RESEARCH has revealed how one in five Scots are set to have a takeaway nightmare, according to takeaway giants Just Eat.
Collectively, Scots will host or attend eight BBQs each this summer, but new research has revealed that nearly a fifth (18%) of these are likely to fall flat.
The study found that 7 in 10 Scots (70%) have experienced under or over-cooked food at a barbecue. The same number (70%) even admitted to having eaten before attending one as they were worried about going hungry due to the food that would be on offer.
That may be a wise decision, as a third of Scots (32%) confessed to having burned BBQ food when hosting, while a fifth of unlucky guests (20%) have even experienced food poisoning from a BBQ.
It seems many BBQ hosts are not responding to the changing dietary requirements of friends and family. Vegetarians regularly get a bum deal with 16% offered only one option to eat and the same number (16%) only given a bun and salad.
In a bid not to offend their hosts, guests owned up to having secretly binned inedible food (29%), fed it to the family pet (12%) or even hiding it in their bag (10%).
The top 10 most common BBQ blunders experienced by Scots are as follows:
- Burnt food being served – 48%
- Over-catering – 31%
- Meat being served under-done – 25%
- Having to wait for hours for the coals to get hot enough to cook food – 21%
- Cooking on a grill that hasn’t been cleaned – 20%
- Guests suffering in a cloud of smoke for most of the event – 16%
- Not enough alcohol – 14%
- People turning up uninvited – 13%
- Being forced to sit outside even though the weather was bad – 13%
- Not enough buns for burgers and sausages – 13%
In response to Scots’ tendency to bungle a BBQ, takeaway app Just Eat has launched a BBQ Rescue Service – asking Brits to share snaps of their grilling disasters to bbqrescue@just-eat.co.uk to be in with a chance of winning a perfectly cooked BBQ meal of your choice delivered to your door.
Graham Corfield of Just Eat, said: “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a BBQ where there hasn’t been a burnt banger or a questionable burger being served. It may be quintessentially British for your BBQ to not go quite as planned, but we don’t have to stomach it any longer. With the new Just Eat BBQ Rescue Service, you’ll get the food you really want, safe in the knowledge that it will be delicious.”
Respondents said that men do most of the grilling (71%), the top reason being that they are ‘glory hunting’ and just want praise when the food is ready (26%), while for some, barbecuing is the only type of cooking that they do (24%).
Scots are expecting to cook five barbecues on average over the summer.
