Michael Symon’s Playing with Fire: BBQ and More from the Grill, Smoker, and Fireplace

65 Pages·2018·17.4 MB·English

by  Michael Symon

This book is dedicated to Lizzie, my lifelong partner, who grounds me,
supports me, and inspires me to be a better person. I truly would not be
here without you. Thank you, my vegetable-loving wife, for accepting and
understanding my obsession with meat!

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PORK
BEEF
CHICKEN
SEAFOOD
LAMB
VEGETABLES AND SIDES
BBQ SAUCES, RELISHES, AND RUBS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX

INTRODUCTION
My Love Letter to Live-Fire Cooking
M
abel’s BBQ in Cleveland, Ohio, is a restaurant conceived from my
lifelong obsession with live-fire cooking. Whether it’s grilling rib eyes, smoking
lamb ribs, baking pizza in a homemade wood-fired oven, or just cooking hot
dogs on a stick over a campfire, I have been in love with these primitive styles of
cooking for as long as I can remember. So it’s no surprise that for almost as
long, I’ve been begging my business partners to let me open a barbecue
restaurant. After close to twenty years of pleading, my wife, Liz, and business
partner, Doug, finally relented, and in 2016 we opened Mabel’s in downtown
Cleveland.
My taste for barbecue came from my years of traveling around the country
filming television shows like the Food Network’s Burgers, Brew & ’Que, where
I visited the country’s absolute best barbecue joints and learned a lot about the
various types of regional barbecue and the folks who make it. It quickly became
apparent that all of the best pitmasters—regardless of where they happened to
live and cook—prepared barbecue that was specific to their own particular
region. That meant grilling or smoking indigenous animals over native
hardwoods in equipment custom-built for that purpose. Everything from the cuts
of meat and spice rubs to the sauces and sides is based on literally generations of
local history, experience, and cultural preference.
That’s why when the time ( finally!) came for me to open up a barbecue
restaurant of my own, I knew that I wanted to make it unique to my hometown.
That meant crafting a style and menu that draw upon Cleveland’s rich cultural
heritage, much of which is firmly rooted in eastern Europe. We season meats
with Jewish deli-style pastrami spices; our kielbasa is made by a sixty-year-old
Ukrainian butcher at the West Side Market; we smoke over locally sourced
apple-and cherrywoods; we serve Hungarian-based sides like spaetzle and
cabbage; our tangy mustard-based sauce is designed around the legendary local
stadium-style mustard Bertman Ball Park.
It’s not that I don’t love Carolina chopped pork, and Memphis dry ribs, and
Kansas City burnt ends, and Texas hot links—I do, I love them all! But I had no
desire to attempt to shoehorn one or all of those styles into my Cleveland
restaurant. I wanted the sights, smells, and flavors to be reminiscent of the foods
we grew up eating; otherwise, it wouldn’t feel authentic. It wouldn’t feel right.
And that’s probably the most important thing that I picked up during all my
travels. The BBQ folks who do it best, whether it’s been for five years or five
decades, have a genuine passion for the craft that comes straight from the heart.
There’s an obsessive dedication to step up their game every single day; to put in
the work and time to make a brisket that is 1 percent better tomorrow than it was
today. Despite their regional differences, barbecue pros—the true practitioners
of low and slow—are all members of the same clan.
And I couldn’t be more thrilled to join them and those who came before them.
We’ve been blessed at Mabel’s to have some of the biggest names in barbecue
walk through our door and try our food. The response by them—and, more
important, Clevelander diners—has been overwhelmingly positive. That tells us
that we’re doing something right and that this Cleveland-style barbecue just
might have some legs after all!
GRILLS, SMOKERS, AND LIVE-FIRE
CONTRAPTIONS
With so many different grills, pits, and smokers on
the market these days, it’s important for every
pitmaster-in-training to carefully consider the pros
and cons of each piece of equipment before making
an investment. In addition to budget, the primary
factors to consider are:
How much space in your yard or patio do you have
to play with?
Do you want the equipment to be portable or fixed
in place?
How much time do you want to devote to tending
to the cooking process?
How many people will you typically be grilling or
smoking for?
What types of fuel do you intend to use: gas,
electric, charcoal, or wood (chips, chunks, pellets,
or logs)?
Would you like the apparatus to do double-duty as
a grill and smoker?
On the following pages, I've listed some of the most
popular types of grills and smokers and which
applications they tend to excel—and fail—at.
applications they tend to excel—and fail—at.