World BBQ
Barbecue University™
How to Make the Smoked Beef Tacos of Your Dreams
A buddy of mine—Dallas-based food and travel writer extraordinaire Mike Hiller—recently posted a photo on Facebook of a taco that stopped me in my tracks: It was composed of tender shards of chorizo-spiced beef plate ribs and flame-roasted salsa verde and topped with crunchy chicharrones (fried pork rinds). He encountered this sexy taco while judging an event called Chefs for Farmers. The taco’s creator was talented chef Cody Sharp of Dallas’ Wheelhouse restaurant. Mike made online introductions,...
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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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Raichlen’s Top Grill and BBQ Restaurants You Must Visit
Book tour is hard work. Eight cities in ten days? That kind of hard work. But it definitely has its perks, and one of them is discovering new restaurants where the wood fires burn bright and the food comes to the table the way I like it: slow-smoked over smoldering hickory or grilled over blazing oak or mesquite. So midway through the year seems like a great time to share some of my best finds for 2018. Do you have a great grill restaurant or barbecue find in your area? Share it on my Facebook page, via Twitter, or on the Barbecue Board....
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The French Are Masters At The Grill
You know of my longstanding passion for barbecue. What you may not know is that I came to this field—circuitously for sure—through a degree in French literature. After college, I traveled to France on a Watson Foundation Fellowship to study medieval cooking in Europe. But how can you study the history of cooking if you don’t know how to cook? So I enrolled in a brand new cooking school in Paris called La Varenne. It was there that I met a fellow student and soon to be fellow food writer,...
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Fresh Ideas for Taco Tuesday! (No Ground Meat in Sight)
I’m not sure when themed food nights became a thing. First, it was “Meatless Mondays.” Sounds rather cheerless and reminds many of us of the meat-deprived Fridays of our youth. But “Taco Tuesdays?” Heck, ya. That’s something we can really get behind! Coincidentally, today’s Tuesday. The burden of what to have for dinner has just been lifted from your shoulders. “Taco Tuesday” would appear to be a generic coupling of words, a common...
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Upgrade Your Summer Entertaining: Enter for a Chance to Win the Barbecue Bible Party with Paella Sweepstakes
Authentic Spanish paella, which was first seen during the 18th century near the coastal city of Valencia, has much in common with American barbecue. Like barbecue, it began as a poor peoples’ food, cooked outdoors over open fires, served as a communal dish that brought laborers together for the midday meal. This summer, we encourage you to explore this tradition and bring together your friends and family over the delicious blend of rice, vegetables, and protein that make up this delightful dish. To help you bring this tradition alive in your backyard,...
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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...
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A Toast to Grilling and St. Patrick
Perhaps you’re neither Irish nor Catholic. Maybe you hate Notre Dame football. There’s still no harm in celebrating on Saturday, March 17, the name day of St. Patrick, the 5th century British cleric who was enslaved as a teen by Irish pirates and returned to the island as an adult. Perhaps you’ve heard that he single-handedly drove Ireland’s snakes into the sea. Not true. Ireland does not now, nor has it ever hosted native species of snakes. Not...
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Evolution of a Filipino Barbecue Cookbook
I first learned about Steven Raichlen when I came across one of his works in a local bookstore while on break from the office. He featured recipes from what was seemingly every country in the world, except my native Philippines. I was intrigued by his research, but I decided to e-mail him to ask why he didn’t have any recipes from back home. To my surprise, he responded personally…and showed me that he actually did (Raichlen’s Indoor! Grilling, Workman, 2004). ...
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“Steven Raichlen Grills Italy” To Debut This Month
Underscoring his reputation as an authority on the world’s grilling cultures, Steven was invited last year to host a new show on the Gambero Rosso (“Red Shrimp”) food channel in Italy. The premise of the show is a simple but intriguing one: Steven visits fishermen, butchers, farmers, chefs, and other people deeply involved in Italy’s food world, learns their favorite preparations, then reinterprets them through the lens of American barbecue traditions. The show, which was filmed in English but will feature Italian subtitles, begins airing this month in Italy. Below is an interview Gambero Rosso conducted with Steven when filming concluded late last fall. Food critic, TV personality, lover of great food, and a passionate cook, Steven Raichlen has found in grilling...
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