Chefs, Pitmasters, and Personalities
Project Smoke Season 2 Launches Memorial Day Weekend, Coming to a PBS Station Near You
Photos by Richard Dallett. It’s official! After months of planning, shooting, and editing, season 2 of Steven Raichlen’s popular Project Smoke launches on Public Television this Memorial Day weekend. This year’s show is even smokier and more insanely mouth-watering than ever. In Project Smoke 2 Steven focuses on foods—and drinks—you never dreamed you could smoke. From sangria made with fire-charred fruit to a luscious smoked chocolate bread pudding. From hay-smoked mozzarella...
Read more →Barbecue for Good: Operation BBQ Relief
Three years ago this month, I interviewed Jeff Stith, a co-founder with two other competition barbecuers of Operation BBQ Relief. Since 2011, this nonprofit organization has evolved into an emergency response team and has served over 700,000 plates of barbecue to people displaced by tornadoes, wild fires, and even a devastating fertilizer plant explosion. The good this coalition of volunteers—some 3,000 of them—has done is immeasurable. I believe...
Read more →The Smoked Salmon Whisperer
Smoke masters go to extraordinary lengths to perfect their craft, chopping and seasoning their own wood, butchering their own meats, spending sleepless nights tending pits or smokehouses. But as far as I know, only one serenades his smoked salmon with piano music. His name is Ole Hansen of Hansen & Lydersen in London. At six foot three, with long blond hair and piercing blue eyes, he looks more like one of his Viking ancestors than the bespoke salmon master to star chefs and...
Read more →My Year in Barbecue
2016 already? It seems like the past year went up in smoke. Which it did for me quite literally. Books. TV shows. Barbecue University. And lots of travel. All perfumed by the intoxicating scent of wood smoke. January: In November 2014, the phrase “smoking is the new grilling” popped into my head. And with that, the concept for my new public television series, Steven Raichlen’s Project Smoke, came into being. For a nation obsessed with grilling—as we’ve been for the last decade—smoking is the next frontier. Project Smoke’s mission would be to bring smoking from America’s barbecue belt to everyman’s backyard. January was a whirlwind of preparing...
Read more →Francis Mallmann Grills a Cowboy Rib Eye
Photographs by Santiago Soto Monllor, from Mallmann on Fire by Francis Mallmann (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2014. Here’s another of our ongoing guest recipe series featuring some of the world’s top grill and smoker masters—this one by Francis Mallmann. Argentina’s most celebrated chef can sauce and sauté with the best of them (after all, he trained with Alain Senderens and Raymond Oliver in Paris). But Mallmann staked his reputation on a venture so outlandish, only a fire-obsessed South American...
Read more →How to Cook with Wood
The wood burning oven at Hartwood. Photo by Gentl & Hyers. For years I’ve heard reports of a remarkable restaurant in Tulum, Mexico—run by American expats—where all the cooking is done over wood fires, and the flavors explode in your mouth like fireworks in a 4th of July sky. Well, now you can experience the restaurant Hartwood and the timeless wisdom of wood fire cooking from founder-chef Eric Werner in a stunning new book called Hartwood, published by our sister publisher Artisan....
Read more →10 Indispensable Tips from Brooklyn Sausage Master (and New York Times Rave) Jake Klein
“The Tokyo chicken number (juicy, salty and spicy from shishito peppers) is the most appealing chicken sausage I can remember,” wrote restaurant critic Pete Wells in a recent New York Times story. He went on to describe the double smoked brisket sausage as a “phenomenal piece of barbecue, packing more smoke into a sausage than I’d thought possible.” You got that right, Mr. Wells. Jake Klein, owner of Jake’s Handcrafted in South Slope, Brooklyn,...
Read more →The Sauce Doctor—May He Rest in Peace
Rich Davis died earlier this week. Not familiar with the name? You should be. Dr. Davis (he preferred to be called Rich) was one of the guiding lights of 20th century American barbecue, and his sauce—KC Masterpiece—came to define the quintessential American barbecue sauce. He was a gentle soul, a generous humanitarian and a great friend to Steven Raichlen. I first met Rich when I was writing BBQ USA. I interviewed him about the origin of KC Masterpiece...
Read more →Barbecue Hall of Fame: Acceptance Speech
On October 3, the American Royal Association announced the 2015 class of inductees to the Barbecue Hall of Fame. And I was lucky enough to be one of them. The formal induction ceremony took place on the main stage of the American Royal World Series of Barbecue® event at Arrowhead Stadium. I certainly was in good company. My fellow inductees were Big Green Egg founder, Ed Fisher, and Kansas City Baron of Barbecue, Paul Kirk. So many of you shared your...
Read more →Masters of Smoke: Ed Mitchell
Always wanted to open a barbecue restaurant? Talk to Ed Mitchell first. Mitchell has opened—and closed—some of the most celebrated barbecue joints in North Carolina. His latest venture was a slick neon and glass restaurant with a designer bar next to Bull Durham Stadium—about as different as his previous establishment—a cinderblock joint called The Pit. But whatever the vicissitudes of the business, one taste of Mitchell’s pulled pork—the meat moist, the smoke scent subtle but unmistakable, the vinegar sauce...
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