My first gas BBQ

I strongly resisted the temptation to move over to a gas BBQ because I believed that you could only get the authentic flavour from charcoal.

There were times though when I only wanted to cook a few burgers or sausages. In these circumstances, setting up and lighting my charcoal Weber would take too long. I wanted something that was much quicker for those sort of occasions.

So I bought a Homebase Sorrento (similar to the one illustrated but with wooden side tables).

I didn’t want anything too large or fancy so the Sorrento fitted the bill.

The first thing I discovered was that you have to pay a deposit on 7Kg butane bottles which becomes non returnable after a couple of years. Next I found that assembling these models is not all that easy.

Niggles:

From the start - the temperature gauge didn’t work and the ignition system needed several pushes to light the gas. The igniter was open so soon got coated in grease which short circuited the spark. There was however a hole in the side which you could light the gas through with either a match or a gas lighter.

After the first Winter the grill was rusty. I had obviously scoured the thin chrome off it. I cleaned it up but it never looked like new again.

The glass in the lid quickly got covered in burnt grease which was then difficult to clean.

There were only two burners with two heat positions which made control of cooking tricky.

Worse though it was hard to control flare ups when cooking fatty food like burgers. The lava rock left spaces where you could see the burners so any fat was bound to drip onto the flames.

I solved that problem by changing the lava rock for Penrock which is square shaped and doesn’t soak up fat. I also bought a fine mesh grill to hang under the cooking grill which again helped stop flare ups.

In spite of the problems I found myself using the gas grill more often because of the sheer convenience. My daughter uses it now.

Time to move on!