Melissa Cookston Reveals Her BBQ Secrets—‘If Men Can Do It, We Can Too’ (Exclusive)
The BBQ Hall of Famer shares bold global flavors, recipes and how how to grill with confidence
Key Takeaways
- BBQ champion Melissa Cookston has a new cookbook, 'Fanning the Flames.'
- Cookston says that barbecue is healthier than expected and can save money.
- While barbecue is traditionally associated with men, she encourages women to embrace grilling.
Barbecue season is finally upon us, and few people know more about celebrating this tasty time of year than Melissa Cookston. As a seven-time World BBQ Champion and the first woman to be inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame, Cookston is a trailblazer in her field. “When I started competing in the mid-’90s, I was the only woman. Today, I see so many more women in the barbecue world than I did in the past,” she says proudly.
In her new cookbook, Fanning the Flames: Recipes and Tall Tales From BBQ Hall of Famer Melissa Cookston, the chef and restaurateur puts a bold new spin on barbecue with recipes that combine her Southern background with influences from her travels through Sicily, Chile, Abu Dhabi, Egypt, Greece and more—and these creative dishes prove that there’s far more to grilling than just hamburgers and hot dogs. Cookston sat down with Woman’s World to share her accessible and delicious approach to barbecue.
Paying tribute to her Southern roots
“I was raised in the Mississippi Delta, which is along the Mississippi River around halfway between New Orleans and Memphis, and we pull from both those places in our cooking,” Melissa Cookston says. “We were literally eating farm-to-table before it was cool! We were raising crops, slaughtering hogs and doing it all.”
“Southern women are known for being great cooks for a reason,” she says. “There’s something really special about taking simple foods that you can cultivate yourself and bringing so much pizzazz once you make them into a meal. We believe in seasoning and flavoring our food, and what’s better than that?”
Barbecue has always been a family affair for the chef. “My love of eating barbecue came from my grandfather, who had a fine appreciation for a good barbecue sandwich. My mother was a rib lover, so my family gave me my palette,” she says. “My husband took me to a barbecue competition on one of our first dates, and I was hooked immediately.”
Breaking barriers as a female barbecue pro
Melissa Cookston’s first cookbook was aptly titled Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room: Southern Recipes from the Winningest Woman in Barbecue, and she acknowledges, “Barbecue really appeals to our caveman spirit. Throughout history, a woman’s place was in the kitchen, so cooking outdoors was considered the man’s world.”
Cookston has empowering advice for women who want to try their hand at barbecuing: “Don’t be intimidated by it. It’s easier than you think. Let’s face it, the men have been doing it forever, and if they can do it, we can do it.” “Outdoor cooking is a fun experience,” she continues. “It’s more than just cooking to nourish our bodies—it’s bringing in family and friends and spending time together out by the grill.”
Passing on her skills to the next generation
In addition to competing, writing cookbooks and running restaurants, Cookston is dedicated to the World Junior BBQ League, a nonprofit she established with her daughter. “A lot of teenagers work at my restaurant, and I really wanted to inspire them to start cooking, so that’s how it started,” she says. “It’s for kids ages 14 to 18 who might want to get out there and compete. Not everybody can throw the perfect football spiral or dunk a basketball, but everybody can cook, and they’re learning core values through competitive cooking—they’ve gained team-building and communication skills and they’ve learned how to be more patient.”
“We have international competitions and a world championship at the end of the year,” Cookston says with a smile. “The kids love it. They’re learning so much, and if nothing else, at the end of the day, they’ll be able to feed themselves. Some of them have even gone on to work in the culinary field, which makes me happy.”
Finding inspiration around the globe
Asked for the inspiration behind her new cookbook, Cookston says, “I really enjoy traveling, and anytime I would travel abroad, I’d find something that piqued my skills for taking ingredients home and putting my special spin on them.” This adventurous sensibility led her to develop recipes like Duck Breast with Smoked Blackberry Mostarda, Peruvian-Style Chicken with Aji Verde Sauce and Pork Tenderloin Souvlaki with Tzatziki, to name just a few.
“It’s been interesting to develop recipes with flavor profiles that we don’t traditionally associate with barbecue,” she says. “They’re easy to make, and the book gives you something different to cook. We can get into ruts with cooking, and I like to be open-minded about flavors that I might not have tried before.”
Cookston sees barbecue as a kind of universal culinary language. “The two things that are most mesmerizing in our world are water and fire,” she says. “There’s a lot of attention to detail in barbecue, and it hits all your senses—your mouth waters from the smells and you hear the crackling of the fire. I love seeing how every culture has a history of cooking with fire.”
An unexpected use of the grill
There’s nothing better than a barbecue meal paired with a cold drink, and Cookston is excited to combine grilling and bartending in an unexpected way. “This is the first time I’ve put beverages in my cookbook. We had the most fun at the photo shoot—we got to smoke berries for sangria, grill peaches for margaritas and fat-wash bourbon to make a mint julep, which is a very Southern thing,” she says. “I was a bartender when I was younger, but I’d never thought about the beverages that could accompany barbecue. I’m not a big drinker, but when you fat-wash bourbon—infusing the spirit with fat to give it a richer flavor—it makes it so smooth, and you don’t get any of the burn that often comes with alcohol.”
Staying healthy and saving money with barbecue
Melissa Cookston believes the idea of barbecue being unhealthy is a misconception. “When you cook barbecue low and slow and render all the fats out, it’s clean pulled meat,” she notes. “As far as proteins go, barbecue is a very healthy way of eating, and the carnivore diet is hugely popular right now. I think you get in trouble when you start using sauces. That’s where your sugars and calories come in. If you pay close attention to seasonings rather than sauces, you’ll end up with a very healthy meal that tastes fantastic.”
With grocery prices on the rise, Cookston also says that barbecue is a surprisingly good way to save money. “You can cook a primal cut and eat many meals off of it. It freezes well, and you can reheat it and use it in so many different ways. I try to buy bigger cuts of meat and then cut them down into whatever I need them for, which saves a ton of money in the long run,” she explains. “For instance, you can take a pork butt and eat pork steaks off of it, you can smoke it, you can make pulled pork and have that in a sandwich or nachos or quesadillas. I’ve even used it for barbecue spaghetti! There’s so much you can do with these bigger cuts that people just don’t think about.”
From saving money to trying new flavors, we can’t wait to put Melissa Cookston’s smart tips to use at our next barbecue.
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