Outdoor kitchens are the most recent craze from here to Timbuktu. In a way it is easier to cook outside and it is definitely cleaner. There is usually more room when you prefer to cook out of doors and the cooking smells are taken away on the wind. Cleaning is a simple task as well. An outdoor kitchen can be as humble or as grand as you want.

Some people create little more than a barbecue, but others go the whole hog and make an outdoor kitchen that is as luxurious as their indoor kitchen. One of the good things about an outdoor kitchen is that it is exposed. You can have a roof and as few as one wall. This gives protection from the rain, but still permits you to be cooking in the open air.

If you design your outdoor kitchen properly, you will have room for everything that you normally use for cooking right to hand so that you will not have to keep traipsing back and forth to the indoor kitchen for pots and pans or ingredients.

A lot of people build their outdoor kitchen integrating a charcoal grill, but many quickly go over to gas. The best kitchens are the most versatile ones, so it might be best if you have a built-in gas cooker and a portable charcoal barbecue unit. Some things definitely taste better when grilled over charcoal, but some people cannot put up with the mess.

Cooking outdoors in such a kitchen can work out cheaper as well, because in the summer, cooking indoors would mean having ventilators and the air conditioning on, which are expensive to run, as we all know. If you live in a warm climate, you will be able to cook outdoors in the winter too.

Where I live now, the lowest temperature throughout the year if about 20 C or 68 F, so we cook in the outdoor kitchen all year through and always have done. Our indoor kitchen was built because, coming from Europe, it simply seemed normal for a house to have an indoor kitchen. Sp, when I had our house built, I had a kitchen put in. That was four years ago and we have never used it for more than making a sandwich or coffee in.

If you make the roof big enough, you can lay a big enough area with tiles to seat quite a few people. Five by five metres (think yards for metres, if you are unsure) is a passable size for a family or for having a few friends over, but there is nothing to stop you from making it as large as a ball room, if you have the room. Imagine the do's you could hold in your outdoor kitchen then!

I would not want to have to go back to cooking in an indoor kitchen again. It feels so right to be cooking al fresco. You really get the impression of space. The nearest I got to that in Europe was cooking with the kitchen window open, but cooking in an outdoor kitchen is far better than that.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is at present concerned with built in cookers. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Electric Freestanding Cooker.

categories: tools,remodelling,kitchen,house,DIY,contractors,decorating,hobbies,skills,projects,ceramic tiles,cabinets,white goods,advice