Who Is Meathead?
Meathead champions sous vide (cooking foods in a plastic bag at low temperature in a water bath). I consider it cheating. I love caveman T-bone (grilled directly on the embers). He dismisses it as a party trick. Meathead distains beer can chicken. I wrote a whole book on it link—not necessarily because it’s a superior cooking method (although it does produce a great roast chicken), but because it’s so much fun.
But there’s one thing we agree on and that’s that live fire makes just about every food taste better. And humankind and the world would be immeasurably impoverished without it.
His first book, Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecuing and Grilling (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), became an award-winning bestseller. Now he’s back with a hefty new hardcover: The Meathead Method (Harvest, 2025).
Meathead (like Sting and Madonna, he goes by first name only) was a seasoned journalist (Washington Post and Chicago Tribune) before he came to barbecue. He writes with wit, style, and grace. Above all, he’s a scientist, and the first half of The Meathead Method is filled with discourses on myoglobin, viscosity, lipids, the Maillard reaction, infrared radiant energy, and so on.
And even on how we taste. Depressing fact: a young person has 8000 to 10000 tastebuds. As we age, that number dwindles by half. (Please pass the salt.)
In fact, if you thought you were buying a cookbook, you’ll have to make your way through 164 pages of science and technology before you get to the first recipe.
Science First, Recipes Later
Believe me it’s worth it. No one knows more about barbecue science than Meathead. If my chemistry textbooks in college were written with half has much verve, I might have gone to medical school.
As in his first book, Meathead does a lot of myth busting. Like that melting fat penetrates the meat when you baste, say, a chicken or turkey. It doesn’t, says Meathead. (But it sure makes the skin taste good.)
Or that brisket and other meats stop absorbing smoke flavor after they reach an internal temperature of 150 degrees. On the contrary, they continue to take on smoke until you wrap them, which Meathead likes to do with aluminum foil (the so-called Texas crutch).
Meathead is against resting grilled meats before serving, seeing no appreciable increase in juiciness or tenderness. (Legions of French chefs would disagree.)
In fact, a lot of what Meathead writes flies in the face of tradition and conventional wisdom. He doesn’t like cooking whole animals. The various cuts and muscles (ham, shoulder, ribs, tenderloin, etc.), he argues, taste better when cooked by different methods and to different temperatures. (I wonder what Rodney Scott would say about that.).
He recommends dividing a whole packer brisket into point and flat and cooking them separately, for example. (I wonder what Aaron Franklin would say about that.)
He doesn’t like marinades, favoring dry brines and spice ribs. (I wonder what grill jockeys from Jaipur to Jakarta would say about that.)
A lot of what he writes makes sense:
He suggests oiling the food, not the grill grate.
He likes grilling shish kebab without the shish (Turkish for “skewer”). The chunks of meat brown better cooked separately, he reasons, and they do. (Of course, a large part of the attraction of shish kebab, shashlik, and other kebabs is how inviting they look on the skewer.)
He advocates flipping steaks numerous times (better browning and more even cooking) and he doesn’t give a fig about grill marks. Thanks to Meathead, that’s now how I grill my steaks.
He’s a strong partisan of board sauces—scattering your cutting board with fresh herbs, chopped alliums, olive oil, lemon juice, etc., then slicing the meat right on top of them. That mixes the flavorings right with the meat juices—a technique pioneered by Adam Perry Lang.
So, What Is the Meathead Method?
So what exactly is the Meathead Method? For most foods, he uses what he calls a “2-zone setup”: rake the embers to one side (or light one burner on your gas grill). Do most of your cooking at a low temperature (225 degrees) away from the heat. Then sear the food over the hot zone at the end to lay on flavor and crust. He does this not only for the obvious large foods, like chickens, turkeys, and pork shoulders. But even for foods that most of us direct grill, like steaks, chops, and chicken breasts.
According to Meathead, his method produces moister, tenderer food and reduces the need for (and anxiety associated with) split-second timing.
Another Meathead method I like is what he what he calls the “afterburner”—direct grilling over a lit chimney starter, which produces a volcanic blast of heat ideal for searing fajitas and other thin steaks. (He also uses a chimney starter to heat a wok for stir-frys.)
But to my mind, the most valuable Meathead method is his refusal to accept conventional wisdom and tradition—to keep tweaking and experimenting until he finds the appropriate set of cooking techniques to bring out the best texture and flavor in every cut of meat, seafood, or vegetable.
Meathead devotes the second half of his book to recipes, and I must say they make my mouth water. Like his Vigneron Method Flank Steak Subs, grilled as they do in Bordeaux—over grape vine trimmings—or his championship chicken, inspired by Todd Johns of Plowboys BBQ. (To get there, you layer the flavors with a rub, barbecue sauce, apple juice, and butter.) Or his Mussels with Smoked Fettucine, for which he actually smokes the water used for boiling the pasta. Brilliant! Or his Torched Figs—grilled with a blowtorch.
The Meathead Method makes an indispensable addition to any serious griller’s library. Come to think of it, I wish I had written it myself.
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