The days are getting longer, sunnier, the daffodils are out and it’s not long until the clocks go back – hello Spring! 
This weekend was the warmest so far this year, and for some of us, sparked the first barbecue of 2015. Barbecues are great. What can be better than cooking outside, eating outside, and generally escaping months of being cooped up in the kitchen? Whether you’re cooking on gas, or keeping things traditional with logs or a few coals, here are some of the things you can expect from outdoor cooking in 2015.
Gone are the days of simple sausages or burgers in a bun. Last year saw a US influence create demands for American style bold flavours such as sweet, spicy, smoky and tomato. Experts predict that flavour will continue to be big in 2015. British consumers are becoming more adventurous and are looking for ways to add hotter, spicier flavours to meals. According to Bowman, this year is likely to see some fiery flavour trends from the international street food scene translate into new products on the supermarket shelves.
Once the evenings start getting a little lighter, increasingly we’ll see barbecues become a method of cooking dinner on a week night. We are no longer waiting for the weekend to light up and get grilling. BBQs could become the norm, while the oven takes a break.
We’ll also see a continued growth in the use of technology in our cooking. More and more of us will come to rely on high-tech electronics to help us take barbecue to the next level. Thermocouple meat probes and remote thermometers will tell us the exact internal temperature of our prime ribs or pork loins. Never get food poisoning from an undercooked chicken breast again!
The average number of barbeques held per family during the summer rose from 2.5 in 2004 to around 9 in 2014. It’s likely that this number will increase further in 2015. Here’s to a long hot summer of al fresco dining (and failing that, make sure you have a nice big umbrella to hand).