A Stress Free BBQ Christmas Meal

It seems like every year Christmas just sneaks up on us, and 2008 is no exception! Shopping centres are clogged with frenzied shoppers trying to find perfect gifts and fresh food for the special day. With this in mind, the Heat Beads® Team have put together some tips and tools to take the stress out of the upcoming holiday, so that you can cook the perfect turkey!

Click here to view our turkey cooking tips.

Bird Cooking Time Calculator

Not cooking a turkey? Never fear, because Heat Beads® turkey cook time calculator will allow you to roast or smoke any bird to perfection, over live coals.

All you have to do is enter the size of the bird and the time you wish to eat. The calculator will tell you what time to light your Heat Beads® BBQ Briquettes, how many to use, the total cooking time that is required and how many people you will be able to serve. Click here to use the calculator.

The Heat Beads® Turkey Recipe

Click here to view this very special recipe with mouth-watering stuffing.

Instructional Cooking Video

Cooking the perfect turkey is easy! Just watch the fantastic Heat Beads® instructional video, to see this great recipe in action.

This exclusive premium content video will provide you with all the tips and tricks to cook a succulent turkey and save you time on the special day. Click here to login in to premium content and view the video.

NB: You must be a subscriber to the Heat Beads® Newsletter to access the premium content section. To subscribe, click here.

Any true blue BBQing Australian bloke knows that there are certain things such as health issues and feelings that just aren’t meant to be talked about, right? Well, as they say the times they are a changin’ and many men across the country are doing their bit this month to raise awareness of men’s health issues such as depression and prostate cancer.

Three men from the Heat Beads® Team are doing their best grow a ‘mo’ for Movember. Damien (Sales and Marketing Manager), Malcolm (Finance Manager) and Jason (Systems Administrator) have been brave enough to take part in this fantastic fundraiser that has proved to be quite a bit of fun!

To see their progress so far, take a look at the pics below.

Left to Right: Damien, Jason, Malcolm

In its fifth year, Movember is one of the most successful fundraisers for mens health in the country, having raised over $24 million in total. The money is donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and Beyond Blue, the national depression intiative. These are particularly worthy causes when you consider some of the stats:

* 1 in 6 men are affected by depression and most don’t seek help
* In Australia last year, 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of the disease, making it as prevalent in men as breast cancer in women.

To donate, organise your own team or attend the Gala Parté click here.

We are about to enter the BBQ season. Therefore, it is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this sublime outdoor cooking activity

When a man volunteers to do the BBQ the following chain of events are put into motion:

Routine…
(1) The woman buys the food.
(2) The woman makes the salad, prepares the vegetables, and makes dessert
(3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the BBQ - beer in hand.
(4) The woman remains outside the compulsory 3-metre exclusion zone where the exuberance of testosterone and other manly bonding activities can take place without the interference of the woman.
Here comes the important part:
(5) THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE BBQ.

Image Source

More routine…
(6) The woman goes inside to organise the plates and cutlery.
(7) The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is looking great. He thanks her and asks if she will bring another beer while he flips the meat.
Important again:
(8) THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE BBQ AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN.

More routine..
(9) The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces, and brings them to the table.
(10) After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes.

And most important of all:
(11) Everyone PRAISES the MAN and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.
(12) The man asks the woman how she enjoyed ‘her night off.’ And, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there’s just no pleasing some women.

We would love to be able to credit the genius that came up with this. If you know who it is, please leave a comment.

Next week marks the launch of our brand new website! www.heatbeads.com received a makeover recently, so keep your eyes peeled for the attractive, easy to use design that will be launched next Wednesday, November 5!

Weber has just launched the new Weber® Char Q® BBQ in the US. This very portable and slightly cute new unit is a new addition to Weber’s extremely popular ‘Q range’ of BBQ’s, which was until now exclusively fuelled by gas. Paired together with a bag of Heat Beads® BBQ Briquettes, the Weber® Char Q® BBQ provides the ideal time for BBQing, whether camping in the great outdoors or celebrating over the Melbourne Cup Weekend!

With the Spring Racing Carnival in full bloom and Melbourne Cup Day only around the corner, it is an ideal time to enjoy a few drinks, a sweep or two and a BBQ. Char grilling everyone’s favourite BBQ recipes is sure to keep them happy during the race that stops the nation!

Source: Left, Right

If you have any special Cup Day traditions or BBQ recipes, why not leave us a comment?

Last week the Heat Beads team had a lot of fun whipping up charred delights for a photo shoot. Our new website will soon be live and was in need of a new look. It was such fun having a great reason to BBQ our favourite recipes, and have the cameras on us as we cooked!

We are sure the new website will inspire all our heatbeads.com visitors to fine tune their grill skills over Heat Beads®BBQ Briquettes!

The shoot was a great success, giving our Heat Beads® website a well-deserved make over and refreshed look. Can’t wait for you to see our new look site with its modern, clean design and easy to navigate pages. Soon there’ll be even more reasons to visit www.heatbeads.com to find the latest news, your favourite BBQ recipes or instructional videos on how to light your Heat Beads®BBQ Briquettes. Check in from November 1st.

The Heat Beads® team likes do our bit for the community. So, when the Latrobe Regional Hospital recently hosted its Platinum Ball at the Premiere function centre in Traralgon, we jumped at the opportunity to donate a prize for its fund raising auction. This fantastic and entertaining evening raised a total of $133,000 to be directed to the Gippsland Cancer Care Centre! This is a whopping $59,000 up on the funds raised at last year’s event.

The silent auction was a highlight, raising a grand total of $34, 600! Heat Beads® donated its brand new Entertainer BBQ and coordinated with local businesses to create the ultimate BBQ package that would light any char grill enthusiast’s fire! The package contained the below items and sold for a bargain $1,900 to Wight’s Motor World.

* Heat Beads® Solid Fuel Entertainer BBQ
* 8 X 4kg bags of Heat Beads(r) BBQ Briquettes
* 6 piece Elwood Patio Setting
* Gasmate Outdoor Patio Heater
* Qualified Chef from Neilsons Restaurant: for one perfect BBQ!
* Salads for 6: Courtesy of Neilsons Restaurant
* $50 meat voucher: Courtesy of Hyland Street Butchers

Apparently there is more than one way to build a BBQ, as heard on Sunday night on the Cooda Beens on ABC Radio. One listener who spent a lot of time in New Caledonia where BBQ’s are scarce says truck rims make an excellent BBQ base. When filled with Heat Beads^® BBQ Briquettes and topped with a grill plate, they provide a cost effective option. They are said to last up to two years due to the thickness of the steel.

This brilliant flash of inspiration got us at the Heat Beads^® Headquarters thinking what other pre-loved items we knew of, that are used to produce a make-shift BBQ. To name just a few:

- A VW Golf Trailer as featured in our blog a few weeks ago, click here to find out more.
- An old washing machine drum
- An old wood fire oven

What do you think? Why not leave a comment with your flash of BBQ brilliance?

Heat Beads® Briquettes, as contestants at the Redesdale Tavern Camp Oven Cook-Off recently discovered, are fantastic for use whilst you’re in the wilderness. When you’re camping it can be difficult to serve something for dinner that doesn’t involve a can of baked beans or burnt sausages.

But it doesn’t have to be that way… just because you’re camping doesn’t mean you have to forsake the gourmet.

We recently stumbled across this great little invention from the US, a portable charcoal BBQ - Son of Hibachi. It’s ideal for outdoor use with Heat Beads® BBQ Briquettes and comes with its very own ’snuff out pouch’, a heat proof bag. You don’t have to wait for the BBQ to cool completely before packing up, simply place in the bag and it will extinguish your Heat Beads® BBQ Briquettes so that they can be re-used.

To find out more, check out this video:

…and in other news The Heat Beads® Team got into the spirit of the AFL grand final last Friday with a BBQ of our own. We ate delights char grilled to perfection including a delicious spit roast and saganaki (see pictures below).

These types of meals show just some of the range that can be BBQ’d using Heat Beads® BBQ Briquettes. For your chance to win a Heat Beads® Entertainer BBQ, enter our Spring BBQ Video Competition - to find out more click here.

You know what the TAC says, if you drink, drive and grill you’re a…wait, what was that last part?!
Most other portable grills have got nothing on this BBQ VW Golf Trailer (see pic below) and it is all completely street legal!

Owner of the BBQ VW Golf Trailer

Fuelled by briquettes, this sensational grill trailer could provide grill enthusiasts with hours of entertainment and could be used while camping, in a friend’s backyard or just as a talking point for a grand final day BBQ!

So what are you waiting for? Get down to your local wreckers and start building yourself a portable grill with some grunt!

The art of char grilling in Australia has gone one step further than the humble backyard BBQ, now taking our hospitality industry by storm.

A group of enthusiastic Australian restaurateurs, hotel and club food and beverage mangers, chefs and other hospitality professionals recently returned home from Ken Burgin’s annual Profitable Hospitality Trends Tour to the US. One of the main focuses of the tour this year was on the art of char-grilling in a professional setting.

Domenic Di Deo, National Food Operations Manager for ALH (which operates more than 270 hotels and neighbourhood pubs, including Australia’s largest steakhouse, the Breakfast Creek Hotel in Brisbane), a team of state food operations managers, and Geoff Atkinson from Beak a la Carte, a meat supplier to ALH in Queensland, were focussed on an experiential ‘taste’ of all things char-grill related. Domenic wished to experience discussions with executive chefs and managers at leading US steakhouses such as the Weber Grill Restaurant, and Smith and Wollensky; learning how they ‘do steak’ in the US. Profitable Hospitality responded with a number of customised hospitality and back of house events, specially designed to meet their needs.

The Back of House visits this year were varied and offered something for everyone.
At the Weber Grill Restaurant, where char-grill cooking rules and the portions overwhelm, conversation with Exec. Chef Ben Moore drew out the secrets of specialist cooking over live coals. Huge steaks, paired with tempranillo, Californian syrah and chardonnay were delicious.

A visit to iconic steakhouse Smith and Wollensky was paradise to the ALH contingent. To maintain its edge, in a very competitive market, Smith and Wollensky butchers and ages all its own meat in-house. Smith and Wollensky in Las Vegas seats 500 and serves around 1500 meals a day.