for their school’s Experience Week; having their students cook over live fire.

Raichlen’s vast – and truly encyclopedic – knowledge of global barbeque and its anthropology might have garnered attention from a few enthusiasts, but his true genius – and source of his popularity – lays with his having combined that knowledge with equal expertise in barbequing techniques, methods and equipment, and his teaching skills used for all of them. All his books on the subject, from his first, Barbeque! Bible, have included detailed techniques and steps (often with photo illustrations), as well as information about tools and equipment. In fact, his How to Grill, though it contains recipes, primarily deals with techniques and everything else needed to master the art of barbequing. Raichlen spent five years, and traveled to 53 countries in six continents, researching for Planet Barbeque. It includes everything from a Colombian recipe for salt-crusted beef tenderloin wrapped in cheesecloth and roasted directly on embers (the dish he selected, when asked in Chicago, as the one above all others he’d recommend making) to Spanish grilled bread with chocolate, two Indian chicken tikkas, French mussels grilled on pine needles, Cambodian grilled chicken, and North Carolina pork shoulder. He discovers an unexpected grilling culture in Germany and lamb grilled on a shovel in Australia.

Planet Barbeque may be Raichlen’s last barbequing book. (He’s currently working on a novel dealing with the history of psychoanalysis.) He says that Planet Barbeque is, in a sense, a bookend. Barbeque! Bible, his first barbeque book, is also an exploration of barbequing worldwide, though without as extensive “how-to’s.” In between are BBQ USA (Raichlen calls it “an homage” to American barbeque) which is stylistically similar to Barbeque! Bible; and others such as How to Barbeque, Indoor Grilling, Raichlen on Ribs, and Beer Can Chicken.

Raichlen’s new PBS series, Primal Grill, can be seen currently on WSEC, Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. It will begin showing on WILL on July 24 at 2 p.m. Raichlen’s books, as well as lots of other barbequing paraphernalia, can be found on his website, www.barbequebible.com.

Contact Julianne Glatz at [email protected].