Over 58 million barbecues will be ruined this summer due to hapless Brits’ BBQ blunders, new research by Just Eat has revealed. Collectively as a nation, we will host or attend 323 million BBQs this summer, which is roughly seven per adult, but new research has revealed that nearly a fifth (18%) of these are likely to fall flat.
The study of 2,000 Brits found that two thirds (66%) have experienced under or over-cooked food at a barbecue. Three quarters (75%) even admitted to having eaten before attending one as they were worried about going hungry due to the food that would be on offer.
That may be a wise decision, as a quarter of Brits (26%) confessed to having burned BBQ food when hosting, while a fifth of unlucky guests (21%) have even experienced food poisoning from a BBQ. One in four (24%) have turned to calling in the help of a takeaway delivery service to save the day after a BBQ disaster.
It seems many BBQ hosts are not responding to the changing dietary requirements of friends and family. Vegetarians regularly get a bum deal with nearly a fifth (18%) offered only one option to eat and a similar number (16%) only given a bun and salad. Over 1 in 10 vegans (14%) say they often arrive to find there is nothing they can eat, while a third (33%) have been put off eating vegetarian or vegan food at a BBQ as it had been cooked on the same grill as the meat.
In a bid not to offend their hosts, guests owned up to having secretly binned inedible food (27%), fed it to the family pet (17%) or even hiding it in their bag (13%).
The top 10 most common BBQ blunders experienced by Brits are as follows:
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Burnt food being served – 45%
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Over-catering – 29%
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Meat being served under-done – 27%
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Having to wait for hours for the coals to get hot enough to cook food – 22%
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Cooking on a grill that hasn’t been cleaned – 18%
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Guests suffering in a cloud of smoke for most of the event – 15%
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Being forced to sit outside even though the weather was bad – 13%
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Not enough alcohol – 12%
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Not enough buns for burgers and sausages – 12%
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Using the same tongs for raw meat as cooked meat, or for veggie options – 11%
In response to Brits’ tendency to bungle a BBQ, takeaway app Just Eat has launched a BBQ Rescue Service – asking Brits to share snaps of their grilling disasters to [email protected] to be in with a chance of winning a perfectly cooked BBQ meal of your choice delivered to your door.
