Beef Up Your Side Dishes For Your Summer BBQ!

Good news, everybody! Summer is almost here, so it's warming up and the sun is staying out for longer. You know what this means—it's time to grab a brew, head outdoors and fire up the barbie!

It's one of the most quintessential Aussie pastimes to grab a few mates and a footy, gather up the kids, load the esky and head to the nearest public barbecue. Or, make the most of the sunshine, and host family and friends at your place for a backyard BBQ around the pool.

But as easy as it is to just grab a packet of cheap snags, a few onions and a bag of buns, it makes for such a better experience if you put a little more thought into what to serve up. 

We are super lucky in Australia to have access to high quality meat from our local farmers. So why not accompany your steak, kebabs and snags with some delicious sides? Let’s look into some crowd pleasing BBQ side ideas to get you inspired.

Salads and coleslaws

Let's start with something easy. Pretty much all summer salads can be improved by adding jerky or biltong. A leafy green salad could have some shaved sweet BBQ jerky to add a little meaty sweetness to it. Or you could use smokey jerky to compliment the parmesan cheese in a Caesar Salad.

If you want to beef it up a bit more, you could take your favourite salad or coleslaw recipe and add chilli beef biltong slices. Biltong is a softer product, so if you want some decent sized pieces of meat in your salad or coleslaw, biltong is the perfect addition. 

For something a little out of left-field, try adding our lamb biltong to a greek salad. Lamb is a staple in Greek food, so these will go together perfectly.

Potato Salad

An absolute Aussie BBQ classic. Consisting of potatoes (of course), sour cream, mayonnaise, dijon mustard, dill, spring onions and bacon, it's a pretty starchy and carbohydrate rich side dish. But if you wanted to give it a bit more of a protein kick, you could try replacing the bacon with chopped biltong.

Sweet bbq biltong would suit well, but if you wanted to add a little something special you could try using our fatty truffle biltong.

If pasta salad is more your thing, then you can sub out the potato and use pasta instead. You can also make this one your own by using your favourite combination of herbs and spices, and add some chilli flakes if you like a bit of heat.

Grilled Corn Salad

This salad is fresh, full of texture and a delicious addition to your BBQ. This salad can be made with Mexican flavours, such as coriander and paprika, or with a more Meditteranean twist with chorizo, parsley and feta. You can really interpret this salad any way you wish, depending on your taste preferences. 

At the moment, we are loving an African style corn salad with slices of droewors. This recipe uses dukkah, which is a delicious nutty spice mix that will really give your corn salad some delicious flavour and texture.

Method

• Cook the corn on the cob in boiling salted water for 10 minutes.
• Drain, and once slightly cooled, brush the corn with olive oil and then sprinkle it with cayenne pepper, salt and paprika.
• Cook on a BBQ hotplate for 10 – 15 minutes or until lightly charred.
• Allow the corn to cool and the use a knife to cut down the length of the corn to remove the kernels from the core.
• Place the droewors slices on the hotplate for 1 minute per side until slightly browned.
• With the corn now in a bowl, add a few teaspoons of dukkah, some chopped green onion, the droewors, a dash of olive oil and a drizzle of lemon juice then mix it all up to combine.

Garlic and Cheese Pull Apart Bread

Cheesy garlic bread is always a crowd pleaser amongst both kids and adults. What is even better that is super simple to prepare. 

Method

• Take a large pane di casa bread loaf or something similar and use a bread knife to cut in a criss cross section on the top half, being careful not to cut it all the way through.
• Combine 75g butter, 4 minced garlic cloves and a tablespoon of chopped parsley in a bowl and then spread the mixture evenly into the bread cracks with a butter knife.
• Chop up a 100g pack of traditional beef jerky into small pieces and add to 100g softened cream cheese, 1 cup of cheddar cheese and 1 cup mozzarella cheese. Mix to combine.
• Push this mixture into the bread cracks with a spoon, making sure it is evenly spred. 
• Loosely cover the bread in foil, and bake for 15 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.

The end result will be the most delicious cheesy pull-apart garlic bread you can imagine! The addition of the jerky adds a perfect hit of saltiness to cut through the cheese.

Charcuterie Board

Let's be honest, we all love a good graze before we get into the barbecued meats of the main courses, and there's really no better way to nibble than with a good quality charcuterie board.

Simple, classic ingredients for your cheese board work well, such as stuffed olives, some crackers and a couple of nice dips, celery sticks, halved cherry tomatoes, a few nice cheeses and some delicious meats. It's common to use proscuitto and salami, but for something a little different, try adding our snap sticks to your board. Our Lime & Pepper flavour will add the perfect hit of flavour on a sunny afternoon.

Feeling inspired? Shop our range now!

There's nothing better than a good selection of some of the best BBQ sides to go with your grilled meat during a Summer cookout. It's one of those uniquely Australian pleasures that we are so lucky to enjoy.