Get Your Grill On

I read lists of tips all over the place, so I came up with my own, my 9 tips for cooking outdoors:
1. Have a fire extinguisher handy.
Ok, first one is boring, but, really, have a fire extinguisher on hand. You never know when you need it, and even seasoned cooks have issues. When you’re cooking […]

Barbecue competitions can get really hectic, and I’m really there to fix the meats that I’m going to turn in. However, Friday night usually requires that we fix ourselves something for dinner.
The last thing I want to do is spend a lot of time fixing fancy stuff for a Friday night dinner. One […]

Grilling season is a great time of the year. May warms up nicely in Ohio, and it makes me want to be out at the grill. There’s just something about it, whether it’s not heating up the kitchen by having the stove going or just enjoying the sun while cooking, I love the grill!
One of […]

Next week, I’m going to be cooking in front of a group of people, along with my barbecue teammate, Mark (we make up the Bucky McOinkum’s Barbecue competition team). What’s the reason? We’re holding a cooking class!

So you hop around the Internet looking at food blogs all day. Maybe you learn from them, maybe you […]

Don’t worry; there’s no leftover coup taking place here… Todd recommended I add a couple of things to the Monday Leftovers series.
A couple of weekends ago, I spent some time doing a big batch o’ beautiful barbecue. As happens any time I do this, there are usually leftovers. Typically, leftovers of brisket and […]

If you’ve done any reading about grilling, you’ve likely heard of building a 3 zone fire. It sounds silly in a way… My dad never built a 3 zone fire! He piled up charcoal briquettes, poured on the lighter fluid and ignited the fireball that became hot coals!
Today’s grilling is a bit different. […]

There’s a great dish that is really popular with many barbecuers. When someone that’s never heard of it hears the name, they almost invariably ask what it is. In its simplest form, the dish is called a “fatty”. It’s smoked, but not in the way you might remember from high school!A fatty, […]

Sometime in the early 1900s, Louis-Camille Maillard supposedly discovered the reaction that takes place between amino acids, sugars and, usually, heat, now known as the Maillard reaction. He didn’t discover it, as it had taken place since fire was put to food, but he did work out what takes place. It wasn’t until […]

It’s easy to get caught up in how to make simple things “gourmet” (I HATE that word, by the way!) Every once in a while, it’s a good exercise to just get back to basics. Simple things, made very well say a lot about the care and attention paid in making them.
Pulled Pork, […]

Being a barbecue kind of guy, I’ve looked every year for an appropriate main dish for holiday parties.  What I’ve come up with is simply brisket!  This has quickly become a holiday tradition at my house.
Brisket is a standard barbecue item at my house, though not all areas of the country would include it as […]