Excellent Ideas for your Outdoor Kitchens

Those who are really fond of cooking and wish to spend a lot of time inside the kitchen can seriously consider putting up an outdoor kitchen. An outdoor kitchen can be as unostentatious as a storage cabinet for cooking gear or as lavish as a full-fledged kitchen with grill, refrigerator, all appliances, sink and dining space. Either way, an outside kitchen can mean a lot of fun and excitement and a new cooking experience.

Outdoor kitchens will certainly need a grill and counter space for preparing food, a refrigerator and sink are not essential. But including them can add to cooking convenience and enhance the value of your outdoor kitchen to qualify as a second kitchen. While indoor-kitchen design has to be lot more elaborate, outdoor-kitchen designs can be casual with bare minimum facilities.

What conveniences the outdoor kitchen should have is a matter of the family’s needs. Assuming you barbecue once a week, a gas grills and a counter-high storage cabinet covered with tile or stucco should suffice. The cabinet will protect supplies from the open weather and the countertop will provide work space for cooking. Once your family develops a passion for eating outside, then you will obviously require storage space and a counter or a dining table along with refrigerator and a sink.

If you can afford the cost, your outdoor kitchen can have some unique features that will make your outdoor living environment really pleasurable. Opt for a full sized outdoor kitchen grill that is different from the standard grills that you see in most backyards. These are full sized grills built with bricks and intentionally made immobile by cementing to the ground. The kitchen can be equipped with multiple burners so that you can cook a large meal within minimum time.

If your full sized grill has no built-in mini fridge, then you must invest in an external mini fridge that can easily be plugged into a power outlet. It is also convenient to have some kind of racks – either wall mounted or hanging - to neatly arrange all the cooking utensils.

If you want to add to aesthetics, then you can create an outdoor kitchen island. However, because these islands will be isolated and exposed to nature, you should use proper construction materials. You can consider marble, granite, stone, and other types of earthly rock materials for producing the outdoor kitchen island. Stone- based material for building the

island will make it lot more durable and it can effectively withstand the elements and they cannot also be stained.

Better to invest in infra red burners as they are known to seal in juices, cook at higher temperatures, and heat up quickly. You can either have them built into grills or as stand-alone units.

Having a fire pit or outdoor fireplace can really lend enchantment to the outdoor kitchen and give your guests that cozy look and feel. To further provide a sense of completion to your outdoor kitchen, you can add some furniture. As it is, your outdoor kitchen should have some kind of overhang to protect it from the weather and as such, you may buy cushion furniture for use outdoors.

Make sure all pipes are properly installed and properly winterized. It is preferable that you hire a professional to install the gas and electric lines for all your outdoor kitchen appliances, gas lights, and sound system. Remember that some outdoor kitchen designs may not exactly fit into your exteriors as access to electricity is important and the ground has to be firm and dry.