Cooking concepts: Weber Baby Q review

CAMP cooking is one of the best parts about camping and, trust me, I love a good feed.

These days there are bucket-loads of options when it comes to buying cooking gear. Seriously, there’s so much more than butane cookers to choose from these days, and some of these concepts will bring a tear to your eye!

Over the coming day's we will be testing different cooking concepts, telling you all the hidden pros and cons you can only find out by using the gear.

First on our list is the Baby Weber Q.

One bit of kit that has gained plenty of popularity among campers these days is the Baby Q from Weber. Put simply, it ticks a heck of a lot of boxes for the keen travelling camper.

It’s basically an oven and a barbecue in one, and it’s the perfect size to cater for everything from a couple to a whole family. Seriously, this little beauty will cook everything from a leg of lamb or a full chicken to kebab sticks, pizzas and snags. You can even bake scones or a pudding if you want. You can live off this bad boy for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert, and the only extra bit of cooking gear you’ll need is a stove to boil something up.

It’s about as efficient as they come. In fact, don’t be surprised if a 4.5kg gas cylinder lasts you an entire trip to the Cape and back again – it did for me and that was cooking on it every night, with plenty of pancakes and melted cheese on toast in the mornings, too!

The unit is quite compact, which makes it portable. Cleaning is nice and easy if you keep on top of things, but the lid gets pretty dirty as it always needs to be in the down position when you cook to generate enough heat, which can be annoying. That said, after the dog knocked it off the table half a dozen times it’s still going strong, so it’s pretty resilient. And if placing it on a table and hooking the gas up sounds like too much hard work, fitting this unit to a slide on the camper will make things so easy it’s almost cheating!

If it’s versatility, efficiency and reliability you’re after, the Weber Baby Q is a dead-set cracker.

Versatility: 5/5
Running cost: 4/5
Set-up (time and difficulty): 4/5
Weight and ease of storage: 3/5
Clean-up and maintenance: 4/5
Strength and durability: 4/5
RRP: $319
More info: www.weberbbq.com.au