5 steps to make a tasty and balanced barbecue 2026

Summer invites us to set up that barbecue around which to share a good time outdoors with family and friends. Children enjoy the beauty of the environment and few smells awaken the appetite like that of grilled food, but... will it be healthy for the little ones, or is it an unbalanced meal? It all depends on what we put on the grill. “Even fruit can be cooked on the barbecue,” says Juan Manuel Benayas, manager of the first grilled cooking school in Spain, Barbacoa Club. How to prepare a good barbecue? What do we need and what tricks will help us take advantage of it?

1. Choose a child-proof menu

Barbecue is a very healthy way of cooking since food defats when exposed to heat. We usually associate it with an unbalanced meal based exclusively on chorizo, chops and bacon... It is the most common thing in our culture. “That's why planning it is important,” says the manager of Barbacoa Club. What can our menu have for adults and children?

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Any type of meat: Beef, pork, chicken, lamb... We can cook everything from Iberian secret steaks to traditional pork or chicken kebabs, chorizos, sausages, ribs or thick beef steaks. While finer meats are done in a quick turn and turn, ribeye can take 15 minutes. For children we will choose less fatty meats. Chicken skewers and hamburgers are very successful. Cooking these foods requires control of the coals and creating different temperatures on a grill, something we will explain later.

All types of fish: cuttlefish, octopus, monkfish, sardines... Fish takes less time to cook than meat. Even a two kilo monkfish can be ready in 10 minutes. “Times go by, it's a matter of practice and being attentive,” says Benayas. Small fish, such as sardines, can be skewered (as is done in many places) to prevent them from slipping through the grate and falling into the embers. The same, by the way, we can do with fruit. Small fish are the ones that children like the most.

Fruit and vegetables: Vegetables can be cut into wedges, strips (they will be crispier), opened in half and filled... They can be arranged in the form of colorful skewers, as we can also do with fruit. "One trick is to hydrate the vegetables with spray oil. With a touch they become brighter and juicier and do not stick to the grill," says the specialist. “If we have to prepare vegetables for a lot of people, we can cook them first and then put them over the coals.” Lightly grilled fruit skewers are an ideal dessert for the little ones.

And when we have prepared what we are going to eat we can take advantage of the remaining embers. If we have a lid we can roast some apples or some peppers for the next few days.

2. Select charcoal

Before planning a barbecue or barbecue, we must decide on a first “ingredient” that we do not usually pay much attention to but that is, in reality, key to the final result: the charcoal with which we are going to cook.

1.- Good quality charcoal comes from hardwoods such as oak or Argentine wood, it will light quickly and will last much longer, around a couple of hours. Depending on how long the embers last, we can make some dishes or others. Coconut charcoal, for example, lasts up to 5 hours. “The one usually sold in shopping centers is made of eucalyptus, a soft wood that ignites quickly but falls apart just as quickly and we quickly run out of embers,” says Benayas.

2.- But the most important thing is that the embers add flavor to the dish: "The smoke generated when the fat falls makes what we have cooked so delicious; they even sell aromatic woods, such as apple wood, which can be poured wet over the embers to add even more flavor to the dish," says Benayas. “A hamburger made with mesquite wood smoke will never taste the same as a hamburger made with gas,” he exemplifies, “because the gas does not add anything.”

3. Light the fire

It is best to light the embers with natural ingredients, such as wood chips or pine cones. A trick: "We can use fruit boxes, for example those with strawberries. We fill them with charcoal, we light the bottom with a lighter until it catches fire and in a short time it turns into embers, it is a soft wood that serves very well for this purpose," says Benayas. Lighting the fire does not have to cause a lot of smoke. If our barbecue is mobile, we can position it depending on the wind and prevent any smoke from entering the house.

4. Cook

On the grill or barbecue you do not cook over the flames, but over the embers. We have to wait, therefore, for the charcoal to turn white before we can cook on it, a process that can take about 20 minutes. To check if the temperature is good, we can also use the “7 second method”, remembers Juan Manuel Benayas. We place our hand about 10 centimeters from the grill and if we remove it after 3 seconds, the fire is still too strong; If it lasts about 7 seconds, the heat is moderate, perfect for cooking. If we hold it for 10 seconds the fire has little strength.

5. Control the temperature

“Although we don't have buttons to choose the temperature, we can control it,” says Juan Manuel Benayas. How?By arranging the embers. If we want food to be cooked slowly, we will arrange the embers to the right and left, leaving the center free... This generates a softer, indirect heat. If we place the embers right under the food, the fire is direct.

With this method we can also create two temperatures on the same barbecue: one with more coals and a strong fire in which to cook the thinner pieces that come out earlier, or for example fish, and another with fewer coals that offers us a more constant heat source in which we can cook foods that require more time, such as thicker meats.

How strong should the fire be? It depends on what we want to cook: A 4-finger thick steak needs a low heat to cook slowly; High heat is good for thin pieces, which need to be turned over and over again.

Advisor:Juan Manuel Benayas, manager of the Barbacoa Club grilled cooking school and Fuegomarket; He teaches grilled cooking courses at the Basque Culinary Centre.