Chef Neil Rankin slaves over hot coals so you can aim for Michelin star quality at home
Having toiled under a canopy of Michelin stars at Rhodes 24, Chez Bruce and Pennyhill Park Neil Rankin was a founding chef of Barbacoa, a Jamie Oliver operation presided over by "the daddy of American barbecue" Adam Perry-Lang. The restaurant marked the consolidation of a British taste for US-style barbecue, where the source and quality of the meat is as important as the "low and slow" technique. Rankin has been slaving over hot coals ever since, as head chef at Pitt Cue Co, John Salt and now the Smokehouse in Islington, north London.
His kitchen is an industrial maze of chimneys and furnaces, but Rankin is adamant that barbecue is, at heart, a low-tech discipline, no more macho than baking. "Everyone wants to see flames and fireworks, but barbecuing isn't like that, it isn't sexy. It's about low heat, gentle cooking, patience, time." For Rankin, it is an amateur's pursuit, best enjoyed at leisure with loved ones. "You can cook much better food at home than you can in a restaurant," he says, and is a mine of advice for realising this ambitious claim: lumpwood charcoal is best, rather than briquettes, which smell bad. For smoking, big chunks of wood are preferable to chips, which burn too quickly. Coals should only be partially lit, so they burn longer and provide a range of heat across the cooking surface. Most importantly, the chef must differentiate between direct cooking a grill set immediately above hot coals and indirect cooking, in which the heat and smoke travel and cool before reaching the meat.
Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 17 hours ago.
Having toiled under a canopy of Michelin stars at Rhodes 24, Chez Bruce and Pennyhill Park Neil Rankin was a founding chef of Barbacoa, a Jamie Oliver operation presided over by "the daddy of American barbecue" Adam Perry-Lang. The restaurant marked the consolidation of a British taste for US-style barbecue, where the source and quality of the meat is as important as the "low and slow" technique. Rankin has been slaving over hot coals ever since, as head chef at Pitt Cue Co, John Salt and now the Smokehouse in Islington, north London.
His kitchen is an industrial maze of chimneys and furnaces, but Rankin is adamant that barbecue is, at heart, a low-tech discipline, no more macho than baking. "Everyone wants to see flames and fireworks, but barbecuing isn't like that, it isn't sexy. It's about low heat, gentle cooking, patience, time." For Rankin, it is an amateur's pursuit, best enjoyed at leisure with loved ones. "You can cook much better food at home than you can in a restaurant," he says, and is a mine of advice for realising this ambitious claim: lumpwood charcoal is best, rather than briquettes, which smell bad. For smoking, big chunks of wood are preferable to chips, which burn too quickly. Coals should only be partially lit, so they burn longer and provide a range of heat across the cooking surface. Most importantly, the chef must differentiate between direct cooking a grill set immediately above hot coals and indirect cooking, in which the heat and smoke travel and cool before reaching the meat.
Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 17 hours ago.