General > General Discussion
So, how did you get your start?
rwalters:
Would love to hear how everyone got their start into the wonderful world of outdoor cooking.
Was it a friend or family member that took you under their wing and got you up and running? Or is outdoor cooking something that you took an interest in, and kind of figured it out on your own? Oh yeah, and do you recall the first grill/smoker that you owned... what was it?
For me, I grew up in a wonderful family, but my dad fired up his gas grill maybe 7-8 times/year. Needless to say, it wasn't him that taught me to cook outdoors...lol! I've always loved food from the grill and/or smoker, but it wasn't very often that I got it growing up.
Met my wife in 93, got married in 94. I grew up in a family where 9/10 meals were homemade, my wifes family was closer to 1/10 meals being homemade.
Needless to say, my wife didn't really know how to cook when we first got married. I didn't know much either because I had never taken an interest in it.
After getting married, the first couple of years we didn't have 2 nickels to rub together, and ate pretty poorly... mostly canned/boxed quick meals. That got really old... but it continued until one day I ended up finding a Char-Griller charcoal grill on sale at Wal-Mart for next to nothing. Bought it and a bag of self lighting charcoal (didn't know any better). Didn't know a thing and messed up a good amount of food... BUT, that's what sparked my love and passion for outdoor cooking, and I slowly started to figure things out on my own (well before forums). That was over 20 years ago, and since then, my love for outdoor cooking has only grown. To me, it's a craft, an art, a hobby, a passion and highly therapeutic. I am no professional chef, but I sure do enjoy trying :)
So, what's your story?
UWFSAE:
Nice concept for a thread ...
Growing up, my parents divorced when I was a wee bairn ... my maternal grandparents were in the same city so many weekends were spent at their house or at their vacation place in north Georgia. My grandfather, like many of the "Greatest Generation" had a backyard full of toys including a then-top-of-the-line gas grill. Delmonico steaks, barbecued sausage (link sausage split, grilled, and basted with a local mustard-based BBQ sauce called Foy's), and grilled spareribs were his normal rotation. My mom and grandmother both saw the value in teaching me to cook (to impress girls when I was older) and I've always been comfortable throwing together decent meals.
Fast forward to my college years and we'd always be grilling out burgers, hot dogs, and steaks at my fraternity house. We had a summer luau mixer with a sorority and did a pig roast ... that was my first time manning an offset smoker. The girlfriends I had seemed to like my ability to cook for them so that simply encouraged me to keep doing it. The advent of the internet opened up a whole new world of recipes and tutorials, and I was hooked.
After grad school, I invested in a series of cheap offset smokers and Wal-Mart gassers, until I moved to Texas for my PhD program. I picked up a barely used Tejas Smoker 1628 offset from a friend who was moving overseas and invested in a Weber Genesis 330 to go along with a hand-me-down Weber Performer. Well, Hurricane Ike in 2008 killed my Tejas 1628 and the Performer (downed tree turned them into a pile of pieces) and the Genesis was it for a while.
I eventually picked up a Smokin-It Model 3 and loved the simplicity; my job has me traveling too much to want to spend time tending a smoker. The electric did some things well, but was sorely limited. When I decided to build a new house, I decided it was time to jump into the pellet world. I had friends who do everything from backyard grilling to competing at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo BBQ Championships, so I picked their brains and played around a bit with their smokers. I was down between the cheaper RecTec 680 and the bells-and-whistles Yoder YS640 Comp Cart. I liked, but didn't love, both for various reasons. I stumbled across reviews by HighOnSmoke and SavannahSmoker of the Blaz'n Gridiron ... a bit more research and a couple of chats with Tim at Blaz'n and that was the clincher ... I'd never had a hands-on with them but I took a leap of faith.
The Blaz'n is pretty much my do-everything machine now; the GrillGrates give me ample ability to sear and as far as smoking it's as good as any on the market. My old Smokin-It is sitting in my garage, still wrapped in moving blankets. My Genesis is there too, as I need to do a comprehensive overall on the internals.
My smoker is in heavy rotation when I'm not on the road, and the main draw for me is experimenting with homemade rubs and sauces. I won't lie, since I built a house I had free hand in over-building the kitchen with plenty of work surfaces for prep and upgraded appliances that make everything live up to my expectations. My friends, neighbors, and even lucky students are my guinea pigs for a lot of my recipes for the smoker; the indoor stuff is reserved for a young lady I'm lucky enough to be seeing.
Indoor cooking feeds the body, but outdoor cooking often feeds the soul ...
rwalters:
--- Quote from: UWFSAE on April 10, 2018, 06:38:41 PM ---Nice concept for a thread ...
Growing up, my parents divorced when I was a wee bairn ... my maternal grandparents were in the same city so many weekends were spent at their house or at their vacation place in north Georgia. My grandfather, like many of the "Greatest Generation" had a backyard full of toys including a then-top-of-the-line gas grill. Delmonico steaks, barbecued sausage (link sausage split, grilled, and basted with a local mustard-based BBQ sauce called Foy's), and grilled spareribs were his normal rotation. My mom and grandmother both saw the value in teaching me to cook (to impress girls when I was older) and I've always been comfortable throwing together decent meals.
Fast forward to my college years and we'd always be grilling out burgers, hot dogs, and steaks at my fraternity house. We had a summer luau mixer with a sorority and did a pig roast ... that was my first time manning an offset smoker. The girlfriends I had seemed to like my ability to cook for them so that simply encouraged me to keep doing it. The advent of the internet opened up a whole new world of recipes and tutorials, and I was hooked.
After grad school, I invested in a series of cheap offset smokers and Wal-Mart gassers, until I moved to Texas for my PhD program. I picked up a barely used Tejas Smoker 1628 offset from a friend who was moving overseas and invested in a Weber Genesis 330 to go along with a hand-me-down Weber Performer. Well, Hurricane Ike in 2008 killed my Tejas 1628 and the Performer (downed tree turned them into a pile of pieces) and the Genesis was it for a while.
I eventually picked up a Smokin-It Model 3 and loved the simplicity; my job has me traveling too much to want to spend time tending a smoker. The electric did some things well, but was sorely limited. When I decided to build a new house, I decided it was time to jump into the pellet world. I had friends who do everything from backyard grilling to competing at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo BBQ Championships, so I picked their brains and played around a bit with their smokers. I was down between the cheaper RecTec 680 and the bells-and-whistles Yoder YS640 Comp Cart. I liked, but didn't love, both for various reasons. I stumbled across reviews by HighOnSmoke and SavannahSmoker of the Blaz'n Gridiron ... a bit more research and a couple of chats with Tim at Blaz'n and that was the clincher ... I'd never had a hands-on with them but I took a leap of faith.
The Blaz'n is pretty much my do-everything machine now; the GrillGrates give me ample ability to sear and as far as smoking it's as good as any on the market. My old Smokin-It is sitting in my garage, still wrapped in moving blankets. My Genesis is there too, as I need to do a comprehensive overall on the internals.
My smoker is in heavy rotation when I'm not on the road, and the main draw for me is experimenting with homemade rubs and sauces. I won't lie, since I built a house I had free hand in over-building the kitchen with plenty of work surfaces for prep and upgraded appliances that make everything live up to my expectations. My friends, neighbors, and even lucky students are my guinea pigs for a lot of my recipes for the smoker; the indoor stuff is reserved for a young lady I'm lucky enough to be seeing.
Indoor cooking feeds the body, but outdoor cooking often feeds the soul ...
--- End quote ---
Great story! And ahhh, yes… “The advent of the Internet”... a complete game changer, eh?
Pappymn:
I remember my dad trying to grill chicken on a POS gas grill in the 80's. I don't recall him grilling that often but it was all crap. You see indirect cooking had not been invented yet.
Pam Gould:
I started cooking over an open fire with friends in about 1980 at Lake Amanda..I love cooking over an open fire..I have grills, electric , gas, charcoal but my best is still open fire, with real wood. .☆´¯`•.¸¸. ི♥ྀ.
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