Your quest to create amazing BBQ and grilling begins here!
If you are new to BBQ and grilling or simply want to step up your outdoor cooking game, start here. These articles and basic recipes give you a solid foundation on BBQ and grilling equipment, ingredients, and techniques.
By using the guideposts below, you’ll learn about thermodynamics (how heat moves through your cooker and your food), how to turn your grill into a smoker with the 2-zone method, how to control temperature, why it is critical to use a digital thermometer (don’t worry – they’re cheap), the fascinating science of meat, how smoke ends up flavoring your food, our top recipes, tips and tricks, and so much more!
Barbecue is a hotly debated topic. Read here about a new definition of BBQ that is distinct from its legal definition. This new definition includes explanations of grilling, smoking and other terms, as well as a brief history of barbecue around the world
Here is an A to Z glossary of barbecue and cooking terms. Some might call it "jargon," which is the specialized language that people of like mind use to communicate. Either way, get to know these terms, use them, and you'll be on your way to becoming a barbecue insider.
What is meat and how does cooking alter it? Discover the science of what meat is made of, including water, fat, protein, connective tissue, salt, and other minerals. And find out what happens when meat meets heat.
What's the best way to set up your grill and smoker? The secret is to have temperature control, and for grills, that almost always means using a 2-zone setup. For smokers, the secret is to get a small hot fire that makes clean "blue" smoke rather that billowy white smoke.
Improve your recipes and make the best BBQ possible with this one essential concept: temperature control. The secret? 2 zone grilling setup, a.k.a. an indirect grilling setup!
Learn about thermodynamics: the basis of all cooking! Find out how heat transference works by conduction, convection, radiation, induction, and infrared heat in your grill, bbq, and smoker.
Here's a list of the AmazingRibs.com top 15 recipes of the year, the best and most visited ones on our site, including ribs, brisket, pulled pork, pastrami, spice rubs, and other BBQ favorites.
There are several techniques to tell when your ribs are ready: bend, twist, peek-a-boo, taste, toothpick, popup, and thermometer test. Since ribs come in so many different weights and thicknesses, knowing when they are done is an inexact science but here are some guidelines and techniques that will help make it easier.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans alone are sickened every year by their food, and some even die. Thousands more are hurt by knives, wire brush bristles stuck to meat, burns and other hazards around the grill. Here's an overview of the hazards and how to reduce the risk
We all strive to create tender, juicy, and flavorful meat, but we also want it safe. Monitoring the internal temperature is the best way to have the best of both worlds. Here's the ultimate guide to understanding proper cooking temperatures and food safety to ensure that your meat is cooked perfectly every time.
AmazingRibs.com's Pitmaster Club is the world's largest BBQ and grilling forum, providing paid members with access to flame-war-free discussions with over 16,000 like-minded outdoor cooks. Enjoy recipes, techniques, product reviews, interviews with top pros, monthly giveaways, and more!
An in-food/in-cooker thermometer should be a part of every chef's tool collection. It displays the temperatures of the food(s) and the cooker simultaneously and is much more reliable than the dial thermometer that comes with most grills. Here's what to look for and how to buy the best in-food/in-cooker thermometer.
How to use our comprehensive buying guide and reviews of thermometers for barbecue, for cooking, for food, for the oven, for the grill and for the smoker.
Grills are not created equally. Before you sink any money into a grill check out this article. It could save you from buying a lemon and make sure your grill meets your needs.
A good dedicated smoker will make ribs, brisket and pulled pork that rivals most restaurants. There are many choices: gas, charcoal, wood and wood pellets. Before you go shopping click here and print out our article on How To Buy a Smoker.
Calibrate your cooker. There is often dust and grease under the hood from the factory on new grills and smokers. Here's how to prepare your cooker with a dry run so you can control its temperature when it's showtime.
Picking the right smoker or grill for your personal needs can be a difficult task, with countless brands, styles, and prices to sort through. To help you find the best smoker grill to buy, we have compiled an elite list of top rated AmazingRibs.com gold and platinum medal winners.
Ratings, reviews, and recommendations on how to shop for gas fired barbecue smokers. These are simple smokers that produce good flavor, on a modest budget.
The kamado, ceramic, egg grill, smoker, and oven is a fast growing category with more and more choices every year. Here are reviews and ratings of them all.
Learn all about wood smoke and how it adds flavor to BBQ. Find out whether you should be using wood chunks, chips, pellets, logs, or sawdust in your cooker. Discover the truth behind the claim that different woods have different flavors.
Create grilled steaks as good or better than they do in the best expensive steakhouses with this comprehensive how-to and recipe. From selecting the right cut and beef grade to smoking and searing on the grill, you'll be grilling up mouthwatering steaks for your family and guests in no time!
This easy pulled pork recipe skips the slow cooker to create authentic low-and-slow smoked pulled pork on a smoker or grill. With smoke woven through the moist meat, bits of seasoned crust, and a gentle splash of BBQ sauce, pulled pork is perfect for your next backyard cookout.
High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, weโll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we donโt have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please donโt think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.
1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.
2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50ยฐF so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.
4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.
5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.
High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, weโll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we donโt have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please donโt think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.
2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50ยฐF so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.
4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.
5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.
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