Rachael Ray

This blog, strictly speaking, is for home cookers; competition barbecuers are another breed of person, half-mad from the smell of smoke and meat, and lusting for a glory that is all-too-elusive, even for the masters of the game. But that game has become corrupt. It’s become about specialty equipment, about pellet cookers and automated fans, remote smartphone thermostats and vacuumn tumblers. The art of smoking meat, so pristine and primal a skill, has become as shrouded in fraud and technology as the meat it buries in foil and margarine. It has gotten away from the true path. I am therefore founding the Bare Bones BBQ Contest, an all-natural, back-to-basics, IROC-style skill contest. It is for master barbecuers only. No special equipment [...]...

This weekend (and even as I write it I begin to quiver) the whole food world, from superchefs on down to bacon bloggers, is on tenterhooks. Why? Clearly you must not live in the foodiverse, because this is the weekend of the James Beard Awards. Now, I’ve written about the awards before, and not always in a glowing way. As was noted last year following Gabrielle Hamilton’s inexplicable Best Chef award, hype has a way of generating Beard awards, which inevitably generates more hype. That’s still true as far as it goes. But I now think that the Beard Awards are, on the whole, of single value to the world at large, and worth paying attention to. Full disclosure: I’m on the [...]...

After a long and cloudy winter, spring has broken across my Alphabet City neighborhood and granted me the gorgeous morning I had been waiting so long for. It was bright and clear and when I woke up I knew that the first thing I wanted to do was to befoul it with smoke. Now don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t polluting out of sheer perversity. My carbon footprint was child-sized, and temporary at best. I just wanted to start grilling. Of course, in the morning, you are limited as to what you can make. It’s too early for hamburgers, and barbecue burritos take far to long to cook; by the time they were done it would be lunch, and that would mean [...]...

Passover, the holiday of my people, doesn’t usually present much in the way of excitement. A few family arguments, some overcooked lamb, maybe a whiff of identity politics. It’s basically Jewish Thanksgiving. This year, though, I thought that I might try to cook something good. And I did. All it needed was a french cookware company, a Southern chef, some Spanish wine, and a bag of aged Italian barley. The cookware was Le Creuset; I had gotten a large enameled, cast-iron braiser, something I’d always wanted, although I couldn’t say exactly why. I mean, I could have made this in my dutch oven. It would have been just as good. But then, my old Kenneth Cole watch keeps time just [...]...

I get invited to judge food contests a lot. I have even done a couple of Burger Bashes (although for some reason I can’t grasp I don’t get invited back anymore.) But I’ve done lesser versions of the same event, and even competed in a few of them. Like competition barbecue, they are a noble idea undone by their judging system. I want to reform all cooking contests everywhere, and give you a good template for your own contest. And that’s what I’ve done. Most cooking contests use some variation of the following system: 2-9 points for taste, 2-9 points for tenderness, 2-9 points for originality, and 2-9 points for appearance.  Can you believe how dumb this is? I’m going to [...]...

This was the warmest March on record, and while that portends evil for the earth, it’s nothing but great when it comes to grilling. I was able to burn my first coals of spring on my roof this past weekend. They were the same, classic “blue bag” Kingsford coals that we all grew up using; the C-Town supermarket across the street from me doesn’t carry anything else, and in fact, nothing else is really necessary. A note on charcoal: I know I always say that you should, if at all possible, use lump hardwood, for reasons of both physics and flavor. The lump hardwood does burn hotter, and taste better, than blue bag charcoal, but it also burns out much faster [...]...

Chris Phelps of Salt's Cure I eat a lot of meat. You know that. It’s what I like to eat, and it’s what I cook. If you want healthy foods or vegetables, you need Luisa. If you want great home cooking tips, go to the Last Minute Lady. I’m your meat guy. But my cooking column is, as a result, laughably simple-minded, since the art of cooking meat is necessarily simplistic. You have to get the best meat, and do the least to it: it’s really as simple as that. I bring this up because I just ate at what I think is the best meat restaurant in America yesterday. I don’t say this lightly. I risk offending a number [...]...

My friend Harold Moore, of Commerce restaurant in New York, is the most blue-collar of chefs. You might not guess it from his menu, an eclectic collection of big-city dishes like beef tataki and chicken roasted with foie gras stuffing. But Harold lives in New Jersey. He loves Springsteen. He is filled with schemes for opening fried-chicken restaurants. He is into big sandwiches. He is someone I trust, in other words, to cook American vernacular cookery. Take the other night. Harold made a macaroni and cheese for the ages. Now, I’m not going to say it was better than any of Rachael’s versions. Certainly, it was unhealthier. Harold paid tribute to our most unwholesome traditions by making with a ton of [...]...

Have I ever enlarged upon my “levels of flavor” rule? It’s like my “pyramid theory” of food construction, an abstract concept I hatched last year, and which prompted a huge wave of silence among our readers. That one was something of a stretch, I’ll grant you. But this one is so palpably true that once you read it, think about it, and then internalize it, your cooking will IMMEDIATELY become 100% better, or I don’t know how to use the cap lock button. The basic idea of “levels of flavor” is this: you can’t get flavor from top to bottom, unless you add it from top to bottom. It’s as simple as that. Imagine you are eating a slice of pizza. [...]...