Holidays
Hot Stuff
Your Guide To Roasting Or Smoking Holiday Meats
Many are the times when my best friend, Kathy, with whom I often host a Christmas Eve open house, has asked me to grill or smoke the beef tenderloin or prime rib. Knowing she has paid nearly $100 (or more) for these gorgeous hunks of meat, you can imagine the pressure! Like me, she prefers her beef (and lamb) rosy rare. I always use the outdoor grill as her double oven is usually full of other things. (Plus, I love the peace and quiet!) Like students at Steven’s famous Barbecue University, party guests often...
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What Santa Really Wants: Christmas Ribs
Like many parents, my husband and I encouraged our young children to leave milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for his magical beasts of burden on Christmas Eve. But did we get it wrong? In hindsight, I bet that jolly old elf would have appreciated a smoky slab of barbecued ribs (not reindeer ribs, of course) and an ice-cold beer to wash them down. The cookies and milk tradition has its origins in Scandinavia, where during the Yule season, children...
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The Ultimate Holiday Gift for Grillers and Barbecuers, Plus a Festive Holiday Menu
Sure, you could give that live-fire cooking-obsessed special person in your life another piece of grill gear. Or a cookbook or barbecue seasonings or a gift certificate to a favorite barbecue joint. But this year, how about a gift that keeps on giving and the barbecue experience of a lifetime? {Researchers at Cornell University determined that unlike material goods, experiences actually become part of who we are.) We speak, of course, about Steven Raichlen’s Barbecue University™—ranked...
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Great Gift Ideas for Grillers: Our 2018 Holiday Gift Guide
Once again, we’re proud to present our annual holiday gift guide to make shopping for the barbecue enthusiast on your list stress-free. Everything from stocking stuffers to a slot at Barbecue University is included, just a few of our favorite things, and in all price ranges. Maybe you can use our suggestions to build your own wish list. In any case, happy browsing! Perfect Draft Barbecue Air Blower: As much as we embrace the primal triumvirate of fire, fuel, and food, we often welcome the helping hand of high-tech devices. One of them is the Perfect Draft Barbecue Air Blower, awarded first place this year by the National...
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Relax: Here’s The Only Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe You Need In Your Life
Let’s cut to the chase: You want a turkey recipe for Thanksgiving that will wow your guests year after year. Stop. You can abandon that exhausting, confusing, relentless search through magazines, newspapers, or the suck-you-in internet. Seriously, this is the ONE. This bourbon- and maple-brined turkey is unbeatable. Hands-down, it’s our favorite turkey recipe. Independently, Steven and I have been making it for Thanksgiving for years to...
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Gift the Taste of Texas This Holiday Season
This post is brought to you by Southside Market & Barbeque, which provided advertising support. If you’re anything like us, your holiday to-do list is already a mile long. With a calendar full of parties to attend, boxes of decorations to hang, and desserts to bake for school and work, it’s hard to find time to complete one of the trickier items on your list: shopping for gifts. We may not be able to trim the tree or bake your...
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Enter for a Chance to Win the 2018 Ultimate Thanksgiving Feast Sweepstakes
Thanksgiving is a holiday to reconnect with family and friends, to spend quality time together watching football and making merry. And the cornerstone of the holiday, which brings us together every year: The table piled high with food. Sausage stuffing, pies, sweet potatoes and more will grace our tables this year. And at the center of the feast, a mouthwatering turkey smoked to perfection. To help you host the best possible Thanksgiving feast, our friends have helped us bring together the ultimate...
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Happy Anniversary to Barbecue! Bible
If you happen to visit the Smithsonian Museum of American History, you’ll find an exhibit on a uniquely American institution: the backyard barbecue. And if you happen to tour that backyard barbecue exhibit, you will see, next to James Beard’s Complete Book of Barbecue & Rotisserie Cooking (published in 1954), and the Sunset Barbecue Cook Book (1958), a book near and dear to my heart: The Barbecue! Bible, written by yours truly and published by Workman in 1998. Which makes this the 20th anniversary for the book that got me into barbecue. (Yikes—two decades have passed already?!) And an unexpected but much appreciated honor for a book that wasn’t supposed...
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For the Fourth of July: Cook an Entire Meal on the Grill
The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. I love the parades (Edgartown puts on a doozy), the fireworks, the patriotism, and of course, the food. I’m certainly not alone: July 4 is the most popular barbecue holiday of the year. According to the Hearth, Patio, and Barbecue Association, 73 percent of Americans plan on eating food cooked outdoors. The celebrations of my youth were rudimentary, to say the least. Today we grill everything—really, from cocktails to vegetables, from breakfast...
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Honor Dad with a Cliche-Busting Father’s Day Brunch
Mother’s Day, named a national holiday in 1914, had a nearly 60-year jump on Father’s Day, which wasn’t formally added to the calendar until 1972. It’s now a virtual given that breakfast in bed belongs to moms while dads man the grill. Why not shake things up this year? Host a Father’s Day backyard brunch. You grill, Dad grills, or you happily share the cooking responsibilities. Then spend a leisurely afternoon doing something you know he’ll enjoy. Here are some menu suggestions (including...
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