Cooking Outside: Your Guide For The Perfect Outdoor Kitchen

[caption id="attachment_6256" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Outdoor Kitchen Ideas"][/caption]

With the warm weather we have now, it's time to get back into cooking outside! If you are thinking of updating your backyard patio into a useful cooking area, take a look at these tips, courtesy of DIY Network:

Outdoor kitchens have certainly become one of the hottest items in home building in the last few years. You can get the same options from your indoor kitchen and you can put those things in your outdoor kitchen. For example, you can get cabinets, grills, refrigerators, but there's one thing that's totally different — everything has to be waterproofed.

The most basic item for your outdoor kitchen is a barbecue grill — don't forget that what makes it a kitchen is that you have a place to cook. You have a few options when it comes to an outdoor grill, you can get something that is prefab, something semi-custom or something that is customized.

You can get something as extravagant as a drop-in stove that's got six burners and a gas kit. You might hire a kitchen designer for your indoor kitchen, but for a more casual outdoor kitchen you might want to do it yourself.

A BBQ grill is the most popular choice for outdoor cooking, but there are other outdoor cooking options:

• A fireplace is a good option. A fireplace outside can easily be transformed into a place outside where you can cook. The idea of being able to congregate around this outdoor fireplace and cook really adds to this outdoor room feeling.
• More casual than a fireplace, a firepit can also be used to cook — with a rotisserie, skewers or a grill over the open flame.

Read more at DIY Network