Building Your Backyard Grilling Station
It's a new summer and home chefs are starting out boldly. Imagine a gathering where you serve up sizzling meat to friends, family, and neighbors (or whoever stops by), with your trusty tools in hand, and your favorite apron strapped securely around your waist… So how do you create this kind of awesome opportunity, now that things are opening back up again? It starts with high-quality outdoor cooking equipment and backyard bar ideas that will dazzle your neighbors and provide you with many years of fun.
Outdoor Cooking Equipment: Building Your Grilling Station with Hardscaping
One of the most popular ways to set up a new backyard grilling station and related “infrastructure” is with some type of hardscaping. These projects typically use materials like manufactured pavers, cut stone, flagstones, and other components that can be stacked and carefully placed together, to create neat and durable outdoor countertops, and other components of an outdoor kitchen. Having a handy flagstone or granite table top outdoors (or some similar type of stone build) gives you extra space to arrange your tools, your ingredients, and everything that you're using to impress the crowds. Then, too, you can add stools and a few extras to provide easy outdoor dining. In good weather, you can get a lot out of this kind of setup.
Supplying Your Grilling or Outdoor Cooking Station
You'll also need handy supplies to manage the food, deliver it to the plates, and otherwise feed and irrigate (for lack of a better word!) visitors. One thing that's great to have on hand is a set of foil trays and foil covers that can keep cooked food at higher temperatures, and keep things neat and tidy. Alternately, you can pile on plates or platters, but the ambient air will soon cool off your food - not to mention bugs and debris and all the rest! Food containers with coverings don’t have to break the bank, but they can add a lot of value during your busy outdoor cooking session. Another must-have is the full grilling kit: spatulas, flippers, brushes, etc. Our grilling guide goes into detail on this kind of outdoor cooking supplies list.
Building Your Backyard Bar
As mentioned, a backyard bar seating area provides for both dining and drinking in your yard. When it comes to creating these open spaces, you have choices: you can build an open kitchen to pass food out to guests, or make a backyard gazebo do double duty as a bar. You can create neat indoor-outdoor setups to house extras like a TV, menu board or other amenities, in a tiki, vineyard or modern style. Again, hardscaping is your friend: just building seating, counters and more out of pavers can be a classic solution. Sound good? Take a look at Chefs’ Toys, where we have everything that you need to set up your backyard space – and then some! We are proud to outfit restaurants and home cooks alike, with a commitment to quality and customer service, as we gear up for the future.
