Cook This: 3 recipes for summer grilling from How to BBQ, including corn on the cob

Our cookbook of the week is How to BBQ by Genevieve Taylor.

Jump to the recipes: grilled corn with ‘nduja butter and manchego, grilled eggplant with whipped goat’s cheese, orange zest and pumpkin seeds, and peanut wings with lime chili dipping sauce.

Genevieve Taylor came to live-fire cooking in a “roundabout way.” Now a fire-cooking specialist, the author of 14 cookbooks, many of them fire-based, and the founder of the Bristol Fire School in the U.K., barbecuing wasn’t part of her upbringing. “It just wasn’t what my family did. I grew up in a single-parent family. Mum worked full-time. There was no way on earth she was going to barbecue for us,” she says, laughing.

Taylor began cooking with fire in earnest two decades ago, when her children were toddlers. Looking for ways to make routine daily meals more interesting, they’d light a fire and cook together.

After a few years, her children moved on to other things, but Taylor was hooked. With a background in biology and a past career as a TV producer making wildlife documentaries, she’s “very much an outside person.” Cooking with fire was a natural fit.

“It’s the perfect excuse to step away from how digital the world has become,” says Taylor. “What I really loved was, it was me, the fire and some ingredients. So, it wasn’t gadget-driven. It wasn’t performative. It was just cooking for my family, seeing the sky, being outside, and just trying to make life a tiny bit more adventurous.”

In early 2020, Taylor opened a live-fire cooking school, which she runs from her garden in Bristol, southwest England. Her new book, How to BBQ (Quadrille), is a distillation of the education she offers her students in class and on her YouTube channel, with more than 100 recipes.

The book begins with Taylor’s top 10 barbecue FAQs and an overview of 11 fire-cooking techniques, each with a foundational recipe to master.

“I wanted to make a very useful bit at the beginning, which explains some myths about fire cooking, and hopefully will enable people to get those basic skills to then take any cookbook off their shelf and go, ‘OK, if I want to cook outside, how do I adapt this recipe to my barbecue?’ It’s all about giving people confidence and skills.”

One of the questions people ask Taylor most often is: “Is gas any good?” According to a survey of 9,146 Canadians, it’s a popular choice: 87 per cent have a gas or propane grill, or both, and 18 per cent use charcoal.

Taylor wrote the recipes in How to BBQ for live-fire cooking and includes tips for converting the instructions for gas barbecues. “Personally, I love the act of actually striking the match and lighting the fire, but I would rather people just enjoyed being outside. It doesn’t need to be a snobbery about it, really. So, whilst I don’t cook on gas, you can do very good cooking on a gas barbecue.”

From indirect and direct cooking to the reverse sear, smoking and braising, Taylor believes that once you’ve learned the fundamental skills of barbecue, the rest is about practice. Like any new skill, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

The fire-cooking world can be prone to posturing, adds Taylor, but barbecuing doesn’t need to be complicated.

The chapter titled “Small Fire” is the biggest example of this, with recipes for one or two people, such as the accompanying grilled corn with ‘nduja butter and grilled eggplant with whipped goat’s cheese. “When you’re struck by the moment, it’s a beautiful evening, and you just want to be outside. It’s just a handful of ingredients, no particularly fancy kit, and you can make something really memorable for dinner.”

Serves: 2

2 husk-on corn cobs 50 g (1 3/4 oz) butter, softened 30 g (1 oz) ‘nduja (see note) A sprig of fresh rosemary, needles picked and chopped Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve: 15-20 g (1/2-3/4 oz) manchego or Parmesan, freshly and finely grated

Fire up the barbecue ready for direct grilling.

Take each corn cob and peel back the husks. Pull out and discard the silky threads, then wrap the husks back around the corn as best you can. Set the corn on the grill bars over the fire and cook for 15 minutes or until the husks are charred all over, turning regularly to cook evenly. Transfer to a plate and allow to cool for a couple of minutes.

Put the butter and ‘nduja into a shallow bowl. Add the rosemary and salt and pepper to taste and mash together with a fork.

Peel back a few layers of husk from one side of each corn cob and spread the butter onto the exposed kernels. Fold the husk back over and return to the grill, butter-side up, for a few minutes to allow the butter to melt.

Transfer to a plate and peel the top husks back one last time. Scatter over the grated cheese and serve while really hot.

Note: If you’re pescatarian or vegetarian, swap the ‘nduja (a spicy, spreadable fermented pork salume from Calabria in southern Italy) for salted anchovies or capers, respectively, and use a vegetarian cheese.

Serves: 2-4, depending on what else you are eating

2 eggplants, sliced into 1-cm (1/2-in) discs 2 tbsp olive oil 25 g (1 oz) pumpkin seeds 1 orange A little fresh flatleaf parsley, chopped, to garnish A drizzle of runny honey or Smoked Hot Honey (recipe follows) A drizzle of extra virgin olive oil Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the whipped goat’s cheese: 100 g (3 1/2 oz) soft goat’s cheese 3 tbsp full-fat Greek yogurt

Fire up the barbecue ready for direct grilling.

Crumble the goat’s cheese into a mixing bowl, add the yogurt and some black pepper. Use a spatula (or electric whisk) to beat together until smooth and creamy. Set aside.

Spread the eggplant discs out onto a baking sheet and drizzle with the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and take to the grill. Set the discs, oil-side down, onto the grill bars and grill until lightly charred on both sides. Slide away from the fire to finish softening all the way through.

Set a small pan over the fire and tip in the pumpkin seeds. Toast for a couple of minutes until a shade darker, then transfer to a small bowl. The grill work is now done, so shut the lid and vents to preserve the fuel or use it to cook something else.

Spread the eggplant over a serving plate. Finely grate the orange zest all over the top, dot with little spoonfuls of the whipped goat’s cheese and scatter over the pumpkin seeds and parsley. Drizzle with the honey, then give a generous glug of extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of black pepper before serving still warm.

Makes: 1 x 340-g (11 3/4-oz) jar

340 g (3/4 lb) runny honey 2 tsp chili (red pepper) flakes

Pour the honey into a small pan or roasting tin and sprinkle in the chili flakes.

Set the pan to one side of a smoky barbecue and leave for an hour — you don’t want it to boil, just warm and infuse with smoke. Remove and pour into a clean, sterilized jar. Seal and allow to cool.

Serves: 4, possibly less if you are hungry!

200 g (7 oz) crunchy peanut butter 90 mL (3 fl oz/1/3 cup) boiling water 4 tbsp soy sauce 1 bunch of spring onions (scallions), finely chopped 1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) chicken wings Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dipping sauce: 2 limes, juiced 3 tbsp soy sauce 10 g (1/4 oz) fresh cilantro, leaves and stems finely chopped 3 garlic cloves, crushed 2-3 red chilies, thinly sliced (long or bird’s eye, depending on your heat tolerance) 1 tbsp dark brown sugar

Take a large bowl that will comfortably fit the wings. Spoon in the peanut butter and pour over the boiling water, mixing well to loosen the butter. Pour in the soy sauce, add the spring onions and a generous seasoning of salt and black pepper, and mix together well.

Add the wings and use your hands to really work the marinade onto them. It will be super sticky (and you may feel frustrated!) but do your best to get as much marinade onto the wings as you can. Cover the bowl and slide into the fridge for a couple of hours, if you can, or up to 48 hours if you want to get ahead.

When you are ready to cook, fire up the barbecue ready for fairly high heat indirect cooking, so open up the air vents to raise the temperature. For this, I would favour a small central fire, so the wings can be arranged around it.

Lift the wings from the marinade and set on the grill bars away from the fire. Scoop any peanut sauce left in the bowl onto the wings, spreading it out to as thin a layer as possible. Shut the barbecue lid and leave the wings to cook for 50 minutes, turning halfway through. If you have a temperature probe, you want the internal temperature to be around 70C (158F).

Meanwhile, make the dipping sauce in a bowl by mixing together the lime juice, soy sauce, coriander, garlic and chilies. Add the sugar and season to taste with black pepper and a little salt, if you think it needs it.

Slide the wings over the fire to finish cooking, turning frequently to crisp them up. If they are getting a little too coloured, slide them back away from the fire. Keep cooking for another 10 minutes or until the internal temperature is at least 74C (165F).

Pile the wings onto a plate with the dipping sauce alongside and tuck in with your hands.

Recipes and images excerpted from How to BBQ by Genevieve Taylor (Quadrille, March 2026).