Message Forums

To all, thanks for the info on the heat beads - I found some of a different brand in B&Q yesterday which I tried out last night, they were fab, much hotter than ordinary briquettes and burned for ages! I'd recommend them - can't remember the make right now but I imagine all the B&Qs will be stocking the same brand - they were in a separate bucket and were marketed for use in kettle barbecues.

We cooked whole chicken legs surrounded by roasties in ours last night - put wine and chopped onions into the moat, sprayed chopped potatoes with oil and put them around the chicken legs (thigh and drumstick). Took 1.5 hours, (turned the chicken after 45 mins) the chicken was really tender, the roasties were just right, apart from 1 which I'd left too large and hadn't cooked fully! Note to self, chop potatoes pretty small! Could have added more veggies into the moat from the start as the onions came out tasting lovely - caramelised too!

Pizza - has anyone done it, the cobb sites seem to recommend using the cobb pan to do pizza on, which we don't have. Does it work the same just cooking it on the standard grill pan? Has anyone done shop bought pizzas on it (don't know if I can be bothered to make pizza dough on holiday!) and again, how long?

I think the Cobb site is referring to after you have finished cooking really. We always heat ours up first with the lid on.

Shop bought pizza is great on the Cobb, but put the pizza on the roasting rack as if you don't you'll have a burnt bottom.....which you really wouldn't want would you? . Timings I'm not sure about, but at least as long as it says on the packet.

We do all sorts on our cobb and have always used the Australian heat beads. I regulary do bolognaise on it, cooking exactly the same as i would as home.

Remember if you don't fully use all the coals you can douse them in water (we have a small metal bucket for this), dry them out in the sun (sometimes not so easy when UK camping) and reuse them. A bag of beads lasts us for ages when we do this.