BBQ restaurants are booming in Toronto, with local establishments offering homemade BBQ sauces, innovative takes on the BBQ classics, and more! We scoured the best of the best BBQ restaurants in Toronto to spot the trends and get you inspired to create your own restaurant quality cooking at home. Read on for the flavour trends and sauces you won’t want to miss out on.
Smoke It
Smoked is the name of the game this season. Restaurants are breaking out their industrial sized smokers to offer everything from the classics like Brisket to unique dishes like Smoked Octopus and Jambalaya. It couldn’t be easier to start smoking your own dishes at home than with the Napoleon Smoking Starter Kit. This compact kit will turn any gas grill into a smoker, so you can get that restaurant quality smokey flavour in your own backyard. This kit even comes with four flavours of wood chips, so you can taste test and determine what suits your taste buds the best!
Taste the Hickory
When taste testing those wood chips from the Napoleon Smoking Start Kit, pay close attention to the Hickory chips. You can’t visit a Toronto BBQ restaurant without seeing Hickory on the menu. Hickory Smoked Ribs are a menu staple, but they’re easy to make and enjoy at home! Simply load your Hickory flavour wood chips into your smoker, we love the Big Green Egg Smoking Wood Chunks or the Traeger Wood Pellets. Traeger has revolutionized the smoking game with their series of Pellet Grills. The Pellet Grills give you an unprecedented level of control, because they are enhanced with Smart Combustion™ technology to maintain precise temperatures. This all in one BBQ not only allows you to explore smoking using wood pellets, but also provides the classic cooking methods of BBQing, roasting, and grilling.
Get Saucy
Any Toronto BBQ restaurant worth its salt (or smoke) will have an array of BBQ sauces on offer. A sweet sauce vs. a more tangy sauce is personal preference, so when creating the ultimate at home BBQ experience, have multiple on offer! Your sauce can be store bought or homemade depending on how much effort you want to put in, but this is a step you can’t miss! If you’re hosting a BBQ Cook Off Competition this summer, use the winning BBQ Sauce in your next grilling out night! Looking for a premade option? If you’re a flavour aficionado, explore a world of unique sauces with Big Green Egg. These sauces, from the Vidalia Onion Sriracha to Sweet Kentucky Bourbon, can be used all the way from BBQ food to your next Bloody Mary.
When brushing those delicious sauces on your food, don’t forget the ever important sauce brush. The Napoleon PRO Basting Brush features a silicone brush that won’t absorb the sauces, and makes for super easy clean up. Just throw it in the dishwasher at the end of the night!
BBQ At Home
While a night out at your local BBQ restaurant is always a good time, it’s fun to challenge yourself to see what you can come up with at home. Finding inspiration from local chefs and restaurants is a fantastic way to expand your culinary expertise and your palette. Loved exploring new BBQ food trends in this article? Don’t miss out on the outdoor kitchen trends we love. Stop by one of our showrooms in Toronto, Ajax, Whitby, or Scarborough or visit our online shop to talk about how you can get in on the BBQ trends and take your home cooking to the next level.
