Female Speaker: I've met Steve just briefly now, and he said to me,
"Please don't use the C-word."
And I have a friend from when I was an undergraduate
who had the same plea: Don't use the C-word.
She's now British television chef, Nigella.
We shared a kitchen when we were undergraduates.
I'm now a health editor and she's a food writer.
Steven, as you probably know better than I do, is a best selling author
with 27 books I think now including Barbecue Bible.
He's a recipient of five James Beard Awards and three awards
from the International Culinary Professionals Association.
His television show, which I think is on PBS, Barbecue University,
and that's based on what he does at the Greenbrier Resorts.
So, I'm going to hand over now --
very careful again not to use the C-word -- to Steven.
[applause] Steven Raichlen: Good afternoon everybody.
Audience: Good afternoon.   Steven Raichlen: Wait.
Since we are talking about barbecue now, this is not DNA,
or life sciences or artificial intelligence or anything so,
let's try it again please -- good afternoon everybody.
Audience: Good afternoon.
Steven Raichlen: All right, that is better.
That's the way we do barbecue.
And you're witnessing something extremely unusual today,
and that is I'm wearing one of these.
Normally, I only do that in funerals.
But, this morning I had the great honor of being invited for breakfast
at the White House and I was reflecting how amazing is it
that a guy writing about barbecue can wind
up having breakfast in the White House.
So, is America not a great place?   America is a great place.
Good. [applause] At any rate, I would like to do three things today.
First of all, I would like to talk to you a little bit
about the history of barbecue.   Please don't run for the exits.
You probably didn't realize this was going to be a history lesson,
but it's actually quite fascinating.
And it bears -- one question I have asked myself many times
which is why is there such a strong emotional connection with barbecue?
And why does it allow a guy like me
to actually earn a living writing about barbecue?
Second thing I'd like to do is tell you a little bit about how I came
to write about barbecue and what I'm working on now,
and what I hope work on in the future.
And the third thing I'd like to do is just open the talk
up for questions and they can be about the history or philosophy
of barbecue, or if you're having particular problems with your grill
or you brisket, I will be happy to entertain any and all.
Okay? So, let me actually just start now.
Are there any questions?   [laughter] Okay, great!
Well, three quarters of a million years ago,
the world witnessed a revolution.
Man became the first animal to cook his dinner,
and how it happened, I'm not sure.   We can only speculate.
Perhaps, a forest fire swept through the woods and roasted a whole bison
on the hoof, or perhaps an unexpected volcano exploded
unexpectedly and trapped a mastodon in a lava flow.
In any case, one of our very early ancestors tasted this new phenomenon
called roasted meat, and uttered the first and one
of the greatest 'aha's' of human history.
Now, I say this all, a little bit of tongue and cheek.
But in fact the discovery of barbecue had enormous consequences,
not only on our social organization but our intellectual development,
and even the look on the modern face.
The immediate ancestor of ours that did not barbecue
or cook was a creature called Homo erectus.
He lived about a million years ago.
And anthropologists use what they call the subway test,
when you're figuring out how distant an ancestor was.
Anybody know what the subway test is?
It means if you were on a subway, and a Neanderthal sat down next
to you, you'd stay seated and continue reading your newspaper.
And if a Homo robustus, who was the first fire user,
sat down next to you, you'd be a little alarmed, you might get up,
you might walk to the other end of the car
but you'd still keep reading your newspaper.
If a Homo erectus sat next to you, you'd get up,
and you'd definitely move to another subway car.
So, pre-fire users, you look at the skull
that had something called a sagittal crest, which was a bony ridge
on the top, big zygomatic arches and bony protuberances
that anchor giant jaw muscles
because Homo erectus was a giant chewing machine.
That's what he did.
When you eat raw meat for your diet you spend five
or six hours a day chewing, at least that's what anthropologists surmised
when they study primates in the wild.
And what happened was once early man started using fire
within a hundred thousand years, which in the course
of evolution is an eye blink,
you see a completely different looking skull.
The giant jaw and the giant teeth shrink down in size.
The cranium becomes much larger because it doesn't need
to anchor all these heavy muscles.
A growing cranium means a bigger brain case.
It means a larger brain.
A smaller jaw means a development of a larynx, more agility in the tongue
and you can actually have the second thing that makes us human aside
from grilling and barbecue, and that is language.
So, you could really say that barbecue begat civilization.
[laughter] Now, fast forward about another half a million years,
let's say about 250 thousand years ago.
By the way how do we know that Homo robustus did some grilling?
Or, at least ate some grilled meats?
[laughter] Well, they have found fossilized animal bones
with the ends of the bones charred.
And it seemed that to get the bone marrow this creature would burn the
bones to break them open
because remember the early prehistoric diet was
unbelievably lean.
And that also sort of reminds us, why would anybody try
to eat a calcinated bison carcass that came out of forest fire.
Well, I have a hunch our early ancestors were always famished,
and they ate virtually anything that wouldn't eat him.
[laughter] About 250,000 years ago, we get the first indications
that people learned how to make fire themselves, and there's a professor
at Harvard that has the theory that tool making is very old
and people have been banging stones together probably
for a half a million years ago.
Well, if you bang two pieces of flint together what happens?
You get a spark, but that doesn't help you because it's a cold spark
and it will never set tinder on fire.
But if one stone is a piece of marcasite, which is a metallic kind
of stone and the other piece of stone is a piece of flint,
and I don't know how you're doing this inside [inaudible]
but that is really, totally amazing.
[Laughs] [laughter] You get a hot spark, and there's a Prehisto Park,
it's called, in the southwest of France
and it's a little recreated Neanderthal village
and they have a re-enactor who will actually and I --
you know as a journalist my first thing is, "Nah.
You're kidding me?   I don't believe you can do that."
So, sure enough he grabbed a piece of marcasite and grabs a piece
of flint, strikes them together and the spark goes
into a little bird nest he fashioned with little shredded mushrooms,
and within 30 seconds he had a flame.
Making fire, think about it.
Building a skyscraper, launching a 747 is nothing compared
to the act of building a fire.
Well, to fast forward through our brief march
through barbecue history -- for many people
in this audience barbecue is a religion.
Among the ancient Hebrews,
Greeks and Romans BBQ really was a religion, and if you read Homer,
the Illiad, before the Greeks went
into battle they always sacrificed an ox.
Interestingly, they put it on a burning pyre
and the Gods got the hooves, the horns and the skin
and the congregants got to eat the meat.
So, that was a pretty sweet arrangement.
Homer actually describes a barbecued ox dish, where you take the fat
and you wrap the thigh meat in fat.
Okay, sort of like wrapping meat and bacon, right?
And then as it's cooked it's doused with alternate layers
of extra virgin olive oil, I'm sure they had none other back then,
and wine, which was probably something
like red Sena [spelled phonetically]
because the wine skins were sealed with pine resin.
So, here in a classic work of literature
because this is a book festival,
is a recipe that's probably 2,500 years old for barbecue.
But, I know what you really want
to know is how did we really get the word barbecue
and how did the modern notion of barbecue come to pass.
Well, the red-letter date here is 1516,
that will be on the final exam.
It was April 14th, actually two days after my wife's birthday,
and an armada of ships set sail from Spain, bound for Colombia,
and on board one of them was a guy named, let me get this right,
Gonzalo Fernando-Oviedo E. Valdez.
He was a really interesting character.
He had written some novels, he was a courtier, knew a little bit
about metallurgy and he was on his way
to the new world to run a gold mine.
When they got to the island of Hispaniola,
today the Dominican Republic and Haiti, he found a group
of Taino Indians on the beach.
They had rigged up a contraption that looks something like this.
There were four big poles,
and across those poles there were some sort of cross poles,
and they formed what looked like a barbecue grate,
and on top of that there was fish, there was wild game.
Another early engraving showed lizards and snakes.
But if you think about the technology for a minute
when your grill grate is wood, not metal what do you have to do?
Okay? It's got to be at least three or four feet above the fire.
When you put the grate three or four feet above the fire, what happens?
You bring down the heat and you increase the smoke.
So, Oviedo asks these Taino Indians --
by the way he's the first one to write about pineapple and avocados.
So, he was -- and cornbread --
so he was a pretty important early food historian.
He said, "What do you guys have going on there?"
And they said they thought he was talking about the equipment.
So, they said it's a Barbacoa, a Barbacoa,
and that gives us our word barbecue.
A few years ago, I was giving a lecture on the history
of barbecue just down the street at the Library of Congress,
and I mentioned this book and then I showed some engravings
from another book by an engraver called Jereo who gave us some
of our first pictures of -- I won't even say of new world BBQ but how
to the European imagination New World BBQ must have looked.
After my lecture, they took me into the red rare books room
and they actually put the book
that had the first written word mentioned a Barbacoa in my hands,
and it was a pretty great and fantastic thrill.
So, thank you to the Library of Congress.
Well it's very a propo that I'm lecturing on the history
of barbecue here because barbecue is inextricably interwoven
with American history itself.
For example, let's see, George Washington was a great barbecue fan.
If you read his diaries he's always talking about barbecues,
including one in Alexandria, Virginia, that lasted three days.
In fact, the only public office that George Washington ever ran for
and much desired but didn't win was a seat on the House of Burgesses,
and one early chronicler implied that the reason he lost was
that he forgot to provide the customary refreshments,
i.e. he forgot to stage a barbecue.
When the cornerstone for the Capitol building was laid,
a barbecue was the way it was celebrated.
When Abraham Lincoln's parents were married their wedding feast was --
you guessed it, a barbecue.
Barbecue has been a fundraiser, an electioneering tool,
a way for Americans to celebrate great events for virtually
since the birth of our nation.
Fast forwarding to the 20th century, two sort of interesting connections,
neither one of which you may think of: number one, Henry Ford
and the automobile, making Model-T Fords, he had an awful lot
of wood scraps left over from paneling.
He had heard about process where by wood scraps could be ground up,
mixed with coal dust, borax and petroleum binders stamped
into a little pillow shape and turned
into what we now know as a charcoal briquette.
So, he called his buddy Thomas Albert Edison and said please set
up a factory for me, and Edison designed the first charcoal factory.
It was called the Ford Motor Works Charcoal Company,
a hot-selling name if ever there was one.
[laughter] Henry got too busy so he put a relative in charge.
That man's last name was Kingsford,
and the rest, as they say, is history.
Fast forwarding again to one year before I was born, a metal worker
in Palatine, Illinois, his company makes nautical buoys.
And had the idea to take one half of a round nautical buoy and put legs
on it and cut a couple little vent holes in the bottom.
And, he had the idea to take the other half of the buoy
and put some more vent holes in it and weld a handle on top.
The company he worked for was called the Weber Metal Works Company,
and in 1952, the Weber Kettle Grill was born.
His name by the way was George Stevens.
So, where is barbecuing going today?
Well, let's see, we've seen the rise of the barbecue competition.
We've seen the rise of the stainless steel gas super grill.
I have a grill at Barbecue University that cost $12,000,
and that's more than my first, second, third,
fourth and fifth car put together.
[laughter] Infrared technology, a new technology for grilling,
and we've also seen much greater awareness
of regional American barbecue.
It used to be you could only eat pulled pork in North Carolina
and you could only eat a barbeque brisket in Texas.
Today, you can find them all over the Big Apple, not to mention here
in Washington, D.C. But, what still thrills and delights me
about barbecue is the fact that for every stainless steel super grill,
there is at least somewhere most likely in the deep South,
a guy who's willing to stay up all night drinking beer, mopping
and tending his pig to make perfect pulled pork
or a pig pickin' the next morning.
Okay, so that's the brief history of American barbecue.
Now the second thing -- how are we doing time wise?
We're okay?
Okay. The second thing many people have asked me this morning is how I
got into this crazy field, and the answer is very simple.
I majored in French literature.   [laughter] I wrote my thesis
on an obscure medieval French poet named Christine de Pizan.
Has anybody heard of her?
I completely misunderstood her message by the way,
but that was something different.
That would come about when feminism --
she was really the first feminist writer.
But I was clueless back then.   [laughter] In any case,
after college I won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.
Tom Watson founded IBM, and his idea was to give fellowships
out to people who burn with a passion for a non-academic subject
and would in some sense become ambassadors for America.
So I had a proposed in a night of drunken euphoria
to study medieval cooking in Europe.   Much to my great astonishment,
the Watson Foundation actually granted me a Watson
Foundation Fellowship.   So, it got me to France in 1975.
That was the year that Nouvelle Cuisine, sprang --
burst forward in the world of cuisine.
A very exciting time, I remember heated debates
about whether the food processor was the device of the devil.
When I learned classical French cooking, we would make fish mousse
by pounding it in a modern pestle and forcing it
into a horsehair sieve -- extraordinary times.
I studied medieval cooking and I planned to write a book about it,
but of course I didn't realize at the time how much trouble a book was
and how difficult it was to write.
But, what it did do is it got me thinking about food as a window
into culture and in history.
And, that's in a sense what I've been doing ever since.
Now, the particular interest
in barbecue happened the second week of November, 1994.
I was writing a series of books called High-Flavor Low-Fat Cooking.
I was doing that because I had been a restaurant critic in the 80's
and I developed a cholesterol problem.
This was prior to the invention of Lipitor, which has made everything,
really made my career possible.
[laughter] But I guess you could say that barbecue was a divine calling.
I remember what I was wearing, what the weather was like, how time slows
down at those crucial turning point moments in your life.
And, I heard a voice, almost as from heaven.
And, the voice said to me, "Follow the fire!
Follow the fire."
And, the idea was that I was to travel
around the world studying how people barbecue
and grill in different countries.
So, I immediately dashed off a book proposal because with an idea
like that, you can't not write a book.
Normally, a book proposal -- if any of you writers,
do we have some writers in the audience?
So you know that a book proposal takes a month to write.
I did it in the morning, then the next week --
if you know anything about book publishing it usually takes more
than a week to get a response.
It took Workman Publishing a year to decide
to publish my Miami Spice book.   But, I got a response back,
and in it my publisher very cleverly put the author promises the visit
the following 15 countries and he listed them,
and then I knew I was really in trouble.
But, I started traveling.
A one-year book turned into a four year mega project,
and the result was a book called Barbecue Bible.
Actually, we're bringing up Barbecue Bible next year
in a tenth anniversary edition that will have 200 color photographs.
So, while I was touring for Barbecue Bible, I learned something else
that was really interesting and that is
that men don't like to ask directions.
[laughter] At the end of my lectures, as I'm going to do now
as you give me the 10 minute sign,
I would always say does anybody have any questions?
And women would dutifully raise their hands and say yes,
I'd like to know this and I'd like to know that and I would answer.
And men would be absolutely silent.
Then after I was done and ready to catch my next plane,
they'd come up to me and grab me by the shirt,
and they'd say my steak is always tough.
My chicken always catches fire.
My fish always sticks to the grill grate.
How come? So, I started writing these questions down
and pretty soon I had enough to make the next big book in my series,
the Barbecue Bible Cook Book series,
and that was a book called How to Grill.
And because we guys sort of learn better through images
than through words I put a thousand step
by step color photographs in how to grill.
That book curiously has become my best selling book
around the world, not only in America.
I was just in Moscow recently where a Russian translation is coming out.
I did a book tour in Japan, which was especially thrilling for me,
four years ago, because I was born in Japan.
They couldn't translate the whole book
because they don't have kettle grills and smokers.
But, they took all the hibachi-friendly recipes from three
of my books, and they put those in a book.
So, that is very briefly how I got into this field.
Why I stay in it is because I find it endlessly fascinating,
because ultimately at the end of the day the story
of barbecue is not just a story about recipes
or about cooking processes, but it's really a story
about who we are as human beings.   Why we're here.
Why our faces look the way it does.
Why you can put a pit master from Indonesia next to a Bubba
from Texas, and even if they didn't speak the same language
after a few beers they'd be communicating no problem at all.
[applause] Anyhow, what I'd like to do now --
and by the way the next book -- sort of the biggest ever.
It's a book called Planet Barbecue.
I'm back out on the barbecue trail visiting places I had never
been before.
I'm traveling with a National Geographic photographer this time.
We'll be able to bring you
in luscious Technicolor all those wonderful scenes of smoked meats
and sizzling fish and flaming fire, remember guys there's a difference
between cooked and burnt, that's one of the important lessons.
[laughter] So, what I'd like to do now,
real quick is open up for a few questions.
Does anyone have any questions?
Yes, sir? Male Speaker: [inaudible] Steven Raichlen: Okay,
I can hear your question so go ahead.
Male Speaker: [inaudible] Steven Raichlen: The question was,
I have a little school called Barbecue University,
which I started at the Greenbrier.
And, it is true I am leaving the Greenbrier,
but we will be announcing a new location next month.
So, Barbecue University will continue.
I did actually take a year off from the taping
of the show, the T.V. show.   Anybody watch the T.V. show here?
All right, that is a good sign.
I played hooky for six months and I wrote a novel,
and it's not a cooking novel or recipes it's actually a love story
and hopefully that will be out next year
but that's a whole different thing.   Next question, yes sir?
Please tell us by the way your name, where you're from
and the last four digits of your social.
[laughter] Male Speaker: Well, actually, first of all I wanted
to say, I really enjoyed Barbecue Bible a lot and the thing I liked
about it the most was the whole worldwide nature
and all the different -- you know someone who is used
to having hotdogs and hamburgers on a grill and then to see this
and be like, "Oh there's so many other things."
I'm originally from the North and moved to the South for a while,
and that's where I got my love for true barbecue
like pulled pork and things like that.
So, it was my -- I discovered that book
through my true love for barbecue.
One of the newer things -- well not really new because it's ancient
but the ceramic cookers that are out there,
obviously a very ancient technology
but you're seeing all these new fangled ceramics.
I was just wondering if you have any plans to do any kind of like --
because there is suppose to be so versatile and stuff to do kind
of a cook book based on that or even small kind of --
Steven Raichlen: Okay, well that is --
the gentlemen for those of you who sort of not deeply in this world,
he's referring to a phenomenon called the egomania,
the Big Green Egg.
It's a kamado cooker, a big ceramic egg with charcoal at the bottom.
And, to answer your question specifically --
the reason I call it egomania it's like Moonies are to religion,
that's what the Big Green Egg is to the world of barbecue grills,
a very passionate following.
I'm not going to do a book specifically relating to that
but in the 10th anniversary edition
of Barbecue Bible we'll certainly be talking about how to use the Egg
and that is a wonderful barbecue success story
that if I had another half hour I would tell you about it.
Yes ma'am?
Female Speaker: This is about cooking beef.
Steven Raichlen: Yes.
Female Speaker: How do you barbecue beef whether it be hamburger
or steaks, where it's crunchy on the outside,
but not either too raw or dead on the inside.
Steven Raichlen: Okay, very good question and I just feel obliged
to point out that when we say the word barbecue,
technically we're meeting a method of cooking that is
at a low temperature for a long time in the presence of a lot
of wood smoke, and neither of those foods would be barbecued per say.
They would be grilled because you need a high heat for those.
Steak, screaming high heat, okay number one a little film
of olive oil, salt and pepper on the outside.
It's about two minutes on one side, working on the diagonal to the bars
on the grate, 90 degree angle.
Two minutes on the other side when you see little pearls of blood rise
to the surface you turn the steak over.
Of course, it helps to keep your grill grate hot,
clean and lubricated, right?
Remember those three rules, it's very important.
That means a hot grill grate, oil it,
lubricate it with a folded paper towel dipped in oil,
and clean the grill grate with a stiff wire brush.
Now, for burgers they're a little trickier because you want
to cook the devil out of today's ground meat unless you grind
it yourself.
So, what I recommend doing is folding a little disk of butter
or herb butter in the center of your burger.
Again, working over high heat cooking the burger through
but the melted butter when you bite into it will squirt and be juicy
so it gives you the illusion
of being very succulent, but it's also safe.
Yes ma'am.   Thank you that was a good question.
Female Speaker: [unintelligible] Steven Raichlen:
So was the first one by the way too.   [laughter] Yes ma'am.
Female Speaker: I have what may be a silly question.
Steven Raichlen: No such thing.   Female Speaker: I'm sure.
I do all the cooking in our house, and I run the grill.
Steven Raichlen: Yeah.
Female Speaker: My husband doesn't cook in my kitchen
and he doesn't cook outside but I understand from the rest
of the world that that's not the way it is.
Why? [laughter] Steven Raichlen: Why?
Female Speaker: Why is it that men think they can grill?
[laughter] [applause] Steven Raichlen: Well,
I just got the five minute warning sign, so that's a tough one
but let me make three observations about that.
Number one is that in many parts of the world there are a lot
of grill masters and to name four countries off the top
of my head Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia,
Mexico and most recently I discovered Serbia,
a lot of lady grill masters.
Normally, what I would say is because women are way to smart
to stand down wind of a hot stinky grill drinking beer.
[laughter] But, I'm sure -- let's see why is it a guy thing?
I'll bet Claude Levi-Strauss will have something to say about the raw,
and the cook and the roasting and the ability of men to control fire
in a certain way through certain parts of their anatomy
that women can't but -- [laughter] In any case, women don't only do it
but -- you know what if you were happy
at the grill that makes me happy.   One more question here.
Yes ma'am.
Female Speaker: What's your feeling about the stovetop smokers?
Steven Raichlen: Well, let's see.
Since my wife and I have smoked salmon smoked on a stovetop smoker
that incidentally we put on our grill,
I'm very enthusiastic about them.
They're great for certain foods, great for smoked salmon and great
for foods that require moisture.
On the other hand if you're trying to do a brisket or you're trying
to do ribs, something that needs some crusting,
what you have to do is smoke in the stovetop smoker for the first half
of the cooking, then finish it in the oven to do the browning.
Female Speaker: Can you use the stovetop, or do you recommend --
Steven Raichlen: Well you know you if you're in an apartment --
basically, I try to approach things in life with the results,
so if you can get a great smoked salmon using a stovetop smoker,
who am I to say no?   Great, any other questions?
Yes sir? Male Speaker: [inaudible] Steven Raichlen: What is my take
on BBQ sauce was the question.
And, I'm glad you asked it because I have a historical note to add
and a couple of things I want to say.
First of all, true BBQ is about the meat and not about the sauce.
Your meat should be so exquisitely, so intensely perfumed with spice,
so intensely smoked with hickory or apple smoked and so succulent,
that you shouldn't even need sauce.
Sauce is like make-up on a tarted-up gal
that should have the inner beauty by herself.
[laughter] But as a manufacturer of barbecue sauces,
I think they are a great thing.
[laughter] But, when I serve barbecue and even if you came
to my home, seriously, you'd get the meat with the sauce on the side,
because you should always try the meat first.
And, I will mention -- if anybody has --
we're about to run out of time here --
oh, the other thing I wanted to say is what was early American --
since we're here in the cradle of the birth of democracy --
so what was barbecue like that George Washington ate?
Well, two theories.
One is there's an early recipe in Colonial Williamsburg
that had a whole lamb being spit roasted
and it was basted alternately with melted butter and salt water.
Okay, a very simple preserving the pristine flavors.
My personal theory is that it was probably very similar
to the barbecue of North Carolina, eastern part that is a sauce made
of vinegar, hot pepper flakes and salt,
not much else because those ingredients are available; tomato,
ketchup were not really available
until the last quarter of the 19th century.
One more question.
Are we just about -- no more questions.
Well anyway, then let me thank you very much and let me just say
in parting, keep it hot, keep it clean, and keep it lubricated.
Thank you.   [applause] [end of transcript]