Is Gas BBQ Cooking Better Than An Oven?

With summer already in full swing, the chances are that you can’t wait for your next opportunity to get outside and start cooking up a storm on your barbecue. Having a gas barbecue at home isn’t just a great way to create a fun and social atmosphere, it can also infuse your food with a variety of exciting and intense flavours that really make your cooking stand out. Perhaps that’s why so many Australians can’t resist the lure of the barbecue once summer rolls around.

Maybe you don’t have a barbecue yourself or you’re wondering what the best way is to bring out the flavours in your food at home. Ovens and barbecues have different advantages and both are capable of helping you to prepare delicious food. To help you find some answers, we’ve compiled this guide – is gas BBQ cooking better than an oven?

How is a gas BBQ different to an oven?

Let’s start by looking at the basics. Understanding the differences between how gas barbecues and ovens work can help you to understand how they treat food differently. Gas barbecues produce the heat that cooks your food from an open flame. This immediately means they’re quite different to most conventional ovens.

Barbecues use conduction to absorb the heat from the flame into the hotplate or barbecue plates. This is then directly transferred to your food, causing the char marks you often see. Both ovens and gas barbecues use convection heating. This is where hot air or liquid cooks your food. The food might not make contact with an open flame during convection cooking, meaning the cooking is more prolonged and equal. This makes a conventional oven the ideal tool for roasting or baking, which a barbecue isn’t generally equipped to do.

Benefits of a gas BBQ

The truth is that ovens and barbecues have different benefits, so the best choice for your cooking is likely to come down to your own preferences. When you’re grilling, barbecuing, or smoking food, a barbecue makes a real difference to the flavour. This is caused by the smokiness of the open flame. Cooking with your barbecue can often achieve faster results too. A gas barbecue also offers great versatility because you can control the open flame to choose how intensely it cooks your food.

Benefits of an oven

Barbecues are no doubt a lot of fun, but oven cooking has great benefits too. There are some items that a barbecue just isn’t set up for, and this is where your oven steps in. If you want to bake a fresh loaf of bread or roast a whole chicken, your oven is going to be much more useful than a barbecue. Another great benefit of using your oven is convenience. Often all you need to do is put the food in the oven and leave it to cook. Most ovens include timers so you don’t even need to watch the clock. This isn’t normally the case with a barbecue, which you need to monitor carefully to ensure the food doesn’t burn or take on too much charcoal flavour.

Both gas barbecues and ovens are valuable tools if you love to cook. There are great benefits to using both, and the way to get the best results depends on the situation and what you want to cook. For gas barbecues and ovens, safety is important. If you need appliance servicing or dependable repairs, it’s essential that you contact experienced gas specialists. Get in touch for reliable domestic gas services in Melbourne’s South Eastern suburbs.