I have been an avid barbecue smoker enthusiast for a number of years now for many years before that are very keen griller. During my grilling days (and rightly or wrongly) I\’ve always been a charcoal enthusiast. I am not sure that it has anything to do with the purists approach to grilling but more […]

It was about three of four years ago that my desire to learn more about smoking food really took off. Many years ago at the food fair I bought what\’s best described as a shoebox smoker, very primitive but it worked and ever since then I\’ve been keen to discover more about the smoking process […]

When choosing the heat source for your smoker there are a number of things to consider. The purist will always say that there\’s no substitute for wood because this provides the heat and smoke in the most fundamental way but I believe that we have to be a little bit more practical that at. After […]

Unless you are an absolute purist and want to use hardwood as the heat source for your smoker then charcoal is probably the next best thing. For sure hardwood has been used for eons as a source of both heat and smoke but in this modern day and age is it practical? If you\’re into […]

Portable electric smokers have a lot to answer for because they are probably the main reason for the epidemic of smoking enthusiasm across much of the USA. These products are low cost and relatively speaking are getting even lower in cost as manufacturing moves out to China. The basic design is an aluminum shell and […]

I\’ve been specific in my choice of words (energy source rather an heat source) because technically electricity isn\’t heat despite the fact that what we\’re actually going to use this energy for is to heat our smoker. Heat is desirable in a smoker for two purposes:- 1. To make heat for cooking (unless cold smoking) […]

Whenever I\’m on holiday I always take my trusty charcoal grill with me. It\’s nothing fancy, just a cast iron fire grate with an adjustable cooking grid above it. My favorite pastime and one thing that never ceases to relax me is sitting by my grill watching the food sizzle and spit on the coals […]

Owning or operating a restaurant entails an incredible amount of work. The times, they are a changing and managements styles are changing with them as we march into the paperless world of the twenty-first century. Running a restaurant is more of a social event than ever before. The Internet age has brought with it a […]

Your wait staff is the most important part of your restaurants sales. A great wait staff knows what to do and can produce, squeezing every cent possible from your hungry customers. There are several very important things that your servers must know in order to help your restaurant succeed. Without this knowledge, you could lose […]

It was about five or six years ago now that I first got really into smoking and I have to say that that was primarily down to my purchase of a Big Green Egg. Not something that\’s readily supplied in the UK but after a few attempts at searching I managed to acquire one. The […]