G'day, Meathead, from Melbourne, Australia. We have just had a great feed of ribs, beer, gin, port, and your Kansas City sauce. We were going to phone you but it was the wrong time zone. The sauce turned out sensational! Everybody loved our version. Your ribs rock!
Simon & John, Melbourne, Australia
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My wife is now addicted to the KC sauce (aka "crack sauce" in our household), and every weekend now is another excuse to sit outside with the dog, bbq and some beer. You're getting a bit of a cult following up in the North West.
Eddie, Seattle
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Your [spiedie] sandwiches were awesome!
Lou Karnbach, Apopka, FL
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AmazingRibs.com is now my startup page.
Jesper Lööf, Stehag, Sweden
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I own a small poultry processing company down here. We decided to open small restaurants in supermarkets some years ago where we sell rotisserie chickens. Your formulas and recipes are great. I learned everything from you.
Andres Vargas, Cali, Colombia, South America
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AmazingRibs.com is the best site on the web. Thanks for all you have taught me. You are my hero.
James Hansen, Plain City, UT
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It seems like whenever I'm stuck or have a rib question, my first stop is amazingribs.com! Thanks for such a great resource.
Scott Johnston, San Francisco, CA
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After trying many of your recipes in the past, I knew when I got the one for the smoked turkey that I had to try it for Thanksgiving. Wow! I don't think I'll ever fry one again. I've since smoked another one for Christmas and two for New Years. I've never had a turkey that juicy and tasty. It definitely had to be carved in a pan versus a cutting board.
Bo Massey, LA
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Tried your recipe for stuffed pork loin at Christmas along with a turkey fixed the way I always fix it. Had a lot of turkey left over. The pork? Not so much.
Bob Walsh, Shoreview, MN
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My ribs came in 1st place!
Pauline Cheslock, North Haven, CT
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| FREE: SMOKE SIGNALS ELETTER
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About Smoke Signals
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 Smoke Signals is the irregular free email newsletter from AmazingRibs.com and it's hedonism evangelist Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn. Smoke Signals lets you know
what's new on the site and in the world of outdoor cooking.
Don't forget: Send me feedback. Especially if you think an article or recipe is
confusing, if you know a better way, or if I made a mistake. Daddy
taught me that "praise is cheap, criticism priceless." And if you like my website, please click here to forward a copy of this to a friend. Remember: No rules in the bedroom or the kitchen!
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March 1 is National Pig Day. Really. No joke.
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 March 1 is National Pig Day. What are you cooking Sunday?
Started in 1972 by a Texas art teacher, March 1 is a major holiday in my household. There is always a debate. Cook pork, or, in recognition of his special day, give Porky a pass and cook tofu? Guess who wine. Or should I say loses?
If you're thinking about cooking pig, you should know that I have completely rewritten my most popular article on how to make the best BBQ ribs ever.
The recipe is killer, but it needed a name. Unsolicited, Doug and Trudy Calvin of Palm Springs, CA provided it. Doug wrote "My girlfriend called the ribs I fixed yesterday 'Last Meal Ribs'. For her last meal on this planet she made me promise to fix the same ribs." Click here for the updated recipe for Last Meal Ribs.
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Chiles vs. Chilis
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 I've recently finished an article explaining all manner of chiles, chilis, peppers, pimentos, sweet paprika, hot paprika, and smoked paprika.
And just for fun, I've listed my favorite hot sauces and the other firecrackers with which I like to work, with links. Click here to read The Zen of Chiles.
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Everything you need to know about herbs and spices
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 I've recently finished an article that tells you what you need to know about herbs, spices, and other flavor components. It includes a list of what you need to have in your pantry, and info about substituting one herb or spice for another. This article should be especially helpful if you're making your own spice rubs and blends. There's even a link to my favorite spice merchant. Click here for The Zen of herbs and spices.
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Show me your ribs!
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 I've been getting wonderful emails and pix from you. Man, you folks know how to party! Send me pix of your ribs or your party and I might include them in a new album on my site. Send them to meathead@amazingribs.com.
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Beans beans, good for your heart...
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 Go to a rib joint and there are always beans on the menu. The chain restaurants all serve the same molasses sweet Boston Baked beans, but the real pit stops, the holes in the wall that are true to their local traditions, serve a wide range of bean recipes based on local traditions. Here are two new ones I've recently added to the site.
When
you visit classic Texas pitstops, beans are almost always on the menu,
and outsiders, particularly Yankees, are often surprised to discover
that they are not sweet. During hard times, beans have kept many Texans alive. For more than a few, Grannies Texas Beans
contained simply beans, salt, pepper, and maybe a little pork fat or
bacon. You can go crazy with additions, but this is the classic,
simple, home style Texas recipe.
Hoppin' John is a bean, rice, and pork dish popular in coastal South Carolina and Georgia. It probably originated with black slaves from the Caribbean brought in through Charleston around which there were large rice plantations. Hoppin John is still very popular among the Gullah on the Carolina coastal islands.
These recipes are accompanied by a sidebar about the differences between dried and canned beans and how to convert measurements from one to the other.
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"Check Please!" video of Honey 1 in Chicago
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 WTTW Channel 11, the Chicago area PBS station, has a great restaurant review show called "Check Please!" featuring guest reviewers from the community. Last year I was a guest and recommended one of my favorite rib joints, Honey 1 BBQ. Robert Adams, owner and pitmaster, learned to cook in Arkansas. He uses wood and only wood, and serves his meat nekked, with a darn tasty sauce on the side. Now there's a man with confidence in his meat. His pit is nothing fancy. It resembles the original barbecue pit, a trench in the dirt with a wire rack on top. His is concrete block and the top is glassed in with a hood to vent the smoke. There's nothing fancy about the rest of the place either. Fluorescent lights, practically bare walls, wobbly tables, and paper plates. If you're in Chicago, it's worth a visit. Click here to see Meathead on TV and video of Honey 1.
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Tunes for barbecue
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 When I put on a slab, I pull up a comfy lawn chair, a good book, a brew, and switch on my tunes. My tunes have recently been amped up a notch. I discovered Playlist.com. They have a pretty slick Flash jukebox player that streams music. So I spent waaaaay too much time
searching their database and put together a playlist of about 150 tunes related to BBQ, food, and drink. It's free, and you can play them right off my site. Let me know what's missing.
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More ranting
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 If you're a regular, you know I like to pull up the virtual barstool and rant, and that the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and a few others are foolish enough to pay me for my screeds and print them on their op-ed pages.
Well I now have another watering hole where the editor puts up with my raving, the Huffington Post. My latest piece last week was an obit for Best's Kosher, producer of the best doggone all beef hot dogs in the nation. The 122 year old Chicago South Side institution was killed by Sara Lee, the conglomerate that bought it in the 1993, even though it was apparently making money. There may still be some Best's Kosher on your grocers' shelves, so get moving. Here's my story on HuffPo.
You might also want to check out Google's new Knol project. Still in beta, it is an interesting counterpoint to Wikipedia. While Wikipedia strives for balance and objectivity and the authors are anonymous, Knol articles have bylined authors with opinions, and readers can rate them. Anyone can write a Knol. You too. I've contributed about 40 Knols, most of them similar to articles on AmazingRibs.com, and they seem to be popular enough that Google has given me several Top Author Awards. Check it out. I think we'll be hearing a lot more about Knol.
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Microwave those sponges!
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 The downside of being married to an FDA food safety scientist is that I'm not allowed to eat rare burgers (when she's around). The upside is that you won't get sick if you eat my cooking. So here's a nifty trick I've recently learned. Once a week, throw your sponges in the microwave to kill all those germs! There's a cool video on the subject from the University of Florida (it's been a good year for us Gators) on my recently updated article on food, knife, and grill safety. It is accompanied by another article on thawing meat safely.
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Keep AmazingRibs.com free
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 One of these days all the fun stuff on AmazingRibs.com will find its way into a book or three.
But until then, it doesn't generate much revenue despite the fact that I'm on track to hit 500,000 pageviews per month in July.
Of course there's no reason to kill trees if I could make some money publishing electronically, so I've taken a page from PBS and NPR. I'm inviting you to voluntarily support my work by donating.
Just click here to make a donation via Paypal or credit card of any amount you wish. $15 would be nice. And a lot cheaper than a big glossy book!
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Be my friend
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 Hangin out on Facebook in 2009 feels a LOT like the late 80s on Compuserve, Prodigy, and The Source.
They were the antecedants of the web, and I was there with my 1983 Tandy 100 laptop from RadioShack and my 1984 Mac, both at 300 bps. Yes, I'm that ancient.
Actually, now that I think of it, Facebook 2009 feels more like AOL 1992 when everyone was there. Facebook has that same great sense of fun and community and exchange of ideas. Access to famous chefs, authors, winemakers, and other celebs is easy, and they often respond personally. If you haven't joined Facebook, you should give it a try. And if you have, click here to be my "friend".
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| Product Reviews and Buyer's Guides |
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Check out the AmazingRibs.com Buyer's Guide
for unbiased recommendations for the best products for the back yard
cook including smokers, accessories, tools, gadgets, books, and sauces.
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Visit my gift shop
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 Order cool gear from AmazingRibs.com including aprons, hats, shirts, sweatshirts, intimate wear, and other apparel for men, women, kids and pets. I also have beer mugs, posters, clocks, and other tschotschkes.
Select from a number of fun captions: Nice Rack!, Porknography, Hot & Juicy, Suck bones!, Eat me!, Succulent, Got ribs?, Allèz Barbecue, Jeet?, BBQ Goddess, BBQ God, Saucy, iRibs. To see the entire selection at CafePress.com, just click here.
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