Learning to Grill

I’M STANDING IN THE BRIGHT COLORADO SUNLIGHT. Surrounding me are 23 barbecue grills of different types on which are searing, roasting or smoking a feast of delectable edibles: prosciutto-wrapped whole trout; veggies charring directly on the coals; a pork shoulder rubbed with achiote and wrapped in banana leaves. Wood smoke wafts around me as I take a sip of icy beer and gaze at the Rocky Mountains. Is this heaven? No. It’s BBQ U.

BBQ U is the brainchild of Steven Raich len——you know, the grilling guy with the indoor/outdoor shades who hosts the PBS show Barbecue University. The livefire cooking academy is held at the historic Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs every summer. Two classes of about 40 students graduate after attending one of two concurrent three-day sessions.

The curriculum is as comprehensive as it is delicious. Raichlen begins at the beginning, which is to say, with early man’s discovery of fire. He posits a semiplausible, if tongue-in-cheek, argument that since cooked food required less chewing, in essence, barbecue begat civilization. Over the next three days, as the students form teams to work on various dishes, Raichlen unfurls the rest of his encyclopedic knowledge of BBQ history, gear and technique.

His theories on grilling break down into three parts, which he sagely underlines with each dish, each lesson. The first thing is technique: Keep it hot, keep it clean, keep it lubed (the grill, that is). Raichlen strolls energetically among his students, assessing the progress of their projects and looking for teaching opportunities. He explains which side of the ribs should face skyward during cooking (the fatty side), then quickly canters off to baste a lobster tail with mint butter.

The second pillar of Raichlen’s philosophy is that grilling should have an element of flash: Coffee provides an unexpected depth of flavor in a rub; a whole chicken roasts upright on a beer can.

“Never underestimate the flash factor,” he says to thunderous laughter as he pours half a bottle of vodka over a salmon side prior to smoking.

There is frequent laughter among the enrollees, and this is a testament to the third aspect of Raichlen’s grilling guidelines: the communal nature of barbecue. “Making great food, of course, is important,” he muses, compiling the day’s dishes on a display table, “but the social aspect of barbecue should never be ignored. Look, nobody ever stands around an oven watching a cake bake. You never get five people gathered around a deep fryer. But you put together a guy with a $20,000 Grillmaster and an Indonesian street vendor cooking over a hubcap, and inside of five minutes they’ll be sharing a beer and chatting.”

And given that an icy container of beer and wine has arrived and the students have just grilled up a teeming tableful of treats, sharing a drink and chatting is exactly what they do.

For more information, call 719-577-5775 or go to barbecuebible.com.

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