What Barbecue and Outdoor Cooking Topics Does Barbecue Secrets Cover?

Updated

Barbecue Secrets is an audio podcast and blog about outdoor cooking, and its content falls into a few clear groups: recipes (smoked and grilled meats, seafood, burgers), technique and equipment discussion in podcast episodes, and category browsing by cooking style. The site suits readers who want recipe ideas plus conversational episodes on live-fire cooking, not a structured step-by-step course. The archive is organized by month and year, with the most recent posts visible from 2016 back through 2006.

Recipe Topics on the Blog

The blog's "Recipe of the Week" posts show the range of dishes covered:

Post What it covers
Latin-Style Smoked Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde Low-and-slow smoking with Latin American flavors, drawn from the author's visits to Costa Rica
Beef Burger with Chili Butter Core A stuffed burger with advance prep (chile butter and chipotle–roasted garlic mayo made ahead), served with guacamole
Oysters, oysters, oysters! Oyster recipes, framed around summer food-safety concerns about raw oysters
Grilled Pink Salmon in Foil Foil-grilled salmon, including a defense of pink salmon against its reputation as the least desirable BC wild salmon species

Two patterns stand out. First, the recipes often come with context—a trip, a season, a local ingredient debate—rather than standing alone as ingredient lists. Second, some are explicitly flagged as project cooks: the burger post states plainly that it "isn't a simple recipe" and needs planning. That's useful when you're deciding whether a recipe fits a weeknight or a weekend.

Techniques and Themes in the Episodes

The podcast episodes mix technique, events, and cooking culture. Episode 23 (August 2015) is a representative example: show notes describe building an authentic Jamaican-style jerk pit for the Brewery and the Beast event in Vancouver, serving jerked pork bellies with Johnston's Pork, and a spit-roasting effort by chef Rob Belcham of Campagnolo. The episode title also promises segments on basting brushes and, in the show's own words, "Nudism, Rockin' Ronnie Style."

So the episodes are not pure instruction. They combine:

  • Live-fire technique — jerk pit construction, spit roasting
  • Equipment talk — basting tools
  • Event coverage and interviews — chefs and collaborators at public cooks
  • Personal commentary — the host's voice and humor run through the show

If you want a focused technique lesson, expect to extract it from a broader conversation rather than hear a clean tutorial.

How the Site Is Organized

Posts are filed under categories that map to cooking styles and ingredients: barbecue general, Gluttony (which groups grilling, steak, and barbecue), grilling (bbq, barbeque, rub, spice), and plank cooking. There are also podcast and salsa categories. The archive runs by month and year from 2006 to 2016, so older material is reachable but requires browsing rather than search-first navigation.

One practical note from the site itself: in preview mode, links do not work. If navigation or episode links appear unresponsive, that's the preview setting, not a broken page.

What This Means for You

  • If you want recipe ideas with stories attached, start with the Recipe of the Week posts; the burger and salmon entries give a good sense of the style and difficulty range.
  • If you want technique discussion, the episodes are the place, but treat them as conversations to mine for detail—jerk pits, spit roasting, basting gear—rather than structured lessons.
  • If you want a specific style, use the categories (plank cooking, rubs and spices, steak) to narrow the archive instead of scrolling by date.

The site does not present itself as a structured curriculum, and the material is dated to 2016 and earlier, so use it as an idea and discussion source rather than a current reference for equipment or safety guidance.