Meet Grilling Expert Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen, best-selling author of more than 28 cookbooks, including the just-published Barbecue Bible! 10th Anniversary Edition and host of PBS’ Barbecue University™ and the new Primal Grill, wants you to have a safe and savory grilling season.

“When it comes to serving a delicious burger, the right preparation is just as important as the right ingredients. Remember, the internal temperature for a safe and savory burger is 160°. So every time you fire up the grill to make burgers make sure your instant-read meat thermometer close at hand. Righteous Grilling!”

--Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen is many things—author, journalist, novelist, teacher, and TV host—but he may be best known as the man who reinvented barbecue. Raichlen wrote the multiaward-winning, best-selling Barbecue Bible cookbook series (4 million copies in print in 10 languages). His Primal Grill and Barbecue University™ TV shows on PBS have helped people all over the world ascend the ladder of grilling enlightenment.

Raichlen’s obsession with live fire cooking began with The Barbecue Bible (Workman, 1998), an IACP/Julia Child Award-winning encyclopedic study of global grilling chronicling his 4-year, 200,000-mile odyssey on the world’s barbecue trail. In 2001, Workman published the IACP Award-winning How to Grill, the world’s first step-by-step guide to live fire cooking, with more than 1000 color photographs, hailed by the New York Times as "astute, approachable, and eminently appealing.”

BBQ USA (2003)—Raichlen’s 780-page, 650-photograph, 425-recipe love song to regional American barbecue—won a 2004 James Beard Award. His most recent book, Raichlen on Ribs (Workman, 2006), celebrates what for many people is the most iconic and quintessential barbecue—ribs—in all their global glory. He is currently working on a book on global grilling called Planet Barbecue.

Raichlen’s 28 books include Barbecue Bible Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades; Beer Can Chicken; the perennially popular Miami Spice (Workman Publishing), and the James Beard Award-winning Healthy Latin Cooking published in English and Spanish by Rodale. In all Raichlen has won 5 James Beard Awards and 3 IACP awards, and his books have been translated into 12 languages, including French, Russian, and Japanese. He recently completed his first novel.

Raichlen’s TV shows include the popular Barbecue University™ and the sizzling new Primal Grill, which debuts on PBS in May, 2008. He has appeared on virtually every major national TV show, from The Today Show, Good Morning American, and CNN to Oprah, the View, and Regis and Kelly. In 2000, Raichlen created Barbecue University, a unique cooking school hailed by the Food Network as the “#1 Barbecue Experience in the U.S.” The 2008 sessions will take place at the ultra-luxurious Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on June 1 to 4, and 4 to 7. Raichlen also created the Best of Barbecue line of grilling accessories, manufactured by the Companion Group.

In August, 2003, Raichlen battled—and defeated Iron Chef Roksbura Michiba in a barbecue battle on Japanese television.

In 1975, Raichlen received a Watson Foundation Fellowship to study medieval cooking in Europe, as well as a Fulbright to study comparative literature. He holds a degree in French literature from Reed College and trained at the Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools in Paris. Raichlen lives with his wife, Barbara, in Miami, Florida.

Want to learn more? Visit BarbecueBible.com to order copies of Steven’s grilling cookbooks and find out if Steven will be visiting a city near you this summer!