Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen is an award winning author, journalist, cooking teacher, and TV host. His best-selling Barbecue Bible cookbook series (more than 2 million copies in print) and Barbecue University television series have virtually reinvented American barbecue.

Raichlen’s adventure with barbecue began with The Barbecue Bible, an IACP/ Julia Child Award-winning encyclopedic study of global grilling chronicling his 4-year, 200,000-mile odyssey on the world’s barbecue trail.

In 2000, he released How to Grill, the world’s first step-by-step guide to live fire cooking. With more than 1000 color photographs, the guide was hailed by the New York Times as "astute, approachable, and eminently appealing.” How to Grill won an IACP Award, as well as a Jacob’s Creek Silver Ladle award in Australia. Raichlen’s most recent book, BBQ USA, is a 780-page, 650-photograph, 425-recipe love song to regional American barbecue.

Raichlen’s 25 books also include the Barbecue Bible Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades; Beer Can Chicken; the perennially popular Miami Spice; the James Beard Award-winning Healthy Latin Cooking; and the new Big Flavor Cookbook. In all Raichlen has won 4 James Beard Awards and 3 IACP awards, and his books have been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, German, Polish, Hungarian, Japanese, and Chinese.

Raichlen’s TV show, Barbecue University with Steven Raichlen, debuted on U.S. public television in spring, 2003. Taped on location at the luxurious Greenbrier resort in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, the 39-part series focuses on the techniques of live fire cooking.

In 2003, Raichlen defeated Iron Chef Roksbura Michiba in a barbecue battle on Japanese television, and Bon Appetit magazine named him “Cooking Teacher of the Year.” Talk show host Oprah Winfrey calls him the “Gladiator of Grilling,” and radio personality Howard Stern hails him as the “Michael Jordan of Barbecue.”

In 1975, Raichlen received a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship to study medieval cooking in Europe, as well as a Fulbright Scholarship to study comparative literature. He holds a degree in French literature from Reed College and trained at the Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools in Paris. Raichlen lives with his wife, Barbara, in Coconut Grove, Florida, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.