Winter Barbecues with BergHOFF’s Cast Iron Grill Pan

The summer is over. We’re sorry if we’re the ones to break it to you, but barbecue season is over for the year. Or is it?

While we might think of the summer as the only time to have a barbecue, it doesn’t have to be. If you aren’t ready to give up on smoky, grilled tasting meals quite yet, BergHOFF has the solution for you. Our new range of cast iron pans enable you to cook delicious grilled dishes, all year round. With our Cast Iron Grill Pan, you can make sure your BBQs carry on all year round.

Cast Iron Grill Pans from BergHOFF enable you to produce food that tastes exactly like your favourite barbecued meals, without needing to step foot outside your door. Our new design is a fresh take on a kitchen staple. The unique heat retaining properties of our cast iron enables for perfectly even heat distribution across the pan. They are perfect for all sorts of cooking, but make even a winter BBQ easy and effective. To be able to produce the effects of BBQ cooking without using a barbecue, you need to master the techniques and principles of cast iron cookery.

Think about the tastes that you associate with barbecued cooking. You might think of spices, sauces and side dishes, but most likely you will think first of smoke. Smokey taste is most associated with cooking over an open flame – whether this comes from coals, wood, or gas. However, the taste we associate with smoke does not necessarily come directly from the smoke itself. We can use a range of flavours to simulate the same taste. These include smoked spices, such as smoked paprika and smoked salt. We might also use savoury ingredients to mimic the sensation of smoky taste, such as fish or soy sauce.

When you cook on a BBQ, you can’t much affect the temperature you cook at. While you can move around the coals and the grill racks, you are still essentially always working with a very hot cooking surface. As a result, to match this on a cast iron grill pan, you need to crank the heat as high as you can. Cast iron has great heat maintaining properties. However, it can take a while to warm up thoroughly and consistently. This means that you need to pre-heat your grill pan to ensure you have reached the temperatures you need to produce. One way to check that your pans have got hot enough is to drip a few drops of water onto the pan. If it evaporates quickly, it is hot enough.

Finally, we need to consider the other aspects of mirroring BBQ cooking indoors. When you cook fatty meats, like lamb or some cuts of beef and pork, the fat will melt and caramelise on a barbecue. However, you may need to use some oil on your grill pan to encourage this sort of reaction. Try brushing on a small amount of oil, rather than pouring much in. Outdoor grilling usually takes advantage of a closable lid – which cast iron grill pans do not have. However, you can easily use an inverted metal bowl over the pan to simulate this barbecue effect.

Barbecue grills are famous for getting messy, and needing lengthy scrubbing. Another advantage of BergHOFF’s new cast iron technology is how easy it is to clean. You can clean almost all mess with just a sponge and soapy water.

Check out our new Cast Iron Grill Pans here, as well as the rest of our new cast iron range.