I think BBQ season must be coming to an end, actually I had what was probably my last BBQ of the year yesterday and that was mainly because I'd been shopping in Morrisons and noticed that they had these Bucket BBQs reduced to £4.00 instead of the £7.99 they usually cost. I've had my eye on these for ages so had to buy one at that cheap price, I was a bit gutted that all the green ones had gone because that was a proper cool colour but I ended up with a bright pink one instead that actually looks mega bright and cheerful.

It's not really the size of a bucket, more like a household bin that you'd have in a bedroom or bathroom. The BBQ comes with a grill section and that just sort of sits at the top of the bucket, it has got a handle so that when your food is done you just need to lift the wire grill off the top of the BBQ to transfer your food to the plates. The BBQ stands on little stainless steel legs, this doesn't add all that much height to it but I think the main thing about these legs is that it lifts the BBQ up off the surface where you're doing the cooking for safety and also to get the air flowing around it. There are a few little vent holes at the bottom of the bucket and again they are to create a good air flow around the coals.

When I'm not using our big gas BBQ I buy them cheapo disposable BBQs and in a way I think they are better than this bucket one because by buying this one from Morrisons it meant I also had to buy coals and firelighters, when they would always come included with a disposable one. It took a bit of time to light this bucket BBQ because of having to reach all the way down into the bucket to light the coals, I hadn't got any of them long handled matches so ended up burning the end of my thumb trying to do it with a lighter! I got it lit eventually though, it just took waaaaaaaay longer than just lighting the paper on a disposable BBQ.

Once the coals had gone white I added my food, and saw straight away that you haven't actually got all that much room to cook on the top of the bucket BBQ. Because of the BBQ being round you lose a lot of food space because of not being able to cook all the way to the edge of the grill tray, last night I got on 2 chicken breasts and just about had time afterwards to cook 4 normal sized burgers. I say just about enough time because you can't overload this BBQ with coal so you have to get your food cooked as quick as possible before the coal starts cooling down too much. After the chicken breasts and burgers I just put some mushrooms and stuff on the top and there was just enough heat left in them to warm those through, so don't bother if you're looking for something that is going to feed a whole load of people..... unless you're feeling flush and want to buy half a dozen of these BBQs and let everyone do their own cooking!

The food did cook through nice though and I was impressed by how quick the chicken cooked because that usually takes ages on the BBQ and with this being such a small one I thought it would end up taking even longer. I reckon you could add more coal if you wanted to cook for more people but then you've got to wait for it to get hot all over again so that probably wouldn't be all that practical.

The BBQ took quite a long time to cool down, that was fine because I was using mine in the back garden so was able to leave it outside for as long as I needed to but if you're thinking about taking it camping or on a day trip then you'll have to think about that. It's metal underneath the bright pink paint so I don't know if it would be a very good idea to pour water over it too much to cool it down in case it rusted the bucket eventually. Another thing is storage, even though the bucket is quite small you need to find somewhere out of the rain and wind to store it again because of the chance of it going rusty.

It's easy to empty the cold coal out of the bucket because of it being so small, I just tipped it upside down into the bin and then gave it a rinse out with the hosepipe once it was empty to clean it. The grill tray took a bit of cleaning with a scouring pad but even that wasn't as much effort as I thought it was going to be.

Recommended...... a cute little BBQ that looks loads better than the disposable ones and that will definately last for a lot longer.