If you love entertaining guests in your garden and you have a lot of space out there, have you considered creating an outdoor kitchen? You might already have a BBQ out there, but why not take it a step further and create a whole area for preparing and cooking food. It’s ideal if you are hosting because you don’t need to keep rushing back and forth into the kitchen all the time, but it’s also great for eating meals with the family as well.
If you think that an outdoor kitchen is the right choice for your garden, here are a few tips to help you get it right.
3 Easy Ways to Create the Perfect Outdoor Cooking Space
Plan For All Seasons
An outdoor kitchen will probably get used most often in the summer, but if you design it in the right way, you can use it for most of the year. You might not be able to use it when it’s freezing cold and the ground is covered in snow, but you don’t have to wait until the height of summer either. The first thing that you will need is shelter. You should consider a carport with storage shed attached because you will have shelter from the rain, but you won’t be fully enclosed.
You will also have that storage on the side which you can use to store a BBQ as well as some of your other garden tools. As well as shelter, you’re going to need some heating and some light. You can get some patio heaters but they can be quite expensive. A fire pit makes a great alternative because it provides heat and light, and it creates a nice atmosphere at the same time.
Consider The Layout
Layout is very important in an indoor kitchen, and it’s no different when you’re setting it up outside, so you still need to follow the kitchen work triangle concept.
You need to make sure that your storage and your refrigerator if you have one, are close enough to the cooking area so you are not running back and forth. You also need to separate the cooking area from the rest of the garden so if you are hosting people, they will not be passing through the cooking area and disrupting you all the time. Finally, you need to consider your hot and cold zones.
If you place a refrigerator right next to the cooking station, for example, it will struggle to keep things cool, especially in the height of summer.
Usually, an L-shaped outdoor kitchen works well because it gives you a closed off area and everything is fairly close.
Grow Some Ingredients
If you are going to be cooking in the garden, you should start growing some ingredients out there as well. As long as the kitchen area doesn’t take up all of the space, you can get a small vegetable patch out there. There’s nothing better than cooking up your own fresh vegetables in your outdoor kitchen.
If you don’t have space for a full blown vegetable patch, you should put an herb garden in instead. Fresh herbs add so much flavor and really take your cooking to the next level.
Setting up your own outdoor cooking area is a great way to get more use out of the garden all year round. Just make sure that you plan properly before you get started.
Kori
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