Your first time.....

[Karon Adams]

Here's something I like to hear from others. "What dish, event, success or failure (which aren't really failures, just lessons) brought to your life the focus of cooking?"

What made cooking, to you, personally, more than just a way to fuel to allow you to be functional?

For me, I grew up learning to cook from my grandmothers, mostly. two very different women with very different influences and needs for cooking. I was always interested in cooking but, with both parents working, often 2nd shift, most of our meals were convenience foods.

When I grew up, got a job at a nuclear plant, I also was almost gifted a house. a lovely little 2 bedroom Craftsman style house in a marginal part of town. but, it was MINE! at 22 years old, I was a home owner with a job as a Nuclear Power plant operator. My leisure time was often scheduled around Science Fiction conventions.

Like any convention, publicity parties are important. So, at a planning meeting for our convention, I broke the FIRST rule of the Navy. "Never Again Volunteer Yourself" Yeah, OK. I volunteered to make Meatballs for the party. at that time, probably the only thing I could cook from scratch, with passing good taste, what Italian Red Sauce, Sunday Gravy, Ragu. and it wasn't half bad. The meatballs were pretty nice, too.

I made 30 pounds of ground beef into meatballs by hand. oh, plus the sauce from scratch. it was exhausting! what I didn't know then was that they were actually GOOD. I was very pleased with myself for accomplishing the project. More inspirational, though, was the feedback. the fans loved them. I managed to have myself a job for the foreseeable future.

That was the time when I realized that A) I CAN accomplish anything I wanted and B) I was not half bad. From then on, I was always looking for something new to cook. I was 22, single, with a job and a home and I was so pleased with myself.

There was a little Greek Sandwich shop in town. I'm not really sure how Greek they were but, they made this dessert that was pretty but tiny. I had never heard of it, before. It was baklava. I decided I wanted to make it. No one told me it was hard, so I found a recipe and made it. not knowing it was supposed to be difficult. I actually made some, again, a few weeks ago. this time, though, I made my own Phyllo. AMAZINGLY simple! light years better than the frozen. man. I'm going to need to make more, now.

Around the corner from my house was a little bread bakery. For me, bread had always been the Wonder Bread style ad I still like that in it's place. But, they made some amazing bread flavors. I couldn't see, however, that much money for a loaf of bread. so, once again, since no one told me bread was supposed to be hard, I just DID it. and now, I make bread weekly during Baking Season.

Looking back at all of this, I realize that this period in my life was when the kitchen became central to my life. I love it. After marriage, since I was a Stay at home mom, cash was tight and babies aren't cheap. so, most of my cooking back then, was taking cheap stuff and making it good. You learn a lot that way. Now, with the kidlets grown and gone, I revisit the learning I have always done in the kitchen, and now, I can focus on improving technique and marvelous food. I do love it.

Throughout my adult life, the kitchen has been the focus of my life. Cooking, I have found and come to believe, is FAR more than simple nutrition for food, cooking is love. Cooking is your time, talent, even treasure as well as expertise, all wrapped up and offered to those you love, on a plate.

in short, Cooking is a Sacred Endeavour.

[Spinaker]

Very well written. You hit many points that I think about all the time while cooking. Most of the food that I make is given away to others. Being that I'm a bachelor, I don't always have people to feed every night at home. However, My food often makes it to the lunch table at the farm to help feed the crew and keep their bellies full for the long days work. That is where I get the most joy out of cooking. Nice write up Karon. Meathead should seriously consider adding you to the staff to write some articles. You have great insight in to the world of cooking.

[Karon Adams]

Thank you, you are very kind. I just write what I feel. Cooking is a passion. I tend to become almost 'obsessed' when I find something that touches me. whether music or films, history or politics. it doesn't matter. if I find one that hooks me, I tend to dig in and learn as much as I can. I can probably answer pretty much anything about Freddie Mercury, for instance.

The difference between those topics and cooking is, eventually, you have learned about all there is to know about, say, Freddie. he has passed away, not creating anymore. in very real terms, it is a finite topic.

Cooking, however, is not. I told my kidlets, you can never tell someone 'I love you' too often. there is an old photograph I thought was adorable floating around online. An elderly couple sitting on a bench, both dressed for church. the caption reads :"Why don't you ay you love me, anymore?" the husband replies, "I told you 60 years ago. if anything changes, I'll let you know." It is adorable but in it's way, very sad. you can't say it too much.

Cooking is one of the ways I tell my family, daily, "I love you". When I cook to offer gifts, that is a LOT of hard work, but that moment when you walk in, for example, my dentist's office (I know, but I have been with this office for 25 years and we are regulars, there.) and hand them a platter covered with 20 different kinds of marshmallows at Christmas. there is no more wonderful feeling.

I don't know if I posted an essay I wrote a long time ago about love, and home made gifts. If you got a tin of marshmallows from me, last Christmas, it wasn't just candy. I can buy candy, even FINE candies, I can buy. I can even have them drop shipped to the recipient to save time. but, when I give you a tin of marshmallows, I am not giving you candy, I am giving you my TIME. to me, that is far more sweet.

[Breadhead]

I learned to cook sitting at a long mahogany counter that was for customers in a fine Steak and Seafood restaurant in Portland, Oregon. A place called Opus Too.

That mahogany counter was 4' away from the cook line. I sat and watched them cook every dish while I was waiting for my dinner. I got to know the executive Chef and when he had the time he would explain the nuance and intricacies of each dish as he cooked it. I would go home and replicate it. It's the only steakhouse I've ever been to that offered NO potatoes. They served fettuccine Alfredo with an option to add some pesto instead of baked potatoes. That was an easy dish to duplicate. They offered Hollidaise and Bernaise sauce for toppings on Steaks and Seafood and my Chef friend showed me how to make those sauces.

Their grill was a wood fired grill that they used mesquite wood to cook everything. It was about 20' long and they even sautéed fish and veggies on that grill. That's where l learned to grill steaks. They grilled about 200 steaks a day to the doneness requested by each customer and had no thermapen back then. After a while I had learned their entire menu and could have worked on that cook line.

I used those skills to cook for friends and family. I never intended to use those skills to make a living. At the time I was traveling the country selling furniture wholesale to major retail chains. I used those cooking skills to escape from the intensity and pressure of the furniture industry. When I was cooking I never thought of anything other than perfecting that cook. It was and is a great escape from the pressure we all feel from time to time.

There is no greater pleasure for me than perfecting a cook and presenting it to my guests and sitting quietly dining with them while they comment on how great the food is.😎

[Jerod Broussard]

Not properly resting a Select brisket. Took two times to learn my lesson. Cooking don't mean crap if you can't follow thru post cook.

[mgaretz]

When I got divorced, my daughter (16) spent half her time with her mom and half with me. Mom was the cook, I did most of the grilling. My kids (son was already away at college) never wanted to eat what Dad cooked, except what I grilled. So when my daughter was with me, we ate out a lot. So I decided to take cooking classes and I learned. (I was always good at coming up with recipes, could tell you what was in most dishes, but had no cooking chops.) At some point I was ready to try cooking for daughter. Knowing that she likes Thai food, I decided to make her a Thai Basil chicken dish that I had found a recipe for.

So when my daughter came over to stay one week, she asked what we were doing for dinner. I said I was cooking and making Thai. She said, "Nooooooo!" "Why not?" I said, "You like Thai food." She replied, "But it will be terrible and we'll starve!" "Don't worry," I said, "we're not on safari. If it's bad we can still go out."

She loved it so much she had thirds! From that day on my daughter (and new wife, and my son too) have loved my cooking. When they come home to visit, they want me to cook, not go out.

[x101airborne]

The Army ruined me on any food not home made and my tastes ruined me on most food not legally and ethically hunted, caught, raised or grown. We were always poor dairy farmers and I never knew much about grocery store anything. Huge gardens, fresh fish from the farm ponds, beef from the herd, hogs in the spring, deer in the fall. Now we are not quite so poor and can afford to buy sugar, but my favorite foods are the ones I make and grew up on. If you have never had the pleasure of being able to scrape the butter off the top of 5, 50 gallon barrels then to take the cheese curd and hang it in cheese cloths over the clothes line trust me it is a wonderful sight. We still make our own molasses, slaughter our own beef and pork, hunt our deer and feral hogs, can and preserve our vegetables from the garden. My steaks are better than any I can get in a restaurant, my fish is cooked just like I like it and even my bad BBQ is better than 70% of the BBQ shacks around here. I love home made, it made a home.

[Craigar]

Hmm...wow...good question Karon Adams. Since reading this post yesterday I have pondering your query and the one thing I keep going back to is Thanksgiving at Granny's when I was a kid. Granny & mom would be in the kitchen getting everything ready and when it came time to grind the giblets, neck meat, onions, celery, etc. for the dressing I would be right there at the kitchen table turning the crank on the grinder. This might be one of the many reasons why my shoulders give me fits from time to time. It surely isn't from the 4 separated shoulders from playing football. The scents from that kitchen still intoxicate me to this day.

Later when I was older, maybe 10 or 11, I was so obsessed with grilling hamburgers, hot dogs and the occasional steak mom and dad broke down and bought a gas grill (very, very similar to the Modern Home Products WNK4...who knows it might have been for all I know) and I was put in charge of cooking on the grill. While that doesn't sound too special keep in mind this was back in the early to mid 70's, we lived in a small town in rural central Nebraska and the only place to buy a gas grill was from the gas utility company in town. I think they paid as much for that bad boy as they did for our first color TV. In any event, I have been hooked on grilling and smoking ever since. Now that the curtain crawlers have ventured out of the nest, I am hoping to devote more time to hone my skills.

[mayapoppa]

I don't come from a cooking family, neither parents, nor their parents were much into cooking. Except for one thing, which I only found out about recently. When my mom was growing up in Virginia, on the border with North Carolina, her dad would barbecue whole pigs, ribs, butts... just sitting outside "painting a pig" as she says. My mom learned how to make ribs in the oven from him, and that was the one dish I would ask for for all year long. Money was tight for us, so it became my birthday meal. I never knew where she learned how to cook ribs, or why they tasted different from nearly every BBQ I had since, until I decided I was going to learn to make ribs. When she heard, she sent me a box of Carolina Treet sauce, and told me about her dad using this sauce as his "pig paint." Once I made the ribs, I realized the taste I had been missing. That led me to getting a smoker (a PBC), and the rest is history. Taste and smell are powerful links to our history.

[RAmorris]

My dad was killed in an accident in 1960 when I was seven, and my maternal grandfather became like a second father to me. I started cooking over a fire when I was 10 years old while on camping trips with my grandfather where we hunted and fished. Breakfast was bacon or ham, fried eggs and grits. Dinner was whatever game we killed (squirrels, rabbits, deer, hogs) or fish (bream, catfish, bass) that we caught, usually fried. Sides were canned pork and beans heated in their cans next to the fire, boiled potatoes, and sliced light bread. If we got a fat wild hog, we would grill it over coals.

In the 1940s, 1950s and part of the 1960s, my paternal grandmother and grandfather operated The Morris House, a boarding house in Macclenny, my hometown. My grandmother prepared all the meals for their boarding house. She had previously prepared meals for the workers in their turpentine camps. Her fried chicken dinners (lunch) on Sundays attracted customers from over 30 miles away and were written up in the nearby Jacksonville newspaper, the Times Union. I learned indoor cooking from her. It was simple southern fare. Fried chicken, fried pork chops, fried spare ribs, stewed hog backbone and rice, chicken and dumplings, meat loaf, mustard, collard, and turnip greens, black-eye peas, fried okra, butter beans, biscuits, cornbread, etc. Vegetables were cooked with smoked hog jowls.

My maternal grandfather died when I was 13 and he was 80. I started working cows (cow hunting) the summer after he died. It was for several families that together leased tens of thousands of acres of range land and ran cattle on it. The land they leased was so far away that we stayed there and camped on it until the round up was finished, usually two weeks. Our group was six or seven men and about as many teen age boys, plus dogs to help herd the cows. It was always the boys’ job to cook dinner and I was sort of elected to lead that process because of my earlier cooking experiences. Cooking was on metal grates over a couple of fires. In those days we had an ice house in Macclenny, so blocks of ice were brought in large metal coolers to put food on. Someone went back to town every three or four days to replenish our ice supply. The food was fried venison from deer killed the previous hunting season, grilled hamburgers, fried round steak, fried or grilled wild hog if we were able to kill any, pork and beans, boiled potatoes, turnip and collard greens homemade smoked sausage and bacon, fried eggs and grits, biscuits, etc. After the round up was finished, we would butcher and quarter a steer and cook it on a special metal grate slowly over coals. I believe this took about 20-22 hours. The men supervised this. We would take the left over meat back home and divide it up between us.

When I was in college living in a dorm I mostly ate at one of the college cafeterias. I was married at the beginning of my junior year (1972) and we lived in an apartment. My first wife, Nancy, was an excellent cook. Her dad was an avid hunter, and there were 12 members in his hunting club. Before we were married she was their hunting camp cook. She was running late for our first date because she was butchering a deer her brother had killed. After we were married, since Nancy worked and went to school like I did, we shared the cooking responsibilities. Her venison hash over rice was incredible, and so were her biscuits.

We started smoking meat over a charcoal bullet water smoker in the late 1970s. By the early 1980s we had smoked spare ribs, chicken, brisket, pork butt, salmon, prime rib, Spanish mackerel, lamb, venison and wild hog. In 1984, I had one of our welders at Tropicana where I worked build a much larger version of the bullet smoker out of stainless steel, powered by an electric coil. It had 4 large racks, but I don’t remember the dimensions. Smoke was from wood chunks placed on the coil. It worked great and would cook at temperatures from 200 to 375 F. In 1985, when the CEO of Beatrice Foods, the company that owned Tropicana, and three of their Vice-Presidents came to visit, my boss asked me to prepare my barbecue for lunch. There would be four from Beatrice and five, counting me, from Tropicana, plus Nancy, which made a total of 10. We lived on 5 acres about 30 minutes’ drive from Tropicana’s offices. Nancy and I prepared a feast of smoked spare ribs, smoked chicken and a number of sides, and served it on picnic tables under the oak trees in our back yard. From then on, every time they came to Tropicana, they asked me to prepare a barbecue lunch.

Nancy and I were divorced in 1987, and she got the custom made electric water smoker. Within the week I went to that welder and had him build me another one. I would often prepare barbecue for women I was dating, usually on Saturdays, and sometimes other couples would join us. My barbecue was so well-liked that Gloria, my second wife, insisted on my taking the smaller bullet water smoker on our honeymoon in 1988 so she could have my barbecue. One of our most frequent arguments was over cooking. I had full custody of my two sons, and they were always complaining that Gloria’s cooking wasn’t as good as Nancy’s or mine. Gloria was a stay-at-home wife and step mother, and believed that she should do all of the cooking but grilling and barbecuing. The day she left, a little over two years after we were married, was when my oldest son, Stephen, refused to eat her biscuits because they were dry. I offered to teach her how to make biscuits like we liked, as I had done frequently before, and she stormed out yelling obscenities.
​
Kate and I met at a business conference in California in 1990 where both of us were speakers. She was an economist for the USDA, stationed in Washington, D.C., and I was in charge of fruit procurement, juice procurement, and operations planning for Tropicana. During our first weekend together at my home on the five acres in Bradenton, I prepared my barbecue and also steamed lobster. We were married five months later, in 1991. Her hobby is gourmet cooking. In 1997, we moved to Winter Haven, about an hour’s drive from Orlando. In 1998, I started planting spring and fall gardens and we would invite guests over for freshly prepared garden vegetables and barbecue. My bad back forced us to stop planting the garden several years ago, but we still have family, neighbors, and friends over for barbecue or one of Kate’s gourmet meals frequently. I got more serious about barbecuing in 2014, found the Amazing Ribs website, and joined the pit club last December. Here are a few pictures.

[RAmorris]

My mother hated to cook and hated to eat. She used to say she wished there was a pill you could take so you didn’t have to eat. Before my father was killed in an accident (before I was seven), we either ate at a local diner (The Blue Haven) or at his mother’s boarding house (The Morris House), which was only a five minute drive away. After my dad died, my mother got a charge account at The Blue Haven restaurant, and we ate all of our meals that we didn’t eat at the Morris Boarding House there. But by the time I was eleven, I had learned to cook, so I cooked our meals. Maybe my mother’s disdain for cooking was a reason that I was attracted to women who were excellent cooks. My wife, Kate, plans to start a video series about grilling and barbecuing, using a Weber 22.5 inch kettle grill, and an 18.5 inch portable Weber grill.

[Willy]

The "dish" that got me started on cooking was chocolate chip cookies, which I began making around 10 or 12-ish. Always loved food, all kinds of food, so it just kind of happened from there. I was a single parent for a number of years, so that prodded me, too. I made the kids school lunches, even to the point of home baked cookies. I no longer bake or do desserts (creme brulee is one exception, a very occasional chocolate mousse is another), but I love to cook--and eat! My wife is a great baker--and a darned good cook--so we're a happy household.

The first time I made chili, I was probably about 23 or so. The recipe called for three cloves. I used three entire heads.

[Huskee]

I grew up with dad grilling burgers and chicken on the grill. In fact I remember helping him assemble hhis first Kenmore gas grill that he still has to this day. I was maybe 9 or 10 I would guess. He was never the meat thermometer type (still isn't despite my encouragement) but he hated dry burnt "hockey puck" burgers he'd call 'em, so he did pretty well with them actually, despite the fact that he hates buns and would always make burgers with bread...oh and cheese to him was and still is Velveeta. Pork chops, ugh. My mom and dad both were of the camp that pork chops had to be cooked to death to be safe. When as a kid, you're eating a pork chop and you think the whole chop is a bone, some parts are just slightly softer, there's a problem. Eventually I got so tired of grilled food that I made jokes that my dad grilled my cereal in the morning and our ice cream at night. Dad taught me hunting from an early age, and he made some mean venison tenderloin though...yum.

Then I moved on to spend 2 1/2 years living as a bachelor. I hated doing dishes, had a tiny apartment-sized range/oven combo, and a tiny camper sized fridge. My first meal as a bachelor was spaghetti. Two pots wouldn;t fit side by side on the rangetop. I hated the mess afterward, it sat there a while. Couple days maybe. I hired my [unknowingly future wife] as a housekeeper once a week. I worked construction, and that often entailed 14 hr workdays (once we did a 18.5 hr day- only because we couldn't count the drive home from the jobsite 3 hrs away, left for work at 6am got home at 3:30am) I was known as the grill guy for a while, because of my schedule and lack of kitchen cleanup motivation naturally led me to favoring the speed and ease of the grill. I even had a portable Weber square tabletop gasser that I took to jobsites for our lunches, meat and Powereades in the cooler. You get good at it with enough failures. One charred steak or burger when you're starving can make you pretty mad, so I got pretty good at grilling. I paid attention. I learned that fatty meat (marbling) was a good thing. Prior to that I thought meat was red and I didn't want to buy fat. I looked for the leanest meat I could find. I know, not every 19 yr old is as smart as they think. Lol. But I was on a good path in that regard. Experience equity, as I heard it worded once.

Fast forward a few years. I'm married with a baby. My wife's 17yr old nephew is living with us, and raves about me being a grill maestro. I do some mean steaks and chops. I bought a cheap $80 Brinkmann vertical cabinet charcoal smoker from Home Depot. I do lots of mean salmon on it. Once time we seen bits & pieces of some PBS show where they made ribs. Nephew says to me 'You know what would be awesome? if you made ribs on your smoker.' 'Challenge accepted' I said. Never dunnem, but how hard could they be? I hated restaurant ribs, dry, over cooked, covered in gallons of sauce...but I had a feeling homemade ones would be really good.

This was about the time Meathead started up AmazingRibs.com. His endeavor would come in handy later, although I had no idea at the time.

I grilled them on my smoker. No water bowl. Low and slow meant nothing to me. Food thermometers didn't exist as far as I knew, and if they did exist, they were for blue collar folk and grandmothers and those who didn't know how to grill. I knew how to grill, I thought, I'm a country boy, a hunter, a fisherman, and construction worker. I got this.

They had pretty good smoke flavor. They were pink, and as tough as my parents' pork chops though. Humbling. I messed this up big time. Ribs are hard. That was my excuse.

Thank goodness for Google and this new website called AmazingRibs, this was circa 2005-2006 maybe. I learned the pink was good, it was the natural reaction called 'the smoke ring'. I was confused as to how I overcooked my ibs and they were still pink. I also learned my ribs weren't overcooked like my parents' pork chops- they were cooked, but underdone. Confusing...

After I learned the ropes through Meathead's expansive, voluntary effort to educate the world on proper grilling and smoking, things improved drastically.

When my wife would close her eyes with first bite and go "mmm!!" instead of simply the polite "it's good..." I knew I was onto something. And when my 2 brothers in law, who I respected as accomplished grill and wine guys themselves, ask to come over to dinner here and they'll bring the wine...it was solidified!

AmazingRibs, along with a few helpings of good ol' live & learn, helped me view cooking not simply as a quick convenience as it was to me in my bachelor days, but turned it into something that is to be shared, an event, memories for my own kids to take with them into adulthood and parenthood. I've smoked meat for a few family reunions, mother in law's move day, 2 large graduation parties, a few candlelit intimate dinners in, and hundreds & counting of regular family night dinners. Now I'm even privileged to call myself part of the team here at AmazingRibs with the likes of some huge names in BBQ. What greater honor?...

Good thread Karon Adams, I enjoyed reading yours and everyone else's posts here.

[CandySueQ]

I feel like I know y'all so much better!

My turning point was cooking for my parents during Mom's cancer comeback. She never would let me cook in her kitchen. She was feeling poorly so I made a simple dinner of fried chicken, rice/gravy and some green vegetable. She looked at me and asked, "Where did you learn to cook?" It wasn't from her, she was not an inspired cooking person.

In 2004, right after I'd started cooking BBQ competitively, my Dad told me that he thought it had made me a better everyday cook. It's these things that keep me at it. After all, everybody eats!

[leftwngr]

My mother is/was/forever will be rather terrifying in the kitchen. Not that she hated kitchen work, just dangerous. Not the most safety conscious person in the kitchen (think burning a pot of boiling water, leaving stove on, knives teetering, etc.). Not so good when there are a ton of kids in the house.

Thankfully, Dad enjoys cooking. I was about 11 or 12 when he pulled me aside and told me to cook with him because "if you ever marry someone like your mother, I don't want you to starve".

From there I tinkered here and there in the kitchen with easy stuff and started getting pretty daring around the age of 14. By high school, I was cooking for friends which led to grilling and seafood boils. Whether for family or friends, I was always cooking for a crowd. It just went from there to my current state of obsessiveness.

Epilogue: Married a violinist who hates cooking... none of us are starving. Thanks Dad.