3 BBQ essentials: light, heat, and fab food

If this is your first time BBQ-ing or you just want to enhance your already-exciting garden life, these three BBQ essentials sit at the heart of every memorable outdoor occasion. As long as you’ve got heat, light and good food, you’re sorted. Let’s dive in.

Mood lighting for lovely ambience

Lighting sets the mood, whatever the occasion. There’s lots of potential whether you want to go for a classic or contemporary patio heater, which provides both light and heat, or a small chimenea to heat the area, with lovely flickering flames to chill out to.

The Enders patio heater is an award-winning design giving you light and heat in a beautiful, compact design that suits every garden style. Classic street lamp-like patio heaters are just as effective, giving you a taller, slimmer profile as well as heat and light.

Click here to see the gorgeous wooden Florenity candle lamp, available on our sister site and ideal for burning one or more candles safely outdoors, lighting up the space subtly and romantically.

A small chimenea is the ideal way to add atmospheric light to a garden or patio as well as throwing out lovely heat. Buy more than one to light and warm a larger space impressively, in style. Here are some photos.

BBQ essentials – Heat to keep the party going for longer

We have so many ways to heat an outdoor space. Clay and metal chimeneas come in everything from small, like the cast iron Billie above, to enormous versions like the one below. They work like giant radiators as the fat body and chimney heat up fast, then radiate heat out into the surroundings.

A fire pit or firebowl will also keep your entertainment area cosy, more like an open fire than contained in a chimenea. Some are housed inside a stylish table where the flames are held inside a glass box, very safe, and run cleanly on gas. Just add a gas bottle for instant comfort.

What about these? They’re all great quality, all carefully chosen by our team.

You can even go for a fire basket, the ultimate in simplicity…

Cook fabulous BBQ food

You can’t have a barbie without food and again, you have plenty of choice around what to cook it on. A small or portable BBQ does a great job for low-key gatherings. Dial the BBQ size up if you’re in the habit of hosting bigger occasions. Cook for five on a smaller BBQ – or feed the five thousand on a wonderful masonry barbecue, literally weighing almost a ton and designed to be a permanent garden fixture.

You can easily cook on a chimenea, which gives you a surprisingly wide choice of ways to make great food. Everything from cast iron cookpot masterpieces to tasty treats created using BBQ waffle irons, cast iron cooking irons, skewers, grills and independent food smokers. And that’s just the start of the story.

Some of our biggest metal BBQs let you grill food directly and indirectly, use an integral rotisserie, and smoke food in an attached smoker unit. Clever stuff, and they mean you can cook for lots of guests fast.