Your garden really is where the “fun” cooking takes place, we all agree it’s exciting cooking with real fire, so why not make the most of it and build yourself an outdoor garden kitchen?
I love the theatre of my pizza oven, entertaining for friends and family, especially when they get to make their own pizzas, and I currently put everything out on a spare patio table. It works but it’s not ideal so having the amenities outside, as I do inside, would be pretty great which leads me onto outdoor kitchens.
What is a garden kitchen?
You don’t have to be a genius to know the answer to this and basically you will want to partially replicate your indoor kitchen. This will include:
- Cooker (this will be your BBQ or pizza oven)
- A food prep worktop
- Water supply
- Storage
Obviously you can go a lot further but that would remove a lot of the fun of cooking outside wouldn’t it?
The budget version
This guide from Instructables shows how to make one which is a homemade wooden frame, with a self-poured concrete counter top. The barbeque, cutting board and sink were bought first and that mean that you can base your stand dimensions around these.
You can also see from the photo that the sink is simply connected to a garden hose so this really can be placed anywhere but it’s great o have water to wash hands etc and save the need to go indoors to clean up.
The concrete counter top may be a little daunting to some. but at least you have a very durable worktop. If you decided to go for a generic worktop from a DIY shop then you be wary of what it’s made of as most are made from chipboard that can soak up water like a sponge, so not great for leaving outside.
Perhaps an alternative for the concrete would be to use some plywood and tile over it ensuring none of it was exposed to the elements?
The pallet version
Now you know that I love a pallet so how about something like this? I’ve tried to find the source for this image but sadly I can’t and therefor there aren’t any plans… but when you’re building with pallets then who needs plans… right?
I would say that you’d need a lot of pallets for something like this and I’m not 100% sure about how enclosed that BBQ is with that amount of wood.
The bricks and mortar one
If you’re looking for something a lot more permanent then these should give you some inspiration and give a bit more of a Mediterranean vibe. The good thing about these is that you can build them from bricks and concrete blocks anyway you like, then you can bring it all together with some render and paint.
The off the shelf version
Looking for an off the shelf outdoor kitchen? It’s definitely a lot shinier and it probably a little bit too much like cheating for my liking, but if you’ve got £500 then you could get this and save a whole lot of time.
It’s got the BBQ, a hob, a worktop and a sink that connects to a hoselock fitting, so it’s definitely got all the attributes of an outdoor kitchen.
More ideas on Pinterest
You really can go in any direction with your garden kitchen so if you’re looking for more inspiration then check out my Garden Kitchen Ideas board on Pinterest.