B&Co Al Fresco Smokeless BBQ Grill: Review

Of course, I mentioned on Monday this week is National BBQ Week, but how do you celebrate if you don’t have much room? Can you still get your BBQ on, while taking up as little space as possible and not have to rely on one-use kits from the supermarket? Or perhaps you love to camp and would be thrilled to be able to take your own smokeless BBQ with you? Maybe you haven’t got a garden and would need a smokeless indoor BBQ? Then I have an idea for you – a smokeless charcoal barbecue.

B&Co Al Fresco Smokeless BBQ Grill: Review

The B&Co Al Fresco Smokeless BBQ Grill is a smokeless barbecue which is easy to clean because of its non-stick coating (hello mostly dishwasher safe BBQ). It’s able to be placed on a table top as it has a drip tray beneath it and a stainless steel bowl. This al fresco grill is battery powered to provide airflow and needs charcoal as fuel. This small portable BBQ grill will offer up to 100 minutes of cooking on just 250g of charcoal which is 85% less than your conventional BBQ. This portable smoke free BBQ is perfect for small outdoor spaces and for both indoor grills and outdoor use.

The smokeless grill is easy to transport and small in size, making it perfect for taking along on camping trips. 

How Does it Perform?

Well I’m going to be honest (as always) we’ve only been able to try it out the once, it arrived with me a little over a week ago and as they wanted it up and out for National BBQ Week (totally understandable) we didn’t get that much chance to play with it.

We had two issues with the outdoor grill, the first was it wouldn’t light. You’re meant to pop some BBQ lighter gel to the base of the main container, once this is lit, you then place the charcoal it isn’t holder on top. However, after over an hour of trying and the breeze blowing it out, we ended up using a mix of gel and paper on top of the coals to finally get it alight.

There we hit the second issue. Now, the instructions say to expect a bit of smoke on first use, what we didn’t expect was to send everyone in the houses around us running for cover as the smoke was so bad. This did calm down after around 10 minutes and was pretty minimal throughout the rest of the time of using it. In the long term, I would be interested to see what startup is like, when we manage to get it alight as instructed and without a strong breeze, as it could be those two situations added to together to make a less than normal startup experience. These are the downsides of a charcoal BBQ, compared to a gas one.

I have to say that was however, the end of our issues. Once it was burning it was ready to cook within minutes and we managed to cook 2 rounds of mouth watering sausages and bacon, some veg and a burger and it still have a whole lot of cooking time left. One thing we all decided was good about this smokeless charcoal BBQ was the fan control system, this allowed you to turn up or down the heat, offering control you would never be able to have on most conventional BBQs.

There were 4 of us in our party and while it says it can cook for up to 6 people at once, I think depending on the ingredients you are using you may be pushing it to get 6 on, for instance we managed 4 rashers of bacon on the cooking surface at one point, but it definitely wouldn’t have taken any more. It’s entertaining size, perfect for sharing between two.

The grill plates are easy to clean with a cloth and washing up liquid, so it is much less hassle than a more traditional BBQ which often takes a long time to clean. This gives you peace of mind and you can relax and enjoy your barbecue.

Overall I think we were pretty impressed with the B&Co Al Fresco Smokeless BBQ Grill, it is definitely something we will try and use again (hopefully without those startup niggles), cooked everything well and gave us a long cooking time for the amount of charcoal that was used.

This grill can be bought from Robert Dyers and while it has an RRP of £99.99 they have it on offer for just £39.93, which I have to admit I would have no problem paying for this.

What do you think of the sound of the B&Co Al Fresco Smokeless BBQ Grill, does it sound like something you would like to try out? 

I received the products mentioned in this post free of charge, however, all opinions and thoughts are my own.

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