20 for 20: The Past 20 Years of AmazingRibs.com—The Best BBQ Website

Celebrate our 20^th anniversary with us!

Back in 2005, Meathead had no idea how a single ribs recipe would change his life (read the story in the first milestone below!). Since then, Meathead has devoted his life to outdoor cooking, become a BBQ Hall of Famer, and AmazingRibs.com has been named the world’s best BBQ website and archived in the U.S. Library of Congress! The site now has more than 700 recipes and hosts the world’s largest searchable database of grill, smoker, and BBQ gear reviews, plus another searchable database of thermometers, and a third featuring BBQ tools and toys. More than 2,000 pages dive deep into the science and history of barbecue, including the importance of reliable digital thermometers and the joy of cooking everything outdoors—from grilled lemonade to smoked Texas-style brisket. Meathead also created the Pitmaster Club, the world’s largest barbecue community with a peak membership of 18,000 members.

Want a new set of tools? Check out Meathead’s new book, The Meathead Method. It’s a toolbox that will elevate all your cooking. Alton Brown calls it “The only book on outdoor cookery you’ll ever need.”

20 amazing years of AmazingRibs.com

A lot of good things have happened since the best BBQ website got its start. To celebrate, we’ve put together something special to thank you, our visitors and supporters. It starts with a trip down memory lane below, featuring key milestones in our company history. We’ve also partnered with some of our favorite grill manufacturers to give you 20 FREE grills, griddles, smokers and other gear over the next 20 days. Enter to win!

Even if you don’t win, we created a list of our most highly rated and best BBQ gear of the past 20 years. Send the list to your special someone with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to let them know you wouldn’t mind getting one of these items as a gift! And, of course, to break in your new grill or smoker, we put together our top 20 BBQ recipes from the past 20 years. These are the dishes that you, our readers, go to most. Pick your favorite recipe and fire up your grill!

Or, how about this? Pick up an official AmazingRibs.com 20th Anniversary t-shirt!

For this special year of AmazingRibs.com—the best BBQ website we know of!—we’ve got everything you need to get outside and cook the greatest meals of your life. Join us in celebrating 20 years of amazing barbecue!

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20 Years of Lighting Fires and Blowing Minds—A Timeline

2005 – AmazingRibs.com launches

Meathead’s neighbor challenges him to a friendly ribs cookoff. He goes looking for a recipe, and can’t find anything good. At the time, he is publishing a wine magazine, has an offer to sell it, and is looking for a new business venture, perhaps a website. After winning that BBQ competition, Meathead starts AmazingRibs.com to share his amazing ribs recipe along with everything else he has learned about the science of cooking great barbecue.

2009 – Pitmaster Club launches

Meathead notices that friends, neighbors, and visitors love sharing BBQ tips, recipes, and photos. And the occasional joke! The email chains become overwhelming, so Meathead opens The Pitmaster Club, an online space for BBQ fans to congregate and get support from BBQ experts, a place free of online flame wars and social media fakery. Just a good, honest, gathering place for outdoor cooking lovers from around the world to share photos and recipes of their latest cooks, newest toys, and best discoveries. To this day, the Pitmaster Club remains the world’s largest BBQ community.

Up your game: Join our Pitmaster Club. Try it out for free for 30 days. No credit card is needed. No spam. Join now and Be Amazing!

2011 – Professor Greg Blonder, Harvard PhD in Physics, becomes our Science Advisor

Greg, an avid bbq’er, stumbles upon an AmazingRibs.com article by Meathead on the mystery of the “stall”—the bedeviling time period in which the internal temperature of barbecued meat just will not rise, often for several hours. Prof Blonder emails Meathead explaining the underlying physics. After Blonder demonstrates that evaporative cooling is the key to controlling the stall and predicting cooking time, Meathead and Doc Blonder strike up a decade’s-long collaboration. Blonder’s work becomes essential to the BBQ mythbusting throughout AmazingRibs.com, culminating in co-authoring the cookbook Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling.

2012 – Max Good joins the team as the world’s first full-time grill and smoker tester

The right equipment can help you make better barbecue. Max sifts through hundreds of grills and smokers to find the best. He kicks tires, slams hoods, does a lot of cooking, and writes detailed reviews. Max maintains AmazingRibs.com’s searchable database of grill, smoker, thermometer, and BBQ gear reviews, the world’s largest, which now includes more than 600 in-depth reviews of the world’s best BBQ equipment.

2012 – Jim Maivald joins the team as Chief Technology Officer

Websites need constant technical fixes and updates. Jim comes on board with more than 30 years’ experience as a webmaster and Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) and with a lifelong love of grilling and smoking. He heads up our technical team and keeps the best BBQ website running smoothly for 15 years. Big Jim shocked us all when he died suddenly in 2023. RIP Jim. His teammate Ray Johnson has since taken the reins as webmaster and lead programmer of vBulletin, the software running our Pitmaster Club.

2013 – AmazingRibs.com introduces “Best Value Medals”

People want information fast. To quickly size up the products reviewed on AmazingRibs.com, Max and the team introduce a rating system based on precious metals, just like they do at the Olympics. Each product now gets a detailed written review along with a Gold, Silver, or Bronze medal, awarded on the basis of features, construction quality and value. In 2019, Platinum medals are added to the lineup as our highest award, reserved only for a select few innovative and/or outstanding products that are leaders in a given category.

2014 – AmazingRibs.com is nominated for the World Food Media Awards

What an honor! Known as “the Ladles,” the World Food Media Awards began in Australia in 1997. The awards recognize excellence in a range of categories from cookbooks and magazines to television and websites all over the world. What an incredible recognition of our work to become the world’s best BBQ website! Ian Parmenter, the Awards Director passed away in 2024 (RIP Ian) but his World Food Media Awards live on as a testament to fantastic culinary work produced around the globe.

2014 – Clint Cantwell comes on board—he’s now President of the company

To beef up the staff of this burgeoning website, Meathead invites fellow BBQ personality Clint Cantwell to the team. Clint is the winner of the Travel Channel’s “American Grilled” nationwide cooking competition (among many other BBQ competitions) and was named one of the “10 Faces of Memphis Barbecue” by Memphis Magazine. He jumps ship from his gig running Grilling.com and Kingsford.com (yes, the famous charcoal company) to write articles, contribute recipes and shoot photos for AmazingRibs.com. Now he’s the company Prez and manages daily operations.

2014 – Bill McGrath comes on board as Chief Thermometer Tester

Bill writes his first review for the ThermaPen, which has since become an industry standard instant-read thermometer. Bill brings with him an electrical engineering degree from Cornell University and sophisticated testing equipment, which make him an authority on evaluating thermometers. He has now tested and reviewed well over 200 products and maintains his test data in an Access database that he built for this purpose. As you can see, when it comes to grills, smokers, and food, we take temperature control seriously. Browse our searchable thermometer database!

2015 – Grill & Smoker “Top 10” lists begin

No, late-night host David Letterman didn’t join our team. But he did popularize Top 10 lists! This is the year we begin poring over all our reviews to provide readers with an at-a-glance list of the year’s Top 10 products in a range of categories from grills and smokers to BBQ tools and thermometers. We still make these lists every year. But in 2019, we changed the name and started releasing the lists in late spring, at the very beginning of barbecue season so readers can get the best new gear of the year! Browse our searchable grill and smoker database!

2016 – Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling is published

Meathead’s first hardcover book! This nearly 400-page tome swiftly becomes a New York Times Bestseller and is named one of “100 Best Cookbooks Of All Time” by Southern Living magazine. It’s also named among the “22 Essential Cookbooks for Every Kitchen” by SeriousEats.com, and it becomes a finalist in the IACP Cookbook Awards. The book has since been translated into German! Find out more here.

2016 – Charlotte Wager joins the team as Marketing Director

A marketing spitfire, Charlotte comes aboard to popularize the best BBQ website, manage social media, and toss in contrarian viewpoints in team meetings. With a background in motorcycles, beauty, fine art, and financial services, Charlotte keeps the “grill men” in line and brings a diverse perspective to the team.

2017 – David Joachim comes on board as Editorial Director—he’s now Vice President

To expand the content at AmazingRibs.com and help manage its thousands of website pages, Meathead invites Dave to the team. The co-author of Mastering the Grill, The Science of Good Food, Fire It Up, and A Man, A Can, A Grill (among other books), he is the perfect partner for a website devoted to the science of great barbecue and grilling. During the pandemic, Dave leaves his post for a brief period and then returns in 2024 to become Vice President of the company.

2017 – Aaron “Huskee” Lyons comes on board as Manager of the Pitmaster Club

With thousands of members in the Pitmaster Club, it needs a dedicated Manager, and Aaron Lyons is just the man for the job. He is a KCBS Certified Barbeque Judge who grills and smokes year-round on more than 10 different cookers. Known as “Huskee” in the Pit, he moderated member comments for a few years and even helped create the award-winning Slow ‘N Sear for Weber kettle grills. Now, Huskee helps make sure the Pitmaster Club runs as smooth as a well-tuned Yoder smoker loaded with hickory in the cold, dark night of a Michigan winter.

2017 – Meathead’s 1^st cookbook is named a FINALIST for the International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards

IACP is a prestigious culinary organization begun in 1978 and its awards are considered among the top honors in culinary journalism, right alongside the James Beard Foundation Awards. IACP Awards span all forms from digital media to food photography and print magazines to cookbooks. What an honor for Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling to be named a Finalist in the cookbook awards!

2019 – AmazingRibs.com announces its “Best New Products” awards

Every year, Max Good attends the outdoor cooking trade shows, reviews the year’s new crop of BBQ gear, and then rates the top products. To help people find the best new stuff, the “Best New Products” awards single out the top grills, smokers, griddles, thermometers and BBQ toys in a handy list, perfect for Father’s Day or any gift-giving occasion! Best New Products replaces the AmazingRibs.com “Top 10” lists of yore.

2020 – Our first Deep Dive Guide ebook is published

At this point, AmazingRibs.com has grown to 2,000+ pages. It’s a useful reference website, but many readers prefer to home in on a single topic in a single book. To help them, we put together our first “Deep Dive Guide,” an easy-to-read e-book with an organized flow from start to finish. The topic is a ground-breaking technique called Sous-Vide Que Made Easy: How To Deliciously Marry the Grill And The Smoker With Sous Vide. We have since published 7 Deep-Dive Guides (and counting!). These e-books are reasonably priced at $3.99, but Pitmaster Club members get them for FREE! Learn more about Pitmaster Club membership here.

2020 – AmazingRibs.com is named a FINALIST for the International Association of Culinary Professionals Digital Media Awards

Whoa – we did it again! The powers that be at IACP nominated us not only for best BBQ website but also Best Culinary Website overall. We must be doing something right. This recognition validates all the work we’ve done over the past 15 years, researching the science of barbecue, busting old cooking myths, sharing delicious recipes, and reviewing the best outdoor cooking products on the market. Thank you IACP!

2020 – U.S. Library of Congress archives AmazingRibs.com

Holy cow! The feds decide that we truly are the world’s best BBQ website and should be preserved forever. Only 43 food sites made the cut, including bastions of the world’s food information like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Looks like the nation’s top librarians noticed that AmazingRibs.com is by far the largest barbecue and grilling site in the world with a wealth of information on the history, art, science, practice, techniques, and recipes of barbecue, smoking and outdoor cooking. What an incredible honor!

2021 – Meathead is inducted into the BBQ Hall of Fame

The accolades keep rolling in! At the Kansas City Speedway during the American Royal World Series of Barbecue, our founder and “barbecue whisperer” Meathead becomes one of only 40 living members of the Barbecue Hall of Fame. Other inductees this year include Rodney Scott of South Carolina, Ollie Gates of Kansas City, Arthur Bryant of Kansas City (RIP) and “Mama B” Lyttle Bridges Cabiness of North Carlina (RIP). Meathead quipped, “Now maybe I can get the trolls on Wikipedia to accepts my edits.”

2025 – The Meathead Method: A BBQ Hall of Famer’s Secrets and Science on BBQ, Grilling, and Outdoor Cooking with 114 Recipes is published

Meathead’s second hardcover book! After letting the hype and dust settle, Meathead gets back to his backyard grills and smokers—and his photography studio—develops tons of new recipes, takes stunning new photos with a ground-breaking “light painting” technique, and releases his 2^nd hardcover cookbook. Food science wizard and TV personality Alton Brown hails it as “The only book on outdoor cookery you’ll ever need.”

2025 – 50 millionth visitor enjoys AmazingRibs.com

What a wild and crazy 20 years it’s been! A record 50 million people have now visited AmazingRibs.com, enjoying the wit, absorbing the barbecue wisdom, cooking the innovative recipes, and buying the best BBQ gear based on our in-depth reviews. From the US and Canada to Mexico, France, Norway, China, and Australia, millions of people around the globe are deepening their love of outdoor cooking. We are so thrilled to help! Stay tuned for even more groundbreaking recipes, tips, and info to come!