Upcoming Event: Community BBQ group cook
This event has now taken place, and was a lot of fun! Keep an eye out for future community cooks to get involved.
Since the pandemic hit in early 2020, the BBQ community has really rallied together - I think a lot of it initially came from so many of us either being furloughed or forced to work from home for the entire Spring and Summer 2020, so naturally with more people at home and with permanent access to their grills they found themselves with time to cook outside.
There are lots of tales of people joining Instagram or setting up BBQ accounts, and other only starting BBQing at the start of the year and already cooking absolutely incredible meals and all sorts of exciting cuts of meats and ideas.
From this community, largely starting on Instagram, a couple of people over the year started organising group cooks - usually around a theme (the first one was just ribs and sides but since then has been more creative with themes like christmas markets and beer snacks for a rugby themed one) and supporting a charity. The basic idea is people sign up to cook something on the BBQ around that theme, giving to the chosen charities if they can and there are a couple of Instagram lives scheduled where all participants get the chance to go live and chat about what they are doing. The cooks can be as big or small as people like, even just a little snack - the group has been predominantly UK and Ireland along with representation from Denmark and Canada, and the group is growing all the time. Incredibly the group cooks have raised something £2,000 for a bunch of charities.
The next community cook
The next event, now being organised as part of the The Sizzle Show community is on Sunday February 7th and the theme is BBQ Platter Plate (interpret that as you like! Its Super-bowl weekend which is impacting that theme).
The event is supporting a couple nurses charities from UK and Ireland.
How can I get involved
If you want to formally be involved - which means getting onto the Instagram lives (if you want to, thats optional of course) and entered for prize draws and the cook competition you can sign up and register yourself on The Sizzle Show website too.
If you want to get involved more informally, or just don’t know if you are going to be able to get involved until the day, then you can still share the pictures and support the cook by posting with the group cook hashtags.
Artwork in header image by Nathan Bowen