Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Visit Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Ala., and you’ll find a barbecue sauce unlike any on the planet. Created by a railroad worker-turned-pit master in the 1920s, this piquant mixture of mayonnaise, vinegar and black pepper has accompanied barbecued chicken for five generations of pit masters. If you’re not from Alabama, mayonnaise may sound like a strange ingredient for a barbecue sauce, but its creamy piquancy goes great with smoked chicken, pulled pork and roast beef. Some pit masters like to crank up the heat with some prepared horseradish.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Conventional wisdom holds that pork ribs taste best when cooked outdoors on a grill or smoker. Conventional wisdom hasn’t experienced the sweet-sour balsamic-glazed St. Louis-cut spare ribs at Animal in Los Angeles. The restaurant’s chefs, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, prepare them in a way that most barbecue purists would never order, much less eat: baked in the oven. Here, their recipe has been adapted for the home cook. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Packer brisket is what you order at a barbecue restaurant. The brisket flat (the leaner, flatter of the two muscles that comprise a whole brisket) is what you’re more likely to find at the supermarket. Lacking the generous marbling of a packer, the flat tends to toughen and dry out during a long slow cook on your grill or smoker. But two simple techniques deliver a moist, tender brisket flat every time. The first is to cook the flat in a foil pan to shield the lean meat from the heat. The second is to drape the brisket flat with a layer of bacon, which renders its fat during cooking, basting the meat and keeping it moist. Then there’s the bonus: You get to eat barbecued bacon along with your brisket.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Just before being served, these ribs are grilled, imparting a crisp, charred crust and an inviting whiff of wood smoke. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Pickled eggs are popular bar food everywhere, but at Backyard Barbecue in Tompkinsville, Ky., they come with a fiery twist. The eggs are pickled in an incendiary amalgam of cayenne, melted butter and vinegar. This is the classic dip for Monroe County pork-shoulder steaks, repurposed to pickle eggs. The preparation is simple, but budget seven days to complete the pickling process. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

The earthy, fruity, spicy, though not especially fiery “little red” mole -- one of Oaxaca’s seven classic sauces -- is cooked separately and seared onto the ribs at the end to form a savory crust. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

This recipe, from the barbecue expert Steven Raichlen, was originally published alongside a pair of recipes for smoking the Thanksgiving turkey: one that has you smoking it outdoors on a charcoal grill, the other indoors using a stovetop smoker and a conventional oven. But there's no reason you couldn't brine the turkey according to the method below and then roast it to bronzed perfection.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Most vegetable charcuterie involves several days of curing and smoking, but these crispy smoked shiitakes — mushroom bacon, if you will — can be made from start to finish in less than a half hour. The recipe comes from a terrific vegan restaurant in Washington D.C., called Fancy Radish, by way of the chef and co-owner Rich Landau. It involves a two-step process: First you fry thinly sliced shiitakes to make them crisp, then you smoke them to make them taste like bacon. You can do the smoking in your smoker or a charcoal grill, or indoors with a handheld or stovetop smoker. You’ll love the crisp crunch and rich, baconlike mouthfeel, with a smoky flavor that’s similar to bacon’s but with distinct mushroom overtones. Make shiitake crispy smoked shiitakes for a vegan snack or BLT, or serve it with eggs if you eat them. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Inspired by what is undoubtedly the world’s most ancient method of cooking, ember-roasted cabbage is turning up everywhere, from the charred cabbage with muhammara and hazelnuts at the new Safta restaurant in Denver to the cabbage roasted in the embers and served with yogurt, sumac and lemon zest at Charcoal Venice in Los Angeles. This one features a sweet-sour dressing of sugar, vinegar and caraway seeds, with mint leaves stirred in at the end for freshness. Savoy cabbage is an excellent cabbage for grilling: The smoke circulates freely through its crinkled leaves.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Depending on your perspective, a chicken breast can be a bland protein requiring bold external seasonings to make it palatable — but it’s also a blank canvas awaiting your culinary creativity. Either way, it has the advantage of cooking quickly and the disadvantage of potentially drying out on the grill. Enter a simple olive oil, lemon and herb marinade, which adds flavor, keeps the bird moist and doubles as the sauce.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Mark Twain advocated for boiling corn — preferably right in the corn field. But there’s no better way to cook corn than by grilling. The high dry heat of the fire caramelizes the natural plant sugars, intensifying the corn’s natural sweetness while adding a beguiling smoky flavor. The key is to brown the kernels on all sides. To form a convenient handle for eating the corn, fold the husk back below the stem end. In this version, the corn is seasoned with sesame, soy, mirin and butter.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Okra is a popular item at robatayaki (grill) restaurants in Japan where the pods are pinned together with skewers into rafts. Turning rafts of okra (versus flipping individual pods) is the easiest way to grill them. Besides the charred smoky flavor grilling imparts to all vegetables, it also minimizes okra’s slime factor — boiled or stewed okra tends to become mucilaginous. This is useful for thickening gumbo, but it’s off-putting to many people who try to eat okra straight. In keeping with okra’s Louisianan associations, this formula calls for dusting the okra with Cajun seasoning before grilling and serving it with a rémoulade sauce for dipping or spooning on top.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Pulled pork is one of the glories of American barbecue. Unfortunately, smoking a pork shoulder requires a smoker — and a substantial part of the day to cook. What if you could capture some of that sweet, salty, spicy flavor in pork chops that grill in mere minutes? You can, and it comes down to the pit master’s secret weapon: a rub. Four seasonings are all it takes to make a classic barbecue rub, and you may have all of them at hand in your kitchen: salt, pepper, paprika and brown sugar. For extra smokiness, use pimentón (Spanish smoked paprika). As for the pork chops, aim for ¾- to 1-inch thick pieces that are as generously marbled as you can find.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Smoke has been called the umami of barbecue, and these pork chops, which the chef Curtis Stone cooks over wood fire at his restaurant Gwen in Los Angeles, possess it in spades. Fish sauce and soy sauce provide the salt in the marinade; hoisin sauce and honey the sweetness. The peanuts and sesame seeds in the topping reinforce the nuttiness of the sesame oil in the marinade. You can use charcoal if wood is not an option, or cook over gas if necessary. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Salmon is the perfect fish for grilling: It’s rich-flavored and intrinsically fatty, which keeps it from drying out when exposed to the high, dry heat of the fire. So why do so many cooks leave half the fish stuck to the grate when grilling it? Nerves are part of it: The moment you put the fish on the grill, you may feel compelled to move it, thereby proving to yourself it hasn’t stuck. When fish first hits the grill, it will stick — that’s the nature of piscine protein. The secret is to let it grill for a few minutes without touching it, after which the proteins will release from the hot metal. These two other techniques guarantee stick-free fish: First, select fish steaks, which are less prone to falling apart than fillets. Second, slather the fish with mayonnaise-mustard sauce before grilling. The mayonnaise acts as a lubricant to keep the fish from sticking.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Napa makes an excellent cabbage for grilling. Its elongated shape provides greater surface area to char — and thus smoke — over a hot fire than a round cabbage. Its leaves are less tightly packed than conventional cabbage, allowing for deep penetration of the smoke flavor. Also known as Chinese cabbage, napa cabbage is native to China and pairs well with Asian seasonings, such as sesame oil, rice vinegar and ginger. To notch up the heat, add a spoonful of Asian chile paste.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Admit it: The one dish you really want to grill well is steak. The one steak you should know how to grill is skirt steak. Rich and beefy, it’s relatively affordable and quick to grill. When possible, buy the outside skirt (which comes from the diaphragm) as opposed to the tougher inside skirt (which comes from the transverse abdominal muscle). When in doubt, ask your butcher. Marinating the steak, even just briefly, allows it to soak up flavor while you light your grill.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Green beans don’t number among the vegetables we normally grill — eggplants, onions, peppers, zucchini — but there’s something about the high, dry heat of the fire and the gentle scent of smoke that heightens their snap and natural sweetness. But how do you grill a vegetable so slender it seems doomed to fall between the bars of the grate? The secret is to use a meshed grill basket, which lets enough fire through to char the beans and enough smoke through to perfume them. The New York chef Missy Robbins grills Romano beans (a.k.a. flat or pole beans), whose shape maximizes the surface area exposed to the fire. If unavailable, substitute conventional green beans or haricots verts. The Italian inspiration for this dish is evident in the garlic, basil, mint and extra-virgin olive oil, but grilling the beans over a wood fire, instead of boiling, is uniquely and distinctly American. If necessary, you can use charcoal rather than wood; a gas grill is fine if that's what you have. Steven Raic

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Swordfish is the perfect seafood for grilling — the flesh is sturdy and firm, with a mild flavor that readily absorbs the aroma of smoke without losing its own. Most people grill swordfish as steaks; the Miami chef Michael Schwartz cuts it into chunks for kebabs, a format that allows him to intersperse the chunks of fish with lemon slices and bay leaves, and grills them over wood (though you could use charcoal or, if necessary, grill over gas). The tips of the bay leaves char, imparting a fragrant herbal smoke. By way of a sauce, Mr. Schwartz serves a classic Argentine chimichurri with a not-so-classic twist — the addition of yellow raisins, which counter the traditional garlic and vinegar with an unexpected note of sweetness. If swordfish is unavailable, use another sturdy fish, like tuna or mako shark. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Zucchini is the summer vegetable grillers love to hate. We love it for its summery flavor and sheer abundance. We love it less for its unfortunate tendency to become soggy when grilled. Russ Faulk, chief designer at Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet and author of “Food + Fire,” has come up with an ingenious method of keeping zucchini crisp during grilling: He slices it thin on a mandolin, then accordions the strips on skewers to grill over a screaming hot fire. The edges char and crisp, giving you the vegetable equivalent of meaty ribs’ burnt ends. I’ve taken the burnt end idea one step further by seasoning the zucchini with a classic barbecue rub — use your favorite — and basting it with spiced butter.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Think of this cured, smoked pork loin as ham you can make in a hurry, with 2 days’ curing time and an hour or so of smoking, as opposed to the weeks or even months that a traditional ham takes. Plus, the loin has no bones, so it’s a snap to carve. For the best results, use a heritage pork loin, like Berkshire or Duroc. Depending on your grill, the pork and the weather, smoking time may be as short as 1 hour or as long as 1 ½ hours. The orange juice in this Cognac-citrus glaze cuts the saltiness of the cure, while the Cognac makes a nice counterpoint to the wood smoke. Besides, brown sugar and orange marmalade go great with salty ham.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

A true ham, weighing 15 to 20 pounds, comes from a hog’s hindquarters. It’s a formidable piece of meat, requiring several weeks of curing and 24 hours or more of smoking. A shoulder ham (sometimes called picnic ham) has a similarly magisterial appearance and profound umami flavors, but in a size that will fit in your refrigerator and can be cured and smoked inside a week. When possible, buy a heritage pork breed, like Berkshire or Duroc, preferably from a local farmer or butcher.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

The perfect burger is every griller’s aspiration and challenge: luscious, smoky and charred on the outside, moist and tender on the inside. That ideal is a challenge, because cooking the burger to a safe internal temperature of 160 degrees, as recommended by the USDA, generally yields meat that many might consider overcooked. The solution involves turning a cheeseburger inside out: Instead of laying a slice of cheese on top, you fold grated cheese into the ground beef. The cheese melts, keeping the meat moist. The other secret is to choose a richly flavored ground beef (ideally from the chuck, or a mixture of chuck, short ribs and brisket) with a relatively high fat content (15 to 20 percent). For best results, don’t forget to grill the bun.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Jeremy Umansky is a master meat curer from Cleveland, where he runs a new wave deli called Larder. New wave? The guy serves smoked carrots and burdock root “meat sticks” alongside house-cured pancetta, pastrami and bresaola. His passion for — and obsession with — koji, the miracle spore used by the Japanese to turn soybeans into soy sauce and miso, runs so deep, he not only gave a TED Talk on the topic, he wrote a whole book about it, “Koji Alchemy” (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020). Most of his vegetable charcuterie involves a complex curing, smoking and aging process, plus fermentation with koji, but these carrots can be smoked from start to finish in about an hour. The roasted yeast rub gives them an otherworldly flavor that’s smoky, malty and absolutely unique. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Maderia, a fortified wine, brings wonderful flavor to this Thanksgiving pan gravy, quickly whisked together after the bird emerges from the oven. As with any gravy, the flavor of the stock is essential here, so it's absolutely worth the time to make your own.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

In spite of its ancient origins and utter simplicity, the tandoor produces startlingly sophisticated results, including smoky flatbreads that puff like pillows, and roasted meats of uncommon succulence. But you can make naan just as easily in an oven. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

This mouth-puckering condiment was one of America’s original barbecue sauces, and while a watery mix of cider vinegar, hot red-pepper flakes, salt and pepper may not seem like barbecue sauce to most Americans, North Carolina-style pulled pork just wouldn’t taste right without it. The vinegar counterpoints the fatty pork, while the black and hot peppers crank up the heat. In the western part of the state, ketchup or tomato sauce is often added for sweetness, a practice made optional in this recipe. Some pit masters add liquid hot sauce in place of (or in addition to) red-pepper flakes, while others add water to diminish the vinegary bite.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

This is pork barbecue as you’ve probably never experienced it, with the shoulder cut crosswise into pencil-thin steaks and grilled directly over hickory embers. Note we're saying grilled, not barbecued (smoked), the way most pork shoulder is cooked in the South. But it’s not complete until it's dipped in a fiery bath of vinegar, melted lard or butter, and cayenne. And no one makes it better than Anita Hamilton Bartlett at R&S Barbecue in Tompkinsville, Ky. To be strictly authentic, you’d grill over a wood fire; barring that, add hickory or other hardwood chunks or chips to your charcoal fire, or place wood chunks under the grate and over the burners of your gas grill. An added advantage: this is “barbecue” you can cook in 15 minutes. Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Reverse-searing is a grilling technique for steak that ensures a dark, sizzling crust and a rosy center that is perfectly cooked to your desired degree of doneness. This brilliant grilling method combines the low and slow cooking of traditional barbecue with the high heat charring practiced at steakhouses. Though it works well with any thick steak, from picanha to porterhouse, this recipe calls for a cut of steak popularized in Santa Maria, Calif., and is today known and loved across the U.S. as tri-tip. As the name suggests, it’s a triangular or boomerang-shaped steak cut from the tip of the sirloin, blessed with a robust beefy flavor.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

This simple but intensely flavorful dish combines two classic Spanish tapas. The first is shrimp, head and shells intact, roasted on a bed of hot salt on a plancha. The second is camarones al ajillo, garlic shrimp sizzled in olive oil in a cazuela (shallow clay dish). While not strictly traditional, this dish combines the best of both recipes — and fairly bursts with Spanish flavors thanks to the flavor-boosting powers of searing hot metal.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

This slaw acquires its smoke flavor not through grilling the greens, but by cold smoking. The advantage is that you flavor the leaves with smoke without cooking them, so the cabbage remains audibly crisp. Cold smoking can be done on a grill or in a smoker, or even in your kitchen using a stove-top smoker or hand-held smoker. The secret is to smoke the shredded cabbage over a pan of ice to keep it from cooking. Horseradish and mustard fire up the traditional creamy mayonnaise dressing.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

There are countless advantages to smoke-roasting (also known barbecuing) your turkey, as in this recipe from the barbecue expert Steven Raichlen. Smoking produces a bird of incomparable succulence, especially when combined with another traditional American barbecue technique, brining. There is the rich, evocative flavor of wood smoke, and the burnished mahogany sheen it gives the bird. Then there's the simplicity of the method: once you put the bird in the smoker or on the grill, you pretty much leave it there until it is done, while the kitchen and oven are freed up for side dishes and desserts. Last but certainly not least, you get an excuse to spend a fall afternoon outdoors, maybe with beer in hand.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

South Carolina’s contribution to regional American barbecue is mustard sauce. Barbecue buffs in these parts understand the wonders that mustard can work on pork, how the spice enhances the meat’s sweetness while the acidity cuts through the fat. A good mustard sauce is a study in balance, the bite of mustard and mouth-pucker of vinegar offset by the sweetness of honey or brown sugar. Tradition calls for using ballpark-style mustard, but this recipe instead opts for the finesse of Dijon-style mustard or a grainy mustard. Serve this sauce over smoked, pulled or grilled pork (it goes great with pork tenderloin), smoked or grilled chicken, grilled salmon and other seafood, and why not, whole roasted cauliflower.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

The baby back (sometimes called top loin) is the perfect rib for neophytes. Cut from high on the hog — literally, it abuts the backbone — it’s intrinsically tender and generously marbled, which keeps it moist during smoking. Thanks to these attributes, you can cook it at a higher temperature than the low-and-slow heat favored in the American barbecue belt. This shortens the cooking time and lets you cook the ribs on a common charcoal kettle grill. (However, you can certainly smoke these ribs low and slow at 250 degrees, in which case, you’ll need 3 ½ to 4 hours of cooking time — and a smoker.) The higher heat and shorter cooking time produce ribs with a firmer, meatier consistency. Add a chile-stung spice rub and a sweet, spicy chipotle-bourbon barbecue sauce, and you wind up with textbook barbecued ribs with a distinctive sweet, hot, smoky finish.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

The packer brisket, so called because that’s how it’s labeled by the packing house, is the Mount Everest of barbecue: magnificent, imposing and intimidating. It’s challenging on account of its size (12 to 14 pounds) and its anatomy: two distinct muscles (one lean, one fat), both loaded with collagen, a tough connective tissue. To do it justice, season the meat assertively. You’ll smoke it low and slow for a period that can last up to 12 hours, then let it rest in an insulated cooler for 1 to 2 hours to allow the meat to relax and the juices to redistribute. Get all the details right and you’ll be rewarded with the ultimate brisket: spicy bark (the crusty exterior); moist, luscious, tender meat; and a smoke flavor that seems to go on forever.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Though variations on French toast abound, this torrijas recipe hails primarily from Spain, where the bread slices are first soaked in wine or milk and beaten eggs, then pan-fried until golden and finally dusted with cinnamon sugar or drizzled with honey. You’ll find many approaches to pain perdu (French for “lost bread”), all of which speak to an ancestral desire to turn a stale staple into edible comfort food. The use of Malaga or cream sherry (sweet wines from southern Spain) plants this recipe firmly in the Spanish camp. With its large surface area, the hot griddle permits you to cook it off in just one batch.

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

Steven Raichlen · NYT Cooking

When Will Horowitz, a chef and an owner of Ducks Eatery in Manhattan, unveiled his watermelon ham in 2018, he sparked an Instagram revolution, inspiring foodies from as far away as Germany and Japan to try incarnadine slabs of his brined, smoked watermelon. It sure looked like ham, right down to the crosshatch scoring on the surface. It sure smelled like ham, fragrant with the smoky scent of hickory. It even had some of the briny umami tang you associate with ham. Though it didn’t really taste like ham, it did firmly establish plant-based charcuterie as a big thing. This watermelon “ham” starts with a tamari-herb brine, is smoked low and slow for the first four hours, then seared. This recipe is adapted from “Salt Smoke Time” by Will Horowitz, Julie Horowitz and with Marisa Dobson (William Morrow, 2018). Steven Raichlen