Buying a Custom BBQ Trailer

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Grilling meats and vegetables on barbecues and grills is a long-standing American tradition, one that many families take part in a few times a year. The Fourth of July and Memorial Day are the biggest two occasions for barbecue, with 73% of consumers using grills on the former and 60% on the latter day. In fact, the Hearth, Patio, and Barbecue Association, or the HPBA, estimates that seven in 10 American adults owns their own grill or smoker for meats and vegetables. It can be fun, too: estimates show that 23% of consumers think of a grilling area as a place for relaxation, and 28% consider it an entertainment space. With this nation-wide interest in grilled meats and more, the right equipment should be on hand for the job. A stand up smoker, custom charcoal grills, pit smokers, and more are out there for any meat cooking enthusiast, and a custom trailer for grilling or smoking meats can add joy and pride to anyone’s barbecue with friends and and family. What should someone look for when buying a BBQ trailer or a custom trailer for grilling?

Who Grills What?

Any discussion about a custom trailer for grilling or the meats cooked starts with the popularity of this style of cooking. Four main schools of BBQ exist in the United States today: Kansas City, Memphis, Carolina, and Texas, each with different styles to suit any enthusiast for grilling. Beef is a popular meat to grill: 89% of all American grill owners, a great majority, say that they usually barbecue beef. And among all grill chefs surveyed by the 2017 State of the Barbecue Industry, 72% of respondents said that they cook for flavor, 62% cook for the lifestyle of it, and 40% cook for the entertainment value, such as when friends and family gather for a barbecue session at a park or one’s patio or driveway. Finally, 83% of consumers say they own at least three grilling accessories, which shows a common interest in varied ways to customize a grilling experience. When buying or designing a custom trailer for grill cooking, what advice should someone keep in mind?

Making a Custom Trailer

It is common for a grill setup to be on wheels and have a trailer hitch, so that a car or truck can drive it to a public place for use. When designing or buying a custom trailer, the purchaser should first consider the size and weight of the trailer for two reasons: the towing strength of his/her vehicle, and how many people the owner plans to cook for at one time. If the trailer is too heavy, the owner may have to borrow someone else’s vehicle to tow it, which could be a hassle, and if the griller has a limited audience to cook for, the huge trailer is a waste. If the trailer ends up being too small, this can slow things down when cooking for a large audience at a grill event. For these reasons, a buyer should find something small enough to tow, but big enough to grill meat and serve it in due time.

The owner should also consider whether or not he or she intends to smoke the meat as well, and different trailers might have equipment for this. The grill’s maximum temperature is another factor, based on how well done the meat is intended to be, and some meats are not safe to eat until they have been cooked to a certain temperature, so the meat one intends to cook in a trailer should weigh into the decision-making process for a trailer. Finally, the metals used in the trailer’s construction and its aesthetics and patterns may be a concern. And if a used trailer is being bought, the user should make sure that it is either cleaned of all debris and stains or at least easy to clean once bought. The wheels and supports should be checked to makes sure that they are steady and work well, and the buyer can ask the previous owner what sort of meats and vegetables were cooked in the trailer, and how well different cooking methods worked out. This can give the buyer an idea of how best to use a particular used grill trailer.

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Francis Pitt

Francis Pitt has made a name for himself in farm-to-table organics, working at restaurants in Portland, Seattle and Burlington, Vermont. While he has a taste for the extreme, most of his restaurant’s top sellers are much more down-to-earth, regularly featuring mushrooms gathered from the slopes of the Cascades, and fresh wild-caught seafood from the Oregon coast. Inspired by trends in Portland, his latest restaurant offers the ultimate chef’s table: dinner begins in the morning at his island collective farm, and 4 lucky guests every week get to follow the food, literally, from the field to the plate! Francis is a firm believer that you are what you eat — do you really want to be a chemistry set?

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