What’s better than a pizza or a barbecue with friends? The garden, porch or balcony of your house can host laid tables and a functional kitchenette to prepare ever-changing dishes from time to time.
On a large terrace, you can easily equip an outdoor kitchen that has all the comforts, however small outdoor spaces can also be more than sufficient to allow you to enjoy the company of your guests.
The secret? Equip yourself with versatile tools capable of carrying out various types of cooking, such as a pizza oven with barbecue.
With a single tool you can try your hand, from time to time, at cooking with an oven, grilling or barbecuing so as to create ever-changing dishes, which can range from pizzas to grilled meat, fish to vegetables.
Alfa domestic ovens can be quickly transformed into barbecues thanks to the BBQ 500 accessory.
In this way, you can obtain excellent grills in the oven, thus avoiding buying another cooking tool dedicated to this type cooking.
But, how does a pizza oven and garden barbecue work and what advantages does it offer? Let’s find out below!
In this article, we’ll be covering:
- Why use a pizza oven and garden barbecue
- BBQ 500: the Alfa solution for grilling in an oven
- How to grill without a BBQ with BBQ 500
- 4 advantages of a pizza oven and garden barbecue
- A wood-burning oven with barbecue for a versatile outdoor kitchen
Why use a pizza oven and garden barbecue
Being able to have an oven that can offer different types of cooking solutions in absolute freedom is already a huge advantage in itself.
Deciding to churn out a fragrant Neapolitan pizza or to prepare an excellent barbecue thanks to the same tool allows both to optimize the spaces and to maximize the budget available, since it will not be necessary to buy two different cooking tools.
Usually pizza ovens and garden barbecues are designed to offer maximum practicality and functionality, as well as high performance during cooking.
How? Thanks to special accessories such as BBQ 500 by Alfa that greatly expands the possibilities of cooking, both in a wood-burning oven and in an outdoor gas oven.
If necessary, therefore, the oven can be used to create excellent grills as well as to cook any dish in a unique way, using a cooking method mix in the oven, grilled and barbecued, which eliminates the problem of fumes that are conveyed directly into the oven’s flue.
Thanks to the combination of different heat sources (embers, hot air and fire), cooking different foods is consistently uniform and tasty. Also worth considering is that wood-burning ovens give dishes a slight scent of smoked wood, very similar to that which is obtained with a barbecue.
A pizza oven and garden barbecue can be easily placed on a pre-existing masonry support or on a special base.
The Alfa bases are designed both as a support surface for the oven and to be used by the station for preparing the dishes so as to increase their functionality and practicality during use.
Furthermore, they are equipped with comfortable shelves and professional wheels with brakes so you can move the oven easily from one corner of the garden to another.
BBQ 500: the Alfa solution for grilling in an oven
BBQ 500 is an innovative accessory, developed by the Alfa Forni team, that allows you to grill perfectly using a wood-burning or gas oven.
Easy to use and clean, BBQ 500 can be used in Alfa domestic ovens and consists of only 3 elements:
- A tray: which contains hot embers and serves as a support base in the oven
- A rotating grill: made of steel, it is stably positioned on the base and the food to be cooked is placed on it
- A gripper: useful for rotating the grill and turning food upside down so as to obtain perfect cooking without the risk of burning
Thanks to these 3 simple components you can cook any grilled dish in a unique manner, combining three different types of cooking: oven, grill and BBQ.
BBQ 500 offers numerous advantages for both cooking and convenience of use:
- It guarantees excellent results and flexibility when cooking
- It facilitates cooking thanks to the rotating grill and the gripper
- It avoids the problem of smoke in the barbecue
- It reduces the risk of burning
The ability to rotate the grill and move it easily, in fact, allows you to place the dishes to be cooked towards the hottest areas of the oven while keeping your hands safe, also thanks to the use of the gripper, so as to grill food consistently in total safety.
How to grill without a BBQ with BBQ 500
With the BBQ 500 you can grill meat, fish and vegetables, consistently obtaining impeccable results.
It is an extremely versatile kit that allows you to take advantage of the wood-burning oven like a barbecue by carrying out various types of cooking depending on how you decide to use it.
This is because BBQ 500 can be used in two ways:
- With embers, to obtain fast cooking at a high temperature, very similar to a traditional grill
- Without embers, to have slower and more uniform cooking that resembles classic oven cooking
The process, in both cases, is quite simple and intuitive. If you decide to use BBQ 500 with embers, the following will suffice:
- Place the hot embers in the front half of the tray with the help of a small metal pallet
- Put the grill on the cooking tray
- Place the food to be cooked on the grill
- Place BBQ 500 inside the oven
If the dishes happen to cook too quickly you can rotate the grill so as to move the dishes in the middle of the tray free from the embers, in order to obtain enhanced delicate cooking.
If, on the other hand, you opt for cooking without embers, just place the grill on the tray, sort the food to be grilled on it and place everything inside the oven’s cooking chamber.
By keeping the oven door open you can increase the circulation of hot air and, consequently, obtain faster cooking of the dishes through convection.
Conversely, keeping the door closed allows you to obtain slower and tastier cooking, similar to that of a traditional barbecue.
Once the various foods have been cooked, cleaning the BBQ 500 is extremely simple.
In fact, the tray collects food liquids during cooking, thus avoiding dirtying the oven top, and the steel grill is removable so as to be easily cleaned.
As a result, thanks to BBQ 500, you without having to buy an additional cooking tool if you want to invite friends over for a barbecue.
4 advantages of a pizza oven and garden barbecue
A pizza oven and garden barbecue is an extremely versatile tool that offers various types of cooking.
There are mainly 4 advantages that this type of tool can offer:
- Greater cooking flexibility: thanks to the combination of different heat sources.
- It removes the problem of smoke: which is annoying for both the person cooking and the guests. Thanks to the oven’s flue, the smoke does not disperse at human height, rather it is pushed upwards.
- Ease of management of the oven: they offer various cooking methods with a single lighting of the wood-burning oven. In this way, you can take advantage of the heat produced so as to use it to prepare various dishes (for example, you can have a barbecue with the BBQ 500 after having cooked pizzas).
- It eliminates the need to purchase numerous cooking tools: excellent grills can be made directly in the wood-burning oven.
Not to mention that, in addition to the advantages in terms of cooking, the pizza ovens and barbecues are designed and built to organize barbecues in a comfortable way, without risking burns and without worrying about positioning the barbecue in a place sheltered from air drafts.
A wood-burning oven with barbecue for a versatile outdoor kitchen
As we have seen, pizza ovens and garden barbecues are extremely versatile tools that allow you to have everything you need directly in the garden or terrace to organize convivial dinners in the company of friends and relatives.
By equipping your outdoor kitchen with a single tool, you can cook pizzas, bake bread, cakes and focaccias, but you can also grill meat, fish and vegetables, experimenting from time to time with new recipes.
Thanks to functional accessories such as the Alfa BBQ 500, the oven and barbecue merge into a single cooking tool, so you can grill in your home oven while also solving the annoying problem associated with charcoal smoke.
In fact, the oven’s flue draws the smoke preventing it from annoying both the guests and those who are cooking.
Furthermore, an Alfa oven equipped with BBQ 500 is also a great solution for those who have space or budget problems.
In this way, it will not be necessary to equip your outdoor kitchen with two separate tools because a wood-burning oven allows you also to make tasty barbecues.
