Do you love barbecue? You should, because barbecue is delicious. Barbecue is a skill that takes years and years of patient practice, with lots of trial and error, to develop and perfect. A lot of blood, sweat and tears go in to making delicious barbecue to be enjoyed by the masses.
If you have loved and enjoyed eating good barbecue—tender smoked meats with covered with tantalizing spices and sauces—and honestly, who hasn’t, then maybe you’re wanting and ready to try your hand at making good barbecue for yourself. Well then try you should, because the best things in life are the ones you work for, and there are few things in life more rewarding than a home cooked meal that you prepared for you. Food tastes better when you cook it yourself.
So if you’re up for taking your status in the world of barbecue from consumer to producer, then you’re going to need to take yourself to school. Just like you can’t hop in the Captain’s chair and suddenly know how to fly a plane and fly it well, you can’t just jump into barbecue and expect good results. You have to learn the ropes first.
Because there aren’t many culinary classes with a focus on barbecue (some barbecue restaurants/competition barbecue teams offer classes, but they tend to be located in the barbecue belt states and have limited availability), and even if they were odds are you don’t have the time or money to go get a culinary degree, you’re going to have to turn to the online world to inform yourself. There’s a plethora of information available out there, some of it great, some of basic, and some of it is just kind of silly. From professional websites of the likes of Weber and other giants in the barbecue industry, to smaller forums, a quick bit of searching around on Google can point you in the right direction and help you find what you’re looking for.
But even if you do find what you’re looking for, you might find that you don’t always get what you wanted out of it. You might be looking for something a bit more constructive and helpful than just a bunch of words written about how to cook barbecue the best.
So why waste so much time doing that, giving yourself a headache and seeing zero improvement in your barbecue? Whynot head over to Jealous Devil ? Jealous Devil is an all-natural, lump wood charcoal company that is disrupting the charcoal industry by providing a superior product and looking to help the little guy as well.
They have a great blog that is filled with useful information for any and all looking to get bigger into barbecue. They highlight fun barbecuing and grilling gadgets and gizmos, talk about what makes barbecue barbecue, and offer some tips to help you further their skills.
One of the best things that they do that you won’t see anywhere else is a “Weekend Barbecue Challenge” that they post each Friday. It highlights a great barbecue recipe that comes from a great barbecue cook (think Bobby Flay), so you know the recipe is going to be good. They then give you step by step instructions on how to properly prepare the recipe; seems pretty standard. What makes this really unique however is the reward that they offer. By participating in their “Weekend Barbecue Challenge,” participants not only are able to try out different recipes that help to hone their hands at barbecue, but are also rewarded with a free bag of Jealous Devil charcoal for simply taking and submitting photos of their finished product. Learning by doing is one of the best ways to learn anything. So why not try their challenge, learn some techniques, and be rewarded with free charcoal to practice on?
