The remains of an ancient barbecue indicate that ribs have been popular for a very long time. 7,700-year-old leftovers from an extinct wild ox known as an aurochs were found in the Netherlands and are direct evidence of a cookout that would have been the envy of any modern-day block party. The aurochs must have generated a huge amount of …
Don’t Miss the Disc-It Round Up!
Nevin and the other nice folks at Disc-It are feverishly planning the 3rd Annual Disc-It Round Up in Albuquerque, New Mexico (home of the Disc-It Company). The cookoff will benefit the UNM Hospital Children’s Miracle Network. On Saturday, July 16 from noon to five, a group of specially-selected Disc-It Chefs will compete for top honors. Attendees try the food and …
Fiery Foods Bookazine by Dave DeWitt Now Available!
My latest publication, entitled “Popular Plates: Fiery Foods” is now available on all the major newsstands in the U.S., including Barnes & Noble, Home Depot, Borders, Costco–all the big box stores. The publisher, Source Interlink Media has printed 200,000 copies, which is by far the largest print run of any of my publications. Essentially, this is a book in magazine …
Ask Chef Mike: Why Heatless Jalapeños?
Q: I heard about some guy who has developed a jalapeño pepper with no heat. Why would anybody do that? A: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Some manufacturers of hot products prefer to use heatless chile varieties and add heat later during processing through the addition of concentrated capsaicin oleoresin. This provides a measurable, more …
Grilling Pimpalicious
Brothel owners rejoice! There’s finally a backyard grill worthy of your leopard print hats. BeefEater Barbecues in Australia has made the world’s first fully operational gold barbecue. It’s a solution to that age-old dilemma faced by successful pimps going all the way back to the ancient 1970s: “How do I stand out from my brother pimps when we all have …
It May Be the World’s Largest, But Where’s the Green Chile?
A new Guinness World Record for the World’s Largest Commercially Available Hamburger was set on Saturday, July 2 at the County Fair in Alameda, California. Weighing in at 777 glorious pounds, the mutant “Juicy’s Outlaw Burger” was created by Juicy’s LLC. After a total of 13 hours’ cooking time and the obligatory weigh-in, the burger was split up and shared …
For Carnivores Only: The Meating Place of Smoke & Spice
By Dave DeWitt and Nancy Gerlach The first outdoor cook to use chile peppers during a barbecue was Jaguar Claw, a somewhat hen-pecked paleo-Native American who lived in the Amazon Basin about 20,000 years ago. He had dispatched his prey with his spear, had butchered the world’s largest rodent with his new flint carving knife into chunks, and was contemplating …