Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1953 and raised in Baltimore. He earned a BA in French literature from Reed College in 1975, won a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship to study medieval cooking in Europe, and trained at Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne in Paris. Before barbecue, he worked as a food critic for Boston Magazine and authored a string of cookbooks — the High-Flavor, Low-Fat series won him his first three James Beard Awards between 1992 and 1997.

In November 1994 the idea for The Barbecue! Bible “hit him like a thunderbolt.” He spent four years traveling 150,000 miles through 25 countries on five continents researching global grilling traditions. The book published in 1998, sold more than a million copies, and re-centered American grilling writing around a worldwide lens. How to Grill followed in 2001 as the photo-driven technique reference, and the IACP gave The Barbecue Bible its Julia Child Award in 2003.

In 2003 Raichlen launched the Barbecue University in-person teaching program and the first of four PBS series — Barbecue University, Primal Grill, Project Smoke, Project Fire, and currently Steven Raichlen’s Planet Barbecue. He was inducted into the KCBS Barbecue Hall of Fame in 2015. He writes from Coconut Grove, Florida and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Grilling as world cuisine. Raichlen’s thesis — institutionalized by The Barbecue! Bible and continued through every series since — is that live-fire cooking is a human universal. Every continent invented it; every cuisine has a version. His books pull satay from Singapore, kebabs from Istanbul, churrasco from Brazil, asado from Argentina, and yakitori from Japan into the same canon as Texas brisket and Memphis ribs. That global frame is the reason home cooks now think of grilling as world cuisine rather than purely Southern Americana.

Technique by photo. How to Grill(2001) is the visual companion to the Bible: every fundamental — direct heat, indirect, rotisserie, smoking, plank, salt block, plancha — shown step-by-step in photos. The format made him the go-to teacher for cooks who learn by watching, and it anchors his approach to plank grilling and other technique-driven moves.

Backyard smoking for everyone else. Project Smoke (2016) and Project Fire (2018) translate competition-grade craft into something a kettle owner can actually do on a Saturday. They’re the entry point for cooks moving from grill to smoker without committing to Aaron Franklin levels of obsession — primers on fuel selection, wood, rubs, and the backyard rigs that get most home cooks 80% of the way there.

Raichlen’s voice is curious, literary, and historically grounded. The French-literature training and the Watson Fellowship in medieval cooking show up in how he frames technique — through the lens of culture and tradition rather than through competition-BBQ rankings or Texas-regionalist tribal identity. He treats a Bangkok satay stall and a Hill Country meat market as equally valid entries in the planetary canon.

He does not chase competition rankings, does not lead with gear reviews, and does not trade in the regional- American identity politics that animate voices like Aaron Franklin or the Texas Monthly canon. What he does instead: encyclopedic, globally-sourced reference books; long-running public-television series; in-person teaching at Barbecue University; and photo-driven technique explainers that strip out the mystique without dumbing down the craft.

The Raichlen lane is also pedagogical. Four PBS series and Barbecue University make him the most consistent instructional voice in American live-fire writing — the canonical answer when someone asks “where do I start?” without a specific regional tradition in mind. His best entry point for that reader is the Bible itself: the global survey first, then drill into wherever the appetite takes you.

• Official sitebarbecuebible.comVisit →
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• BookThe Barbecue! Bible (1998)Buy →
• BookHow to Grill (2001)Buy →