously searing your steak.”
“But the main reason it gets lit most days is that it is endless fun and a conversation starter at every cookery class I’ve ever done. Standing round the Vulcanus with a morning coffee while someone cooks you home-cured bacon and freshly collected eggs is a great start to the day.”
Grillstream’s new SmashGrill, from LeisureGrow, with its 91cm x 44cm non-stick flat plate surface, can handle a full English and more, be it pancakes, stir-fired vegetables, egg fried rice and, of course, smash burgers.
The system uses U-shaped burners for uniform heat distribution and comes with a built-in gas bottle on the side and dual shelf storage. The SmashGrill also channels juices and fats away through its tilted and adjustable flat plate design, into a removable fat cup. The SmashGrill uses GasSure, with real-time information about your gas levels and with a sophisticated leak detection system.
Weber recently launched its new SLATE tabletop griddle. This gas griddle provides edge-to-edge consistent heat and a digital temperature display to deliver fast, high heat searing.
Reaching temperatures of over 260°C in 10 minutes, the griddle’s rapid and precise temperature accuracy is possible through a redesigned, patent-pending valve and burner system that improves heat consistency. The griddle is perfect for crispy smash burgers, as well as breakfast bacon and pancakes.
Wake up and smell the coffee – and the barbecue.
Weber