DJ BBQ - Fire food: the ultimate BBQ cookbook

CONTENTS

Bring a lick of fire to your subs, sandwiches and snacks

Slow and low best things come to those who wait

Grill your way to food heaven with burgers, kebabs, wings and more

Explore the world of live fire beneath the grill and in the coals

Complete your fire food feast with veggie dishes, salads, dips and sauces

Yes! You have arrived welcome to my live fire book. Greetings. I am here to help you with your next BBQ cookout.

For those of you who arent familiar with my work on YouTube, my name is Christian Stevenson, aka DJ BBQ. Ive been cooking BBQ since I was six years old and made it a full-time job in 2012 when I started my catertainment company, DJ BBQ. During the summer, my crew and I build a restaurant and soundsystem on the festival circuit. We slow-cook pork shoulder, grill the best burgers and spit-roast entire beef legs (top bit), all over live fire. Its a proper smrgsbord of delicious BBQ and tasty tunes. We cook beats and meats that's catertainment. I also produce online content to complement the live vibes. Every other week, I upload a fresh BBQ recipe onto my YouTube channel. So if you find you have any questions about these recipes, or need more inspiration, the chances are you'll find some help on my video channel.

The whole reason I do this fun and exhausting occupation is that food tastes better cooked over fire. Its the lost ingredient. Plus, being outdoors is way better. Fresh air, good friends, great tunes, a crackling fire and, of course, cold beers. Thats all thats needed.

Weve been cooking on gas and electricity for more than a century. Before this, cooking was mostly done over live fire, and in many parts of the world live fire remains the dominant method for cooking. Yeah, thats right, BBQ is how it all started. Once there was fire, there was progression. There was evolution. Fire allowed us to masticate and digest food with way more ease, and our brains developed because of it. Fire and food helped the evolution of mankind.

These days, we stay indoors and work with the convenience of other heat sources. But what we are missing is a key ingredient that comes from the combustion of fuel. When we cook on wood, something dynamic happens. The smoke and gases that emanate from the wood give our food another layer of flavour. The sweet wood notes permeate the BBQ, awakening our tastebuds to the upper echelons of awesome!

Handling fire and heat is a job in itself. Thats why most people turn a dial and stick their joint of meat in the oven thinking, theyre going to get roast beef. It is not roast beef. It is baked beef, and it is nowhere near as good as kissing that joint with a lick of live fire. Handling live fire is one of the best skills a human can possess.

Ive been walking the Earth for almost 50 years. Ive travelled extensively throughout South and Central America, Pakistan, Lebanon, Europe, the Baltics, Australasia and Northern Africa. Ive watched locals handle live fire and achieve incredible results from their ancient techniques. Ive been watching chefs, gauchos, artisans, pitmasters and home cooks from all over this planet cook BBQ and I have soaked up many of their techniques and recipes.

In this book I will show you a plethora of grilling, roasting and smoking techniques. Theres a slew of tasty recipes, covering meat, seafood, veggies, fruits and some wonderful little surprises. We are going to goof-proof your cooking so you can feel confident rocking your grill.

Your cookouts will never be the same again!

People often ask me the same question, Charcoal or gas? My response is normally, Whats the point in going outdoors if youre cooking on gas? Theres a perfectly good gas burner in your kitchen. BBQ starts with fuel: that means lump wood charcoal (which I also call coals or charcoal), seasoned wood chunks, and even charcoal briquettes. Learning about fuel is the best place to start

As a child, I learned how to cook BBQ on my dads gas grill. But, as soon as I fled the nest at the tender age of 18, I bought my first proper cooker, a Weber 18-Inch Kettle. My life in BBQ changed forever. Then I bought three Lang offset firebox cookers and things got really exciting. Then I met the premier charcoal maker from the UK, Matt Williams of Oxford Charcoal Company, who has spent over 25 years working with wood 20 years as a thatcher and 7 as a charcoal maker. Matt tours with the DJ BBQ crew on the summer festival circuit and we cook on his fuel and learn what his fuel does to our BBQ essentially, amazing things!

FORGET GAS

Most backyard enthusiasts use one of three cooking fuels: charcoal, gas or wood. But not many people understand the differences and especially the positive benefits of using charcoal and wood over gas.

We never work with gas. You can make a gas grill better by getting rid of the gas in the canister and throwing a bunch of wood or charcoal in there instead.

There is no flavour in gas. Wood and charcoal add flavour, but gas is a hydrocarbon, so when you burn it, you make a lot of water. By using gas to cook meat, youre essentially broiling the meat and not properly searing it to get that beautiful Maillard reaction. That luscious steak crust that most pitmasters are looking for can only truly come from a charcoal fire.

THE BEAUTY OF CHARCOAL

Charcoal gives off a radiant heat that is more controllable than almost anything. It can be used to smelt iron, slow-cook a brisket or grill a steak. The only difference is airflow. The temperature is regulated entirely by the amount of oxygen you give the charcoal. This is the reason why people have been making wood into charcoal for over 30,000 years. Without it, we couldnt have had the bronze age, or the iron age and you wouldnt have an iPhone. Its the original industrial fuel and its one of the most controllable fuels you will cook on. But you need to get to know your fuel if youre going to cook your food on it.

One of the reasons many people opt for gas over charcoal is that people claim they can cook straight away on gas compared with charcoal. I tell them, I can have hot coals quicker than you can preheat your gas grill. Fact. I will have a hotter heat using proper charcoal within 6 minutes and thats 5 minutes faster than a gas grill (see ).

WHAT IS CHARCOAL?

Charcoal is the product of thermal destructive distillation of anything that used to be alive. You can make charcoal out of many different things, from bones to cow manure. We generally use wood although we have experimented. Weve made decent charcoal from the blade bones from pork shoulder, but you need a lot of them to really get things cooking.