From IT to BBQ: Igniting Passion and Building Community with Nick of Meat Smoke Fire

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today's episode of the Meet and Greet BBQ podcast is brought to you by AOS Outdoor Kitchens. They are the South's leading outdoor kitchen design and installation specialists. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Meet and Greet BBQ podcast. Today I am speaking to Nick from Meat Smoke Fire about his cookery school, the big green eggs that he sells and a load of other things, but he'll update us on all that shortly, without much further ado. Here's Nick. Hi, nick, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. For anyone who doesn't know who you are, please do introduce yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:44

So I'm Nick Williams. I'm from my company's Meat Smoke Fire. I've been in this BBQ game for years and years and years, but officially 10 years. I think it was last weekend 10 years since I got into this Or since I bought my first big green egg. I've had BBQs for years and years, but first big green egg bought 10 years ago. So my background is that I always cooked on big green egg, which has been fabulous. I worked for big green egg, or I contracted into big green egg for a while, and as I was doing that, i set up. I started doing cookery classes, people and ended up setting up a cookery school, which is where I am now. So, outside here and there's all sorts around me, i'm sitting by a lovely fire keeping warm, yeah. So we set the cookery school up. Well, we started doing private classes at customers houses What seven years ago, something like that And then we set up the cookery school here and had our first year of classes in 2019, about the same time as Marcus Boarden, in fact. Yeah, and we've been doing that ever since. So that's pretty much how I got here. My background is actually not cooking or barbecue or anything like that. I'm an IT project manager by trade.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Well, i know from previous conversations I've had with you how you got working for big green egg. that story to me was fascinating, so it's kind of like a chance encounter, wasn't it?

Speaker 2: 2:16

That's absolutely serendipity. Yeah, I bought the first big green egg. It's actually still over there. You know they last a lifetime, It's over there. So, yeah, bought my first big green egg. hadn't yet been delivered. I'd just arranged for the office to have it delivered the following day. I'd actually gone for my leaving due from my previous IT job And I was on the way back from London and got on the train and sat down and there's a friend of mine sitting in. there was only one seat there And I sat down and directly opposite me as a friend of mine. So I start chatting to him and I was talking about food and you know we've got that in common, talking about food. And, yeah, eventually this guy leans over from the other side of the carriage and says Have you ever cooked pulled pork on a big green egg? And I hadn't actually mentioned the name of the barbecue or anything like that And I said to no, you know I haven't. but, funny, you should say that I've just ordered one and it's actually been delivered tomorrow. And we carried on the chat between the three of us, my friend Nigel and this guy he didn't tell me, tell us who he was or anything like that And at the end of it, as I was getting off still very drunk obviously my leaving due, getting off the train, it was what it's. a bit like Remington. Do you remember the Remington Shaver adverts? You know, I liked it so much I bought the company. Well, it was, I said to this guy. you said so what you said, and I just piece the pieces together From what you said. I think you own the company, don't you? And he didn't. he owned the franchise for the UK on Ireland. But yeah, it was David, David as Ryan, who still owns the franchise for the UK in Ireland. And so I said to him I'm going to send you an email in the morning. This is my drunken stupor. I'm going to come and work. I'm going to come and work for you Because I had no idea what I was going to do. I knew I was going to take some time out And so I did. I went and I ended up working for them at Chelsea Flower Show, selling big green egg for them, outsold all of their professional salespeople, and ended up then joining the company or contracting into the company and working for them for a good number of years.

Speaker 1: 4:38

So yeah yeah, random serendipity meet the guy who owns the company on the train on the way home from your leaving due I love the story about Chelsea Flower Show as well, because I've worked in gardening for years, so I know the show And more often than not, the salespeople for those type of companies are all about the spec, all about the tech, whereas someone who just loves barbecue and loves cooking, they've got a completely different passion that comes across when they're talking. You can tell that they love and they're indeed by a product I'm sure that's part of what made it so special and work for you.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Yeah, i mean I got put. I mean I still keep in contact with a sales guy. A guy called Andy knew it. Some people might know him We all call him Halfpoint because he's quite short, but Andy was there and he was. David said you know, you've got to follow what Andy does. You know, watch him do what he does. And I watched him and it was just, it was exactly that sales, sales stuff. And you know if you believe in a product and what it can do, that enthusiasm just comes out And so, yeah, it's fine to a whole lot of people And you know it's, yeah, it's just when you, when you use the enthusiasm for a product, then you know it's easy to sell And I found it quite easy. David was obviously reasonably impressed And I ended up joining them to do various different roles with them. So but yeah, it was good, it was a good good meeting with him on the train And it was great to work with Chelsea And I did Chelsea for three different, three years in a row with them, which was fabulous, or maybe not three in a row, but three different Chelsea's great place to go and work. You know great fun And and you know the stands that they put together the green egg were just stunning. Nothing, you know. Most people didn't understand that we were a commercial stand and not a garden, because they were so beautiful, you know, but a lot of money was spent on it.

Speaker 1: 6:49

So hey, it's not cheap. I know from experience Chelsea is not cheap, but at the same time it's worth it because the people walking around and what you can actually do there. So how did all of that evolve into the barbecue school?

Speaker 2: 7:05

So because I was contracting with them, you know they could pick me up and drop me whenever they wanted. So Chelsea was brave. I ended up working in the office for a bit and it really didn't suit that. They're based down in, down in Winchester, oh yeah, In all in all down in Winchester or just outside all speed. And for me, i live in Cambridge, you know, and I was.

Speaker 1: 7:30

Oh, that's a fair long way, Jesus.

Speaker 2: 7:33

Oh yeah, yeah, I was commuting down on a Monday. I'm lucky enough, i have a camper van, so I was living in my camper van, working four days a week, in the office, coming home on a Thursday night. I'd agreed that we wouldn't do Fridays, you know, down there. So I was doing that and I got fed up with it. There was some other stuff going on And you know we agreed that maybe that wasn't the right role for me. So I ended up taking on all of their dealer recruitment for them, which was an action or go around, you know, hunt out places that could sell big green eggs, hunt them out, go see them and then recruit and train them. So that's what I did. So I did that for a couple of years. Over time. That just, you know, scaled back And so a number of customers I met, you know I did events with them up in the park and you know Taste of London and Meetopia And customers had said is there anyone who could train us how to cook on these things? And there really wasn't at the time. So I saw that niche and started picking up customers And what was really bad is they all seemed to be in Hampshire And you know that sort of area of the country. So I was doing these huge commutes to go and see these guys, you know, spend a day with them, teach them how to use their egg, have a whole load of fun and then drive all the way back again, and it all seemed to be down that way. In the end, i said, right, enough is enough for the travel. Why don't we probably enough people now. why don't we set up here I've got a few eggs by that point Why don't we set up here and build the Cookery School up here? And I won't travel, i'll get people to travel to me. So that's what we did in 2018, set it up. We had all of our first classes in 2019. And then COVID hit. Obviously, yeah, great. But I guess everyone said that those Cookery Schools have all said that It was tough times, but I'm sure we'll come on to what we did during those times. But, yeah, so we set up in 2019. We've sold out every class, i think, but one that we've run, which is incredible. We've had some great people here, we're very fortunate, we've got some lovely customers And I love doing what I do. But what we don't do here is we don't run hundreds and hundreds of classes because it is a bit of rinse and repeat. I want to be enthusiastic about what I'm doing with the people on there, and if I were doing three classes a week, it wouldn't be that. So we only run 15, 20 classes a year now And we have a lot of fun doing it.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Going back earlier in the story, how did you originally get into barbecue? Because you'd obviously already ordered your big green egg by that point, And that's not really the jumping off point, is it normally when it comes to barbecue?

Speaker 2: 10:41

No, So no, i've always cooked. We weren't a single parent family, but we were essentially that My dad was off the scene, my mum worked, and so from the age of wow, when we were primary school, i used to have to take my brother home or take him into Cambridge. We used to go places And I was very young when I started having to cook for him, so for the parents, and I really got into it And then, you know, went off to uni, enjoyed myself there, came back and I actually moved back into home because my mum used to travel around the world. She used to set up teacher training classes, but all around the world, you know, pakistan, ethiopia, ghana So she was never there. So it made sense for me to move back home And I made her buy a nice gas barbecue And I totally got into cooking on that. And then we bought you know we've been I say we, helen and I, my wife we bought a really nice. Well, i thought it was really nice. You know it's a 400 pound gas barbecue. Geez, that was a lot of money 20 years ago. And then I went on to buy a Weber Summit S650, a big, huge stainless steel gas thing. Loved it, but it was my thing, it was. My mother-in-law came home with the brochure for the big green egg from a local farm shop And I was like I've got to have that. So when I left my job I was made redundant. Bit cheeky, i made myself redundant. Probably shouldn't say this, probably shouldn't say this online, because, yeah, i engineered, my engineered leaving the company I've been at for 20 years. I was looking after the finance for 650 project managers. I had enough. I lost my best mate at work and my mum to cancer and I was just like, right, i'm going to leave. So I got out and when I did that I said to Helen all right, now I've got the money, i'm going to buy a big green egg and I bought it. So, yeah, barbecue, i've always cooked, i've always entertained. My parents were both, when we were a lot younger, were big entertainers. There used to be this eating crowd, it was called, and you'd go to somebody's house, you'd take a one dish with you and enough for three people, and we used, and that just sort of escalated And we I ended up doing that And we used to have dinner parties or, you know, have our friends over and everybody had to bring one dish enough for three people, And so you get this big mix of stuff We all cooked and we, you know, we loved it. So, yeah, that's really you know sort of how I got into barbecue. I just loved, i loved cooking on anything.

Speaker 1: 13:41

So what's your current setup? now, you've mentioned, you've got a few big green eggs, but what else have you got whilst you're cooking on?

Speaker 2: 13:46

Yeah, so we've got a Dele Vita just behind me over here. Great piece of it.

Speaker 1: 13:51

We spoke to Joe recently and they are very tempting. Shall I freeze it that way?

Speaker 2: 13:56

Oh, I was looking for a pizza oven last year, Last year, year before it was before the Dome, you know, the Gosney Dome came out But I was looking for something wood-fired, you know. So yeah, went for the Dele Vita, Love it, absolutely loved it, And we ended up talking to those guys and we now stock them. So, yeah, I was with Marco who does all their demos. He was here with us Monday this week. So we've got a Dele Vita, We've got a little pro-Q flat dog that we cooked on on one of our live cooks last weekend, weekend before last Little pro-Q thing flips out, love it. We have a cob and we've got a camper van. So we've got all these little cob barbecues. I haven't used it in years. We've got oh, I've got a really cool little barbecue. Barbecue is probably the wrong thing. It's a couple of people in the village call themselves the Vargas Bruns And they make. They take old plow wheels. They're Argentinian and they take old plow wheels, So you know the wheels that go on the back of the plow, that spin round and turn over them. They take those and they turn them into a fire bowl and then they put a build a little stand and they make then a little plancher to go above it with another plow wheel Beautiful. Absolutely, absolutely awesome bit of gear, and so a little asado, a little chaper, sorry to cook on the top, and then it's got a little griddle as well that you can get.

Speaker 1: 15:38

It's 245 quid or it was when I bought it.

Speaker 2: 15:40

Wow A couple of years ago, love it. I've taken it camping so many times. I've taken it to Scotland, all over the place, and we love it. Awesome little bit of kit for the money, brilliant. We did this holiday to Scotland with some friends of mine who ski ward ski. I ski with them, snow ski with them, and they also ward skins summer. So we got there and hang out with them only for a couple of days And I took it out. I took the green eggs, the mini maxes, the small ones, a couple of those, and he's actually got one as well, and it's about 15, 20 of us who turn up And I took this little asado, not asado chaper and plow wheel thing. I don't know what it's actually called, but took that with me and we cooked on that more than we cooked on anything else. It's that thing of cooking over a live fire. You put logs onto it. You're not putting charcoal, it's logs. It's great fun And everybody loved it. But, yes, made by a couple of Argentinian guys in my village who run this company called Vargas. They're the Vargas brothers and they do wedding catering and stuff like that, but they do it all over live fire. So, yeah, yeah, so we've got one of those. What else have we got? We've got the Afeera fire pit back here, so those are sold by, or were until this year sold by, aferesco, who do big green egg. So same company, although that's now moving to a different company, now in May time, i think. What else have we got? Oh, loads of stuff. It's just yeah, yeah, i'm spoiled. I'm a kid in a candy shop, you know.

Speaker 1: 17:34

You can tell by the passion you've got. It must be amazing to be in that situation And, of course, there's so much you're cooking. I mean, looking at your Instagram, i am loving although I'm hating the Six Nations at the moment, being Welsh, but I'm loving the pie kind of series that you're doing at the moment And it also shows your skills and shows people what they can do on a barbecue. So what inspired the pie series?

Speaker 2: 18:01

So, helen and my wife really we were looking at Six Nations, we like. So we've been doing this series of themed cooks. Well, it started at the beginning of lockdown And, to be fair, it wasn't my idea. It was big green egg. David from big green egg reached out and said will you cook a leg of that or whatever the? it turned out to be a leg of lamb, but will you do an Easter cook for us? Everyone's shutting their houses and you're the only one with any decent wifi, all of that stuff. Will you do a cook for us? So we ended up doing our first ever Instagram cook at the beginning of lockdown and big green egg advertised it. 700 people watched it live And. I'm like, hey, moli, this is live, this isn't recorded. This is 700 people watching it live. You know I go on to all these Instagram feeds. You know we're all hitting 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, but this was 700. And I was like, okay, this, you know, this got to be something in it for me And bless him. David was a bit David from big green egg. We're great friends, but we're also. we also fight a lot.

Speaker 1: 19:21

All the best friends do.

Speaker 2: 19:22

all the best friends do Yeah yeah, yeah, but he for that cook. He said you're Nick from big green egg, you're not allowed to mention meat smoke fire. And only because he said that I was like it twigged. It's like he doesn't want people to see that I'm a big, you know advert for meat smoke fire. So I ended up all I got all my friends to log on and go type in the comments oh look, it's Nick from meat smoke fire. And he did, and they all did, and the phone just lit up. For about two months It totally transformed our business And it was at that point. You know, we just closed the cookery school. I do smear and optical engineering as well And of course all the planes are on the floor. So I've got no. I do maintenance, i do some calibration of maintenance equipment. So there's none of that going on. I only do it a day a week. But there was nothing. The cookery school shut because we're all locked in. All of our sales come off the back of the back of the car, sales come off the back of the cookery school. So we've got no sales. I'm like, oh my God, what are we going to do? And it's just the light bulb moment, you know. It's just like okay, right, we're going to go online, we're going to take everything online. I think Jay from Alton's Barbecue World has said similar sort of things, you know. So we thought this one cook 700 people. Okay, well, we're not going to get 700, but we'll start this series. So we started Saturday night takeaway That's what we called it. you know, a bit cheeky, i know, but we started doing takeaway dishes. So we started with curries, you know those sorts of things, and we continued. So we've just gone past I think 100, well, 100th live cook was about a month and a half ago. So, going back to six nations bit, so we try and theme them. If we can, we'll theme them. And obviously, with six nations coming up, we thought, well, we've got to do something. It was really tough to work out And her and I said, why don't we just do something where we can theme whatever we cook to that country? And so we did the pie thing. So the first week we did I'm going to mess this up, should know this, so it's not like a Wales and Italy So we made this fabulous Italian pie, or it's a flat pie really, with kale and Parmesan and all sorts of lovely things. We made an English pie. So I wanted to pick an English ingredient, something typically English. And so we, you know, i associate, you know, something typically English is, you know, pheasant shooting or something like that. So we did a pheasant pie for the English one and then for the Welsh one. Okay, it's got to be leeks, it's got to be, you know. So how very dare you, leeks or lamb, right? So it was leeks and lamb. To be fair, i am, you know, my surname's, williams. My brother's just had it, just done his DNA thing, and it turns out we're 36% Welsh, or he is, so you know I might be something different, but yeah. So we did that for that week and then we left it a few weeks and then this last weekend we did Scotland. So we cheated a bit. I didn't want to do anything. You know we often bend the rules a little bit. So we did it. Rather than being a pie, we did a sausage roll, but we did it with haggis and black pudding in a sausage roll beautiful, it looks so good. Yeah, an Irish pie, an Irish potato pie, which was fabulous, and whatever the last one was, that's terrible.

Speaker 1: 23:22

French apple pie.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Oh they were stunning. But doing these live cooks every week, a lot of the time I'm doing the recipe for the first time because there's just not enough time in the week to do a live cook, to prep it all, to do it to practice and then do it again on the weekend. So a lot of these things we sort of wing, and that's half the beauty of what we do with these live cooks is that they're not serious. You know, a lot of people come on, they do these very serious cooks. Ours tend to be quite comedy. You know, half the time the ingredients are still in the fridge inside and I have to send Helen a running in to get them. I mean, i'm very fortunate I've got Helen, this little sister who comes over and does the camera work. So I, like a lot of the other live cooks, the camera's always moving because I'm darting between. You know, we've got five eggs around five, six, five or six eggs around me now and we often we're using all of them.

Speaker 1: 24:23

So yeah, it's authentic as well, isn't it? you know that's what people are going to see is real. It's all about real, because so much on social media is fake or it's dressed up in this way, on that way, and you only see the best parts, but what you're offering is you faffing about to make this great food, but stuff that is going to go wrong, you know.

Speaker 2: 24:43

And we've got people on there. I mean we've got this beautiful little community of people. I mean we get, i mean we're blessed, we get 30 plus most weeks and we've got this beautiful little community who are our customers. They've been to our classes, a lot of them. Or, if they haven't, they come to our classes after seeing these things. But they, they, they're there because they know the people as well. We introduce everybody. We'll make a point of introducing everyone. So Andrea, who does the camera works? she gets introduced every week, you know, and she's got, i mean, some of my customers, with our friends, with her on Facebook now wish her a happy birthday, on a birthday, you know, they've never met and some you know, but it's this lovely little community. Yeah, it's just yeah, but they're there, willing us to fail some of them. One of my friends down in in Devon, when he tunes in he's just dying for it to all go wrong, and it does not that often but it does go wrong. But then we've got you know, we've got others that we've got one guy who bless him. He's been to a couple of our classes he came to. But we did a Thai class with a friend of mine who runs a Thai restaurant. Down in Brighton runs a restaurant called Car Brighton and we did a Thai class and he came to that and and then since then he's invited me fishing. So I've been down to Brighton and we've been sea fishing with this customer. But he tunes in every week and and he's a big traveler, so you know he's tuned in from all over, you know South Africa and yeah, i mean he gets in trouble with his wife because he's like, what are you doing? it's happening morning. Why are you on your phone? and he's tuned in to watch us cook. All right, his name is Martin. He's a absolute star and one of his friends. You know, one of his friends now tunes in all the time and there's a group of them and it's just absolutely hilarious. These people are just. I think they're bonkers, but they probably think I'm bonkers hey, who wants to be ordinary?

Speaker 1: 26:48

right, there's nothing fun or interesting about being ordinary. I'd never want to be ordinary, and I think we've worked quite naturally there into the fact that we celebrate fails on this podcast, because that's where you learn the most. You know you could do 100 cooks perfectly on the barbecue and you're effectively winging it, but the second you get something wrong. You learn from that. You never do it again, so it improves you as a cook. So you've mentioned some things have gone wrong. What sort of fails if you had to deal with, and how have they taught you to improve?

Speaker 2: 27:20

I mean on the live cooks. My favorite was the week after we got, a couple of weeks after we got, the delavito peeps for oven and we were doing some burgers, or I don't what we're doing burger buns anyway. Maybe we would do, you know, probably posh burgers or something. I can't remember what we were putting in them, but we were cooking the buns as well. Live, we do. You know, it's only 45 minutes, so you've got to get them in, cooked and out and then serve. We do three recipes. So I said I said, oh sorry, let's, let's fire up the, the delavita. And so I'm so close this fire it's burning my legs, i'm boiling. I brought my coat out but it's a don't need that, we'd strip off the top in a minute. So so no, we I. So I fired up the delavito. I got the egg set up with, you know, in the normal set up to bake. I thought I just chucked some buns in the delavito I never tried it before and I said people, i've not done it before chucked them in and after about five minutes we better check up. Let's just have a look at how they go. It opened up and they are black rocks, you know, absolutely black as charcoal. It's like okay, they were supposed to be in for 30 minutes. In five minutes I've absolutely nuked them. So that was one of them, trying to think what out of massive fails I've had. I mean, we all. You know I was ten years ago. This weekend my first egg over there was delivered and I look back, it came up in Facebook. I cook pulled pork. You know that's what we all do, don't we? barbecue pulled pot. Been on for six hours. Pulled pork doesn't cook. Cooking six hours on a big green egg, you know you look at 15, 19 hours for a three kilo piece of pork. This was. It was not. I still put it on Instagram. That was obviously a fail. We've all done that. I cooked. I hated once for a cycle race and I have still, to this day, have no idea went on. But I had five big green eggs not all mine cooking. I had three at a farm shop and two here, and when I go up in the morning to here, gone out, hmm, and they still got the pork on them. I'm like that's unusual. Anyway, i mean I've got up really early, luckily, but I thought that's a bit. I hadn't put any monitoring on it, which is stupid because I'm catering, you know, absolutely daft. But I went over to the farm shop and two out of the three there had gone out as well, and it was it's still using exactly the same settings I would use now. Whether the you know what there was in the atmosphere that night, who knows? four out of five eggs have gone out. I'm not a great advert for big green egg, that one, but it would have happened on anything else, i think. But yeah, yeah, it was just like oh my god, what, what? you know how did that happen. But then you've got to recover. So it's like the light them up, bump them up, but we still we serve 250 people lunch. So everyone was happy it happened, it worked, but it was. It was an epic fail on. You know so many, so many things. You know, don't, don't assume it's just gonna tick along. You know, monitor it, get up.

Speaker 1: 30:54

If you're catering, you can't afford to do that something even if you save, even if you saved it, yeah it was a save, but it was.

Speaker 2: 31:03

It was. Ah, we've learned a lot that night. Have I ever ruined a really good bit of me? I don't think I have, not to the point that you couldn't save it, but yeah, i mean we've burned a lot of things. David at Big Green Egg always says you can't burn anything on a Big Green Egg, and the first video I ever made with him was we did a Christmas Cook in the middle of November by a lake. It was at the office, big Green Egg's office And we were terrible And, video wise, we were awful. But yeah, he burnt the turkey, so and all the veg that went with it. It was awful.

Speaker 1: 31:51

I had a weird fail about two, three days ago, so cooked my Camado and it was still hot and the weather wasn't great. But I was like, well, I don't want to put the cover on it when it's still hot, so I'd hang the cover up, go to bed. I'll put the cover on it. Tomorrow is fine, everything's shut. So I get woken up at half five by what sounds like cats fighting and properly going at it and loads of banging and stuff Because windy. So my wife's like baby we've got like a 14 week at home. Babies will wake up, go out there, sort out, whatever the hell's going on. We'll open the back door after going down the stairs And the cover has blown off in the night, where it's been windy And I don't know how a cat's got in it and the wind moving this thing around And I could just see this angry lump jumping inside this thing. So half five in the morning, not wearing much and in like sandals, and it's like four degrees outside, blown a gale, i'm chasing this thing round and trying to not get attacked by this cat. God knows how long it'd been in there, you know we had something similar, something similar here.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Our neighbor I mean, she's not there at the moment, she's the house, her house has been totally renovated, she's to put a lot of birdseed out and it attracts vermin. So this I'd seen this rather manky looking old, slow rat This isn't good when you're a cook preschool but I saw him wander across our garden. Oh God, here we go, so I put out a rat trap and one night there's this almighty squealing noise, absolute screeching noise, horrible. And then you could hear on the patio this, whatever it is, is running around with this plastic rat trap attached to it. Oh God, we look at, we look out the window, we can't see a thing. I come out, can't see anything. Anyway, get up the next morning. We've never found the rat trap. Whatever it was took it with it, which is terrible, you know, absolutely terrible. But yeah, but you've got to. You know, strangely not strangely, but I saw Elkie got you know when he opened his cookie. Who's schooled this year? He got his hygiene rating and they turned up within two days. We registered nine years ago and they came and did our first inspection this year. So crazy, nine years.

Speaker 1: 34:35

Well, luckily they didn't find an errand discarded old trap, right? No, we are fine, no, they're incredible.

Speaker 2: 34:43

It's sort of expected. You're outdoors, you're cooking food, things are going to fall on the floor. You know you've got to take precautions. So you know, yeah, we've got a five star hygiene rating, which was great. Yeah, and our neighbour doesn't put birdseed out anymore, so we've not seen anything since.

Speaker 3: 35:05

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Speaker 1: 36:13

Well, it's great having a proper cook on Cookery school. Owner, you're doing loads of live cooks and we've asked people before about giving us some tips for beginners. How to start off. Covering things like cooking to temp always allow much more time. You can rest meat for so much longer than you realise, so why not get stuff done like an hour or two before people are meant to be here, etc. Etc. But can you give us any more intermediate? barbecuing cooks Looking more like I don't know, reversing, looking at some other kind of maybe more complicated bits of meat. Can you give us something a bit more juicy?

Speaker 2: 36:51

Yeah, i'd say, with all these things, you know, go into your homework, don't panic. And just, i like to keep things very simple. You know there are only so many ways you can cook on one of these things. People cook something new. You know whether it be. You know they cook a duck, for example, and they really panic because it's a new piece of meat. Just treat it like a very similar piece of meat, you know. So treat it like a chicken. Or you know, if you're cooking I don't know, you know we've done huge, huge rumps and reverse it and treat those like you were the botanier or probably, that's probably quite a complicated one, but treat it like you were the cowboy steak or something like that. You know it's just a bigger one of those, so it's just going to take longer. Give yourself plenty of time when you're cooking those things, but we all get caught up. So there is a fail. Here we go, fail, fail and and and yeah, good example I bought a lovely, ah, a beautiful four river big from my local butcher, from the local farm, localish farm shop. I worked with this butcher a lot. I got him to age it for me, but whiskey age it, so it's been. It was being adorbed with whiskey every week. He kept it. I mean, it was already aged. When he then put it in a bag and started, you know, hesse and Sack, and started aging it for me, We picked it up, he took it out, the Hesse and Sack, you know it is furry. Yes, this is going to be epic. Helena Spice is like Oh my God, whatever you do, don't show that. Don't show that to my mom. You know she comes from a very okay. Well, there are no better now, but they were very conservative food eaters. But so I had this beautiful four of a big and I you know I've not cooked one before as big as that and reverse seared it. But that's what I was going to do for Christmas Day. So I reverse seared this four of a beef thinking, you know, pecania hour, this will probably take an hour and a half six hours. Wow, oh yeah, to get to 48 degrees. 48 degrees, it was that big. It was huge. It was 180 quids worth of meat. It was enormous.

Speaker 1: 39:24

What time for you like smoking it?

Speaker 2: 39:27

I was cooking it 110 degrees, right, but it took six hours. So, yeah, lunch was five hours late that Christmas. So there's a failure for you. I wasn't popular because there was nothing in the interim. Everyone's starving, but yeah, something like that. I tell you, yeah, it's probably more beginners than intermediates, but don't expect everything to work first time. You know pulled pork. The number of people who come to our classes and I'd say pulled pork is intermediate, you know it's not. You shouldn't be doing that first. You know first cook. You know start. Start when you get one of these barbecue, start with sausages and burgers and chicken breasts and chicken and all the cheap stuff. Get your temperature nailed in, learn how your barbecue works and then move on to these things that you want to cook. I mean the number of people we you know I bring have here. We talk about pulled pork. It's one of those things that you can't really do at a cookery school because it just takes too long. So I draw, i draw. We do this session where I draw graphs for the power piece of meat cooks And we I say to people you know, we're doing a three kilo piece of pulled pork, pork shoulder on the egg. What time you start to get at, and more often than not it's nine in the morning, 12 o'clock, and I say dinners at six.

Speaker 1: 40:58

You know it's nine in the morning? No, no, I know from experience that is no way.

Speaker 2: 41:04

Well, well, on an egg, because I mean, the beauty of an egg is the airflow is so little because it's keeping all that heating in there And because the airflow is so little the stall is can be huge, you know. So I've had a piece of meat store for nine hours. So you know, i've said to these people a three kilo piece of pork may take 19 hours to cook. So don't get up at nine in the morning or four in the morning and put it on, because it ain't going to be ready. It will be. It will be above 63 degrees. It'd be fine, you can eat it, but it's sliced pork, it's not pulled pork. You know, it doesn't fall apart, it's not pulled pork. So yeah, it's the same things I tell beginners people. You know, get used to what. What are you doing, and then and then do a bit of a practice. Don't expect it to go right first time, you know yeah, it's about having fun in there.

Speaker 1: 42:08

I think that that's where people are quite often intimidated, i think, when they're first looking at barbecuing. I've got a friend who's just starting the journey. I'm almost tempted to get him on for an episode because I was speaking to him about a month or two ago and he was asking me where do I even start? He's literally just bought this house, he's moved in, it's going to be there forever home And he's been quietly watching and listening to stuff without telling me. I said you know I've got a commando, but if I was first starting out, i would recommend a kettle, because you can do anything on a kettle. It's a good place to start, you know, and you can find your feet on there And he's gone straight in for a master touch, i think, is that he's gone for And commando style master touch. Yeah, yeah, or actually it's, it's, it's the, the 57 inch Weber that he's gone for And yeah, and I'm like, just start from that, do some simple things and see where you go. But it's the fact that only we always talk to quite experienced cooks on this podcast. I'm really tempted to get him in early doors and talk to him just about the experience and starting and trying things and then getting him back on in like a year and a half, two years time and seeing how it's progressed, if he's really caught the bug, because it is a bit like an addiction, isn't it? barbecue? So much like an addiction I find. Totally I'm out.

Speaker 2: 43:42

I'm out here five nights a week cooking, you know, even when we haven't got classes. You know I don't, i don't, the classes are just. I mean I love doing them, don't get me wrong, absolutely love doing them, but I love being out here and cooking. I mean you see that with Marcus as well. Yeah, you know how often is Marcus down at these cookery school when he hasn't got classes on. You know we're, we're always, you know we're out here. You know I am absolutely spoiled. Well, what I've got here, I have to say, but yeah, it is an addiction. So yeah, for your friend, i mean, yeah, start learn a little bit about how meat cooks, what you can do, and then move on to some of these really expensive stuff. But, as I said about that little, you know my plow wheel thing, it's 245 quid, it's fabulous.

Speaker 1: 44:31

That's nothing really. in the grand scheme of barbecues, that's nothing at all.

Speaker 2: 44:36

I mean I'm sitting here. We've probably got 50,000 quids worth of kit here. Yeah, 245 quid peanuts absolutely peanuts. Just try it. Go and get the bargain. And it's not just barbecues. American barbecue It's not just ribs and wings and brisket and smoked sausages and all of those things. It's anything I watched a little bit about when you were talking to Marcus. It's sort of about Sue Stoneman and her Pavlovans. I loved Sue. I was lucky enough to be with Sue last week. She cracks me up, but both of us aren't massively into smoked food. It's not about American barbecue. For us It's about the tool being something you can do all sorts on, everything on. It's very rare that you'll see us cook it. I talked about pulled pork. The last time I cooked pulled pork probably three years ago. The last time I cooked a brisket, we did one at a class two years ago, three years ago. Yeah, it's not about brisket and pulled pork and ribs, no sorts of things. For me It's about cooking everything else. That's what you'll see us doing. I've noticed tacos have got super popular lately on the barbecues, but we've done loads of tacos. Just watch our live cook. The stuff we've covered is mad, absolutely mad. Things you never think you could cook on a barbecue. It's not a barbecue, it's an oven.

Speaker 1: 46:24

It's an oven and it's a hob And it's good for you to get an outside and cook in as well is the other thing.

Speaker 2: 46:31

So good for you mentally. Yeah, so I did the Q together thing with you a couple of months ago.

Speaker 1: 46:41

Yeah, I think it was November, wasn't it? I think it was November time.

Speaker 2: 46:45

Is it as long as that? Bloody hell, sorry, yeah you can say bloody.

Speaker 1: 46:49

you can say shit, it's fine, don't worry, It was a shitting long time ago.

Speaker 2: 46:56

No, but it feels like yesterday. Yeah, i mean, i'm fortunate I don't really suffer from I don't think I do, but I did have a father who was a manic depressive, so I've grown up with that, I've seen it. I'm always happy, but there are times of the year I don't like, and as soon as autumn hits, that's when I'm at my worst. I don't like the light going. Helen or she laughs at me. I go into a room, i turn the lights on. Her sisters sit in their lounges with the lights really dim and I hate it. I need light. So I don't like the autumn. But yeah, for me getting outside is really important. I love to be out here cooking, it doesn't matter what the weather. I mean I'm fortunate. I've got this beautiful pergola above my head with that's all the lights coming from. You know it's a pergola with lights built in. You know we are very fortunate in what we've got here. I've worked bloody hard to get it. I have to say that. But yeah, it took me five years to get the money together to buy this pergola. I saw it. I saw it when I was doing big green recruitment. I saw it at one of their company I recruited to be a big green reseller. I said I'm having one of those And, yeah, it took me five years to get it, but it's great I can come out here. It's not a shack. Everyone else is into their shacks. It's not a shack. My barbecues are all outside of it, like. This is where the people sit. I'm an entertainer. When all of our seating is covered, our barbecues are outside. They're fine. In the rain, they'll do their job. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether it rains, snows, hails, wind. They're still going to cook. I want my guests to be warm, warm and comfy and dry. Hence we've got the fireplace that I'm sitting. You probably can't see, but I'm sitting next to it. It's burning my legs For me getting outside is really important. It lifts me, it does lift me.

Speaker 1: 49:27

And we talked as well about the fact that these ovens are. We call them oven there, but these barbecues are outdoor ovens. You can cook anything on them. So on that point, i think it's time that we look at Barbecue Bingo.

Speaker 3: 49:41

Barbecue Bingo is brought to you by Lumberjack Food Company. Your ticket to Flavortown. So what I'm going to do.

Speaker 1: 49:47

I'm going to share my screen. Hopefully you can see it. I'll set it a little bit far away.

Speaker 2: 49:54

There we go, i'll move a bit closer.

Speaker 1: 49:56

So it's a big rotating wheel that we spent lots of money on by taking two seconds to Google and type in things, and we have a list of different ingredients on there, all of which now have been left by previous guests. And what? we're going to do spin the wheel, see what random ingredient comes up and ask you to, at some point, put a cook together and tag us in so people can see what you can do with anything. really, there's one item on there called My Signature Dish, which is we ask people then to cook what they're known for. So what would be your signature dish?

Speaker 2: 50:33

On the barbecue probably a pecanja. Yeah, yeah, love pecanja. We do it in every one of our classes because we love it. We absolutely love it. I mean, i was fortunate that I've got an amazing butcher and he had me cooking pecanjas eight years ago before, or pretty much anyone else that I've seen with doing them, and it's because he's such a good butcher. He said, look, you've got to cook this cup. So, yeah, probably pecanja. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:10

I'll go for that. Let's see how lucky you are. Let's give this a spin. I hope it is not that So it landed straight on my signature dish, i think.

Speaker 2: 51:26

Come on, spin it again. We've had, we've had, we've had Are you sure Right, let's let's let's, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 51:31

Then Look at that, test me, test me, second spin, test you right I? don't know if I'm allowed to say that but yeah, yeah, of course you are Black pudding.

Speaker 2: 51:43

Damn.

Speaker 1: 51:44

I only did it last week.

Speaker 2: 51:45

Yeah, cool, we will do something with black pudding.

Speaker 1: 51:49

I'll tell you. what do you want me to make it interesting? Next to black pudding is strawberries. Why don't you do something with black pudding and strawberries? Oh my God, You said you wanted a challenge.

Speaker 2: 52:03

Why not? I'm up for that. Black pudding and strawberries You can take two off the wheel. There you go, there you go, let's do that then. Do I get to put two ingredients?

Speaker 1: 52:11

on then. Yeah, let's do that. So you're going to be doing black pudding and strawberries. Let's see here what we can get on for you. We've taken off strawberries and black pudding. What would you like us to put on Two different items?

Speaker 2: 52:27

I'm going to put octopus on there? Oh, because I have some in the fridge and I need to do a dish with it. So I'd like to see what some you know. And how about something like kibasa, polish smoked sausage? How about that?

Speaker 1: 52:51

as a few of them, so I'll put Polish smoke sausage on there.

Speaker 2: 52:54

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:55

There you go.

Speaker 2: 52:56

Lovely stuff, awesome, oh, i'm looking forward to that. So strawberries and black pudding, yes strawberries and black pudding.

Speaker 1: 53:05

And when you get the chance to do it, just tag us in. Use the hashtag barbecue bingo. If it's a few months from now, it can be a few months from now, because I know how busy you are with these things?

Speaker 2: 53:15

No, we'll get on it. We might even do it on a set. I mean, why not advertise to you guys? We'll do it on a set, love it.

Speaker 1: 53:22

Absolutely love it.

Speaker 2: 53:23

We haven't got one now until the 1st of April.

Speaker 1: 53:27

Well, there you go, don't worry, we've got a lot of time. So what have you got planned for this year? What are your hopes and dreams for this year?

Speaker 2: 53:39

Oh, brilliant question As a business to continue. You know it's a big move stepping away from corporate and setting this up. You know I'm a one man band. Well, helen, helen the help, so I've got the family that helped, but really there's me running this thing. You know we've not got a showroom, we've not got anything like that, but we are big green eggs. Well, we were last year fifth biggest retailer Cool. So I'd love that to continue So I can continue bringing classes to people. We love doing the live cooks. You know they cost us a fortune. They take a huge amount of effort. You know a 45 minute cook probably takes two days By the time you've written it up and done it. You know, worked on what the recipes are going to do, are going to be written them up, put them on the website, done everything Probably takes me two days, which is a massive investment for a one man company. So, no, but I'd like to continue doing those because during lockdown, even after that, we got such lovely feedback from our customers about their mental health. So you know it really gave them a focus on a Saturday. They knew that they were going to join in. Come and join us, do the cooks, watch the cooks and then go away and do them afterwards. You know, originally when we started, everyone was doing them afterwards, but not so much so now. So I want those to continue and people still be infused about them. You know I don't want the numbers. You know we're not going to do it if we're getting five people watching it, but we are getting 500 people a week then watching them offline. So I want that to continue. I want to continue to take barbecue to people and the big green egg to people who perhaps never thought about it. So that would be good. Yeah, what else? That's probably terrible. I'm not a big plant. I mean, it's stupid.

Speaker 1: 55:58

You know, i love how chilled out you are, though. I love it, because that means you can enjoy it and you can take advantage of things, because if you have X, y and Z in the diary, if an opportunity comes up, you can't grasp it with both hands.

Speaker 2: 56:10

Mm yeah, no, absolutely. So I mean we've taken the decision this year to do fewer classes than we've done in previous years so that we can spend more time doing the things that we love around the business. You know around cooking around. You know traveling and discovering new foods and those sorts of things. I mean, if you're stuck in a cookery school, you know giving five classes a week or three classes a week, whatever, right the way through the season, you're not out there learning anything yourself. So you know. For me yeah, you know 20 years or I've probably had 12 years of IT project management I'm probably the least planned person out there. You know, other than holidays, i like a holiday. But, yeah, yeah, not necessarily with the wife, she'll kill me. but yeah, i'm off skiing Friday and she's not coming. Hopefully she knows by now. Yeah, yeah, no, she does know. yeah, she's giving me the pink shit, as we call it. This is the third skiing holiday of the year. Skins, i love skiing. so, yeah, well, I'll have three skiing holidays and practically nothing else. But no, i just wanna be chilled and be able to work with people and take stuff to them. We make a big point around meat smoke fire. We won't sell you anything that we don't believe in, and I will test big green egg products and then, when people ring me up and ask to buy them, i'm not gonna sell it to you. You can go and buy it from somebody else. I won't sell that to you because it's something I don't believe in and there's not a lot of those. I mean, that sounds terrible. Big green egg make good stuff, but there are certain things that I'm just like no, there's some of their thermometers. It's like go and get yourself a thermopen, don't you know gonna buy it once, you're gonna have it forever. Spend a little more, go and buy it. So go and buy yourself a thermopen, don't buy whatever you know. so, yeah, i think no, we're gonna have a chill year. Chill year, it's not gonna be chill at all. You know, i kid myself every winter that the website will get so much better, will get all this video content up there, and it never happens because it's just, it's just relentless. It's not relentless, it's probably the wrong word. It's lovely and busy, it's the word. So in a few weeks time I've got Jack from Jack's Meet Shaq coming up to do some videos with us. Love Jack, yeah. so you know, i was with Sue Stoneman last week and Rob's BBQ last week. Hope you're gonna catch up, sue, in June when we're down in Devon. Yeah, i wanna catch up with more people. We're going to Sizzle Fest. you know the stuff that's called See you there. then we'll see you there. Yeah, the stuff Charles. you know Charles was. you know I, when I was at Big Green Egg originally a long time ago, i had to go in and see Charles because he wasn't selling very many, so we had. you know, i went in and had chats with him about how he could improve. you know He's doing a fabulous job on, you know, down there now. You know we were at Sizzle Fest last year we went, we're going this year. So you know I just wanna catch up with people you know, get more involved in the community. It's not something we're brilliant at here, but yeah, if I had you know goals this year, probably to get more involved.

Speaker 1: 59:54

And the final question that we ask everyone on the podcast is is there anything that we haven't talked about together now on the podcast that you want to talk about, or anything that you feel the community should be talking more about in regards to barbecue, I think a couple of things.

Speaker 2: 1:00:12

One don't jump on the bandwagon, i'd say to people You know, and it's very easy to get sideswiped by people like me and others who are, you know, clearly pushing a product that perhaps you know, let's go back a little bit, you know. I think we're going to be able to talk about this. You know, let's go back a couple of years. The Jumbup, or whatever it was called you know, Everybody rushed out to buy those things. What happened to them? You know? utter rubbish, probably. You know I didn't go and buy one. I haven't got one, i never had one, you know. So just make up your own mind on these things. Don't follow the crowd, necessarily. So what else would I say to people this year? I don't know, just to, just for me. It's just about having fun. Get out there, have some fun. And what's the big story? No, just get involved, just go and have some fun, cook some stuff, enjoy it. We're not all going to become millionaires through social media. If any of us do, it'd be a miracle for home. Someone who's been doing it for three years and does something as a podcast, i can safely say none of us are going to become millionaires of this This is a passion piece, you know, and that's why you love it right, absolutely yeah, we set up our YouTube channel and I think you know we earn about 50p a month or something.

Speaker 1: 1:01:57

you know Well, good going, good going guys.

Speaker 2: 1:02:03

No, just go out there, cook, get involved, don't you know? for me there's nothing new this year, it's just having fun with it. Getting out and having fun with it. Yeah Well, that was the question I've forgotten what the question? was Yes, it is.

Speaker 1: 1:02:19

What should we be talking about in the community? And having fun is top of that list, frankly.

Speaker 2: 1:02:23

Yeah, having fun and I think the Qtogether thing is brilliant. So, you know, getting out there with people and supporting them. And, yeah, don't be bitchy, don't slay people's cooks, they're all learning. We all went there. Yeah, you know, support people.

Speaker 1: 1:02:39

Yeah, Support people And now's your chance. Plug yourself properly. Where can people find you? Where can they buy stuff from you?

Speaker 2: 1:02:49

So we are. Our website is meatsmokefiremeatsmokefirecouk. Our YouTube channel is exactly the same YouTube slash at Meat Smoke Fire. Our Instagram is at Meat Smoke Fire, all of that. So we're online, but the best place just pick up the phone. My number's on my website Ring me. You know we're here to give advice. I hate that. You know you can buy I keep going back to Big Green Egg. You can buy a Big Green Egg from Big Green Egg Direct, but you're going to talk to a call center well, not a call center, a customer services group who haven't got anywhere near the experience that we've got cooking on these things. Are they going to? they're going to try and sell you stuff. I always pick. When people ring me, you know I say to them I'm going to try and sell you as little as possible, because what I want you to do is go away, get your egg, use it And then, when you've decided how you want to cook on it, then come back to me and, you know, buy the services and whatever else is in there. So, yeah, we're online, we're on the telephone, we're on Instagram, we're on YouTube, we're on just about everything. We're trying to get on everything. I mean, it's just endless, isn't it? Social media stuff Sounds terrible. Okay, sounds like, as I'm the age I actually am. You know, i'm in my fifties. So, yeah, just give us a call. Look at the website, give us a call. We'd love to help you And if it's giving you advice to go and buy a different product, we'll tell you that. You know, as I say, i don't want to sell you something you won't like because that reflects on me And that's why our customers love us, because we go the extra mile when we've sold them something And we will tell them honestly what we think about a product And we review stuff. So you know I'm not there to review it and then go oh, that's the best thing since LightSpread. You know, buy it through me. You know there's certain products out there. It's like, you know, big Green Egg brought out a lovely Bluetooth digital thermometer that you replace your thermometer Stuff like that. Oh, and I did a review of it. It's rubbish. I tell you it's rubbish. You know, absolutely It's Bluetooth It was. You know, just by the technology it's going to be rubbish That it's limited distance. You know I can see my normal thermometer with a pit of needle that swings around better from 20 meters away than I can. You know looking at my phone. So I'm probably going to get cut off for that now by Big Green Egg. But anyway, if I'm no longer a Big Green Egg reseller in about six weeks, it's because I said something like that. David made it, but yeah, luckily he lives in Australia now, so I hope he won't see this video.

Speaker 1: 1:05:50

Well, on that bombshell. It's been great speaking to you. Thank you so much for your time And have a great evening as well. Thank you so much, And you All right, take care Lovely. Cheers, bye. And that's it for another episode of the Meet and Greet BBQ podcast. Thank you so much for Nick for taking the time to speak to me today. It was fascinating talking to him. So much passion, great cookery school. Go search it. Go look at him on Instagram, on YouTube, his website. He loves to talk about BBQ and he's passionate about it. He'll also tell you if something's good and worthwhile and also if it's not so so valuable in this game, and we'd love to hear from you. Please do contact us through social media. You can also type our name into Google meet and greet BBQ podcast. You'll come to our website. You can drop us an email. We also have a store there where you can buy some merch and some affiliate stuff, like a thermapen, which again Nick had mentioned today. Great bit of kit And otherwise, until next time, keep on grilling.

Speaker 3: 1:06:59

Today's episode is brought to you by AOS Kitchens, the South's leading outdoor kitchen design and installation specialists.