Barbecue your food, enjoy sips of your favorite wine and tan yourself in the sun!! What a perfect combination it sounds when it comes to entertaining your family and friends on an out-of-the-home trip.

The term “Barbecue” can be used in dual senses. One can barbecue the food that is cook it by heating under charcoal or gas in a special technique or one can use a barbecue to grill his choice of meat and vegetables.

Let us first talk of the equipment.

Barbecue can be of three broad types – charcoal, gas and electric. But hold on! This is only one part of the story. You also need to give a piece of your thought to the considerations such as how often would you need the barbecue? Where will you be primarily using it? What will be the size of your group or is it for personal use? And most important of all, do you have enough shelf space to store it?

If you cook large portions of meat, or for a large group then it must be worth investing in a big barbecue. On the other hand if you are a burger and hotdog type person then you can stick to a cheap and small one. Planning to hold frequent barbecue get-togethers, every weekend say, go for a decent size and decent price for you do not wish to leave few stomachs half-filled.

Charcoal barbecue are for perfect chefs. These use charcoal for cooking and produce food with smoked and earthy taste...very authentic indeed! But these are slower and may be difficult to clean as well. Gas barbecues come with two or more burners, give more heat and flame control and use natural propane gas for cooking food. Electric ones are plug-in types and can be taken to beach or picnic parties. Each of the barbecues has its own lighting mechanism and has to be monitored so that your food is well cooked to suit both your palate and stomach.

Once you have made up your mind and found answers to all the above questions, one needs to hunt for a suitable barbecue. Remember, these cooking devils come in prices ranging from the cheap ones ($20-$50) to the expensive ones ($3000 for the state-of-the-art gas grills).

After having talked about the barbecue as equipment lets now discuss the barbecue cooking. Barbecue is a method of cooking where the food, normally meat, is grilled over slow or medium heat till it cooks. In this process, the cooking is generally healthier if you use moderate amount of fats and spices. The food tastes better. Usually, the all meats are vegetables are marinated in sauce or some traditional marinate such as curd or spices before being thrown in the equipment for barbecue.

So, entertain yourself and your friends by making mouth watering burgers, hotdogs, steaks, chicken. And yes, do not loose on vegetarians for you can barbecue almost all vegetables be it corn, eggplants or stuffed tomatoes.