Oriental style chicken wings cooked on the Weber electric Pulse 2000,

BBQ comparison; do you have a favourite? This may just change your mind

We are cooking about a kilo of chicken wings on each of 3 different Weber BBQs; the electric Pulse 2000, the gas Spirit II E-310 and the charcoal MasterTouch to compare the results and hopefully come to a conclusion as to which BBQ gives the best flavoured results. As usual Richard Holden, one of the UKs top BBQ chefs, and Ian Hodgett from The Barbecue Shop here in store show you how easy it is to cook these delicious little morsels.

Ingredients:

6lb 9oz (3kg) chicken wings; trimmed and the skin scored
2 tbsp sesame seeds; for garnish
spring onion tops; finely chopped, for garnish
chilli flakes, for garnish
little red chilli; very finely sliced, for garnish

Marinade:

4 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 chillies; deseeded and finely chopped
4 tbsp honey
4 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp fresh ginger; grated
2 cloves garlic; finely chopped

Equipment:

digital temperature probe

Combine all the marinade ingredients and place in a bowl with the chicken wings; thoroughly coat them and leave for about an hour, covered, at room temperature.

All 3 BBQs were pre-heated to about 200C, the Pulse 2000 had one element turned completely off, and as the BBQ is extremely well insulated there is no need to turn over the wings as the heat just circulates around the grill. The MasterTouch was set up in the ‘bullseye’ method with the lumpwood charcoal in the centre and no fuel at all around the outside; we used lumpwood charcoal as we were only doing a short cook, if we had been doing a longer cook we would have used briquettes. The Spirit just had the centre burner turned on. As the wings are quite a tough muscle they need to cook ‘low and slow’, so they were placed over the areas of the grill where there was no heat and cooked for about 30 minutes.

Again, as with the burgers we compared in an earlier video, (click here to watch this video) the Pulse was on a par with the charcoal MasterTouch. The wings off the Pulse and the MasterTouch both took on the lovely caramelisation colour but the wings off the gas Spirit were less charred. But don’t dismiss the gas Spirit, they were still delicious. The conclusion is that if you live in an apartment or property which bans the use of live fire then the Pulse 2000 is a perfectly acceptable BBQ, the taste is comparable to charcoal and the grate can easily hold enough food for a party of four to six.