Grilling Techniques
Barbecue University™
Performance Enhancers for Gas Grillers
It’s understandable if gas grillers, despite their overwhelming numbers, sometimes feel left out of the barbecue discussion. Pit masters who use wood and/or charcoal seem to get all the love, and sometimes, verbally bully gas grillers. Yet, 64 percent of American grillers own gas grills. Steven and I are among them. We own gas grills for the same reasons you do. They’re convenient, easy to light, don’t get your clothes dirty, and put dinner...
Read more →Planet Barbecue
Seoul Food: Pork Belly Breaks Out of the Bacon Mold
In 2004, the small food, wine, and travel publication I worked for devoted an issue to Korean-style barbecue. Little had been written about this cultural phenomenon, and we were confident our readers would share our excitement. We worked hard for weeks, our research culminating in a soju-soaked food crawl through L.A.’s Koreatown. We were guided to the best markets and barbecue restaurants by a hip young Korean-American named Jonathan Kim. (He went on to found one of the largest Asian food emporiums in the...
Read more →Barbecue University™
Grilling with Cherry Wood and Fresh Cherries
When it comes to flavor, nothing can beat the aroma of wood smoke. You may be familiar with using hickory, apple or oak wood, but have you tried smoking with cherry wood? Cherry can be used the same way you would other varieties: toss soaked wood chips on the coals of your charcoal grill or add them to the smoker box of your gas grill. I came to appreciate fragrant cherry wood during my sojourn to the Pacific Northwest—Cherry Wood Chips are...
Read more →Barbecue University™
Indoor Grilling
Here in Miami, we break out the warm hoodies and jackets when temperatures dip into the fifties. But I realize other parts of the country, particularly the Northeast, are enduring real cold this winter. (The wind chill in Vermont last week was an unfathomable -100 degrees.) There’s certainly no shame in taking the party indoors when temperatures fall below zero. Or maybe you’re one of millions of condo or apartment dwellers who are prevented from...
Read more →Barbecue University™
Grill to Thrill: Cavemanning (Cooking in the Embers)
Some of the best moments in life occur when we’re not completely in control. Zip-lining. Falling in love. Live-fire cooking. As an industry, grilling and barbecuing seem to be moving toward the “set it and forget it” mentality, marketing grills and smokers that have more in common with kitchen appliances than the primal cooking fires that have sustained mankind for millennia. Don’t lose touch with that powerful, seductive, unpredictable, sometimes violent element....
Read more →Barbecue University™
Use Your Christmas Tree on the Grill: Spruce-Grilled Steaks
Though I am constantly thinking about various cuts of beef and new ways to cook them, the busy month of December traditionally brings Spruce-Grilled Steak to mind over and over again. Why might I focus on this recipe each year, you ask? The answer is simple: the scent of freshly cut Christmas trees brings me back to the aroma of spruce smoke and a sizzling rib eye steak. Created by my friend and the editor of my French-Canadian books, Pierre Bourdon,...
Read more →Barbecue University™
Pulled Pork in a Hurry: Introducing 3-2-1 Pulled Pork
If you have six hours of daylight, you can barbecue a pork shoulder and sit down to an incredible meal before the sun slips below the horizon. Tough, now that we’ve gone off Daylight Savings Time. But doable. This was all Steven’s idea. Buoyed by the success of 3-2-1 ribs, one of our most popular blogs, Steven wondered what would happen if we treated a pork butt (aka, shoulder) to 3 hours of smoke, 2 hours wrapped in butcher paper, foil, or...
Read more →Planet Barbecue
Perfect for Parties: Yakitori, A Hot Grilling Trend
Trolling for new menu ideas for fall and winter parties? Look no further than the grill masters of Japan. Trending now among American chefs is yakitori. The word literally means “grilled chicken,” but the simple name doesn’t begin to describe the variety, complexity, and deep cultural significance of Japan’s favorite grilled meat. These small but elegant skewers (chicken, usually, but other meats and vegetables, too) are the epitome of Japanese barbecue, and...
Read more →Eat Your Words
Two “Must Have” Books for Your Barbecue Library
Pitmaster: Recipes, Techniques & Barbecue Wisdom (Voyageur Press, 2017) Most winning competition-level pitmasters keep their cards close to their vests, seldom revealing the secret strategies that consistently propel them to center stage (a “walk”) once the scoring’s complete. Not these guys. They seem determined to spill the beans (barbecued, of course). I first met the co-authors of Pitmaster, restaurateurs Andy Husbands and Chris Hall, in 2010 when they...
Read more →Barbecue University™
Greatest Hits: 10 Recipes from Barbecue University™
Barbecue University™—still going strong after 17 years! The professor, yours truly, has lost track of how many students he’s personally escorted up the ladder of grilling enlightenment. Suffice it to say, the answer is “thousands.” And I can’t say how many recipes have been featured over the years, because while each student receives a leather-bound notebook that includes that session’s menu and recipes—always 8 to 10 a day—I often go off script and give them extras. During the first...
Read more →
