"The Guy Cooks!"

Danger! Men Cooking!
Is that familiar? Doesn't have to be. Cooking isn't a "black art". It can actually be a lot of fun! Just takes a little planning and some timing. And that's where this site comes in. I got the idea from a car owner’s group bulletin board I belong to. From detailed maintenance and repair procedures to custom modifications - anything you ever wanted to know about a particular model is available on the site and easy to find.

I’d like this website to operate the same way - offering ideas from bulletproof recipes to equipping your kitchen like a pro. It’s for all of us who enjoy good food (and drink!) and want to share ideas or glean some hints to use on their own.

Why do parties always seem to gravitate to the kitchen? It’s comfortable; there’s stuff to do, and a great place to entertain. The best part? Everybody gets a chance to participate. They’ll have a ball - and it'll mean less work for you!

Since this site is a work-in-process, we’ll tweak it from time. If you the reader can offer advice on how to organize this site better, suggestions will be deeply appreciated.

…And with that, off we go!


Cooking Medium: My favorite cooking platform is the outdoor barbeque, preferably charcoal-fired. Gas is fine. But for me - lump or briquettes - it’s got to be charcoal. Cave man instinct, I guess!. I’ve got great memories of my dad and me piling up charcoal in the backyard grill and getting it going, and of me learning his sauce secrets in the kitchen.

If you’re going to get yourself an outdoor grill, make it a good size with a lid - about 22 inches in diameter. You want one with enough room to build a fire off to one side, with vents in the lid and on the bottom for air flow control. You want plenty of room between the grill and the top of the lid. The idea is to cook by indirect heat with the lid on, sort of a convection technique, rather than laying everything directly over a spread-out bed of coals. My old standby is the Weber “One Touch” 22-inch kettle. The better models have a bowl sweeper and ash catcher on the bottom along with hinged panels on the top level grill to allow adding more coals without disturbing the grill itself.

No barbeque? Just about anything we discuss that’s cooked on a barbeque can also be done in the kitchen oven, usually in the “Broil” setting. For you rookies, an oven has two basic modes: “Bake” - where the heat source is below and allows fine-tuning of the temperature, and “Broil”- where the heat source is at the top. There’s usually no temperature adjustment. The only way to regulate heat intensity is to increase the distance from the burner above. That means lowering the oven rack. The slower the cooking rate you want, the lower the rack needs to be. Sometimes, keeping the oven door cracked open helps keep the heat intensity down, too. Slowing the cooking rate allows the interior to cook evenly without cremating the outside.

Heat: If using a charcoal grill, you want to build a volcano-shaped pile of either charcoal lumps or briquettes off to one side. The idea is to keep the heat source offset from the food.

Try some chips! For some added aroma and flavor, get a package or two of wood chips (available at any supermarket or backyard store), soak them in a big bowl of water for ½ hour and add them to the coals when ready to start cooking. They‘re available in an array of “flavors“ like oak, mesquite and hickory (Jack Daniel’s makes theirs out of old whiskey barrels.) Great stuff!

We’ll usually include side dish suggestions along with the "main event". Doing it that way should help you to learn the main secret - “timing”. “Timing?”. As in love, it’s crucial! When you can prepare everything in proper sequence so that it all comes together at the right time, you‘ve mastered “timing“!