In this episode of the Biscuits and Jam Podcast, Southern Living's Sid Evans talks to Tyler Florence, the superchef and television star who's sharing his passion for traditional grilling methods in his new cookbook, "American Grill: 125 Recipes for Mastering Live Fire." From humble beginnings in Greenville, South Carolina, Tyler's culinary journey has taken him all across America, and he's got the stories and passion to prove it!
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00:00Tyler Florence, welcome to Biscuits and Jam.
00:02Listen, I'm so honored to be here.
00:03You guys have had all the cool guests, and I've been a little jealous that I haven't
00:07been on until now, but I am so happy to be here.
00:09How are you doing, man?
00:11I'm doing great.
00:12I know you've got your own podcast, don't you?
00:14Yeah, we have a podcast called Two Dudes in a Kitchen.
00:17It's on iHeartRadio, and we're in our second year right now, so it's kind of fun.
00:21I love live broadcasts like this.
00:23It's so nice because I'm sure similar to you, when you see colleagues and even
00:29chefs that you admire, when you're at an event, you get like this little five-minute
00:33window at the shrimp cocktail counter to say hello, but you never get an hour to
00:38sit down and talk to somebody, so I love this platform.
00:42Yeah, I do too.
00:43I do too.
00:44Well, congrats on the new cookbook.
00:48It's called American Grill, and it looks great.
00:51I haven't actually seen a physical copy of it, but I've seen the PDF.
00:55There it is.
00:55Yeah.
00:55Yeah, thank you.
00:56I just got the first box in, and we worked on this for about a year, and I got to tell
01:01you, the photography is just stunning, and it's really all about mastering your barbecue
01:05outside, and this is really how, honestly, I love to cook, because we have kind of two
01:13sides to the coin of our cooking styles.
01:16It's what we do at the restaurants, and that's generally for the art of it all.
01:20It's really kind of beautiful, fancy food that you want to pay $45, $50 a plate for.
01:25It's great, Michelin-caliber great, and there's how I cook at home, and that's usually kind
01:32of more towards like our Food Network voice, which is great, simple cooking that you can
01:36make this weekend, and I love firing up the grill.
01:40So this is my 17th cookbook, and when we started to kind of jump into the why of why this,
01:46why now, why you, I was like, let's just start cooking outside and celebrate the great
01:50outdoors.
01:5117 cookbooks.
01:52I mean, that's kind of incredible.
01:55Did it take you 17 cookbooks to come around to doing a grilling cookbook?
01:59Kind of, because you get into a rhythm of success with publishing where people just kind of want
02:06a little more of what you did last time, and what we do on Food Network is really about
02:10great recipes that you can make with your family and friends this weekend, and that's
02:14always kind of been my lane.
02:15And, you know, we put a lot of effort into our recipe writing, just like you guys do with
02:19Southern Living, and also our recipe testing.
02:22So all of our recipes are tested down to the absolute grain of salt.
02:26They're all perfect.
02:27But it's not really how I cook at home, me personally, right?
02:30And so when I cook at home, you know, if the weather's great, if the weather's cold outside,
02:35like I have eight grills outside my kitchen window that are what I call my grilling park.
02:42And I have three big green eggs.
02:45I have a wood-burning oven.
02:47I have a stick smoker.
02:48I have a really fancy $8,000 Heston grill.
02:51I have, you know, Japanese hibachi grills.
02:53And so I'm always, like, kind of firing up the charcoals and, like, kind of grilling
02:57something outside because I love the way, you know, and maybe it's just the Southern
03:00kid in me, but I love the way my clothes can smell like a campfire.
03:03I love that smoky char when things get kissed with kind of, like, super high smoky heat.
03:10And it's just how I just generally like to cook at home.
03:12So it just, we just said, okay, let's just be, you know, like, authentic to where we are
03:17now, you know, what I'm doing now.
03:19And this live fire cooking thing, you know, it's so interesting.
03:25It's so delicious.
03:26Well, I'm feeling a little bit undergrilled.
03:28I only have two at home.
03:30And if you've got eight, I've got some catching up to do, clearly.
03:34It's good to have a backup plan, though, right?
03:36Oh, yeah.
03:37I mean, because, like, listen, people send me stuff all the time.
03:40So I do generally get a lot of, you know, like, merch and gear and all that kind of stuff.
03:44But my big green eggs are probably my go-to as far as what I fire up first because it's
03:51just easier to control.
03:53You can do so much with it.
03:54You know, you can do pizzas.
03:57You can bake on it.
03:58Like, you know, one of the fun things that we found out when we wrote the cookbook is
04:01that tail-off temperature when you're done grilling whatever you're going to grill and
04:05the grill stays hot for a long time.
04:07It's a perfect temperature to bake stuff.
04:09So we made it.
04:10We baked a Bundt cake on a grill.
04:11We made it baked a cheesecake on a grill.
04:13We made all really kind of, we did, like, cobblers and all kinds of fun stuff on the
04:18grill to capture that residual heat.
04:20And it's a whole different dimension.
04:22And you really end up using your grill as an outdoor oven.
04:26Yeah.
04:27Yeah.
04:27Or an outdoor stove, an outdoor, like, kitchen.
04:29Right.
04:30Well, there's so many great recipes in there and a lot of surprising ones, a lot of recipes
04:36that go, you know, way beyond the steak and the burgers and all of that.
04:40And I want to get to that in a minute.
04:44But before we do that, tell me a little bit about Greenville.
04:48And, you know, you're from Greenville, South Carolina.
04:50And Greenville is now, you know, it's now really known as a food town.
04:55I mean, it's a destination.
04:58Incredible food scene.
04:59So many great restaurants.
05:00But tell me about the Greenville that you grew up in.
05:04What was it like, you know, back then in terms of the food scene?
05:08Was there a little bit of a budding food scene or was it really, you know, not so much?
05:13You know, Greenville has always been a really interesting place.
05:15And for sure, there is a third city in between Charlotte and Atlanta.
05:21Make no mistake, Greenville is a thing.
05:24I'm going to be in Greenville twice this year for two separate events coming up.
05:27And very exciting to go back and see, again, what's blossoming and what's new and what's hip and what's cool.
05:34Because it seemed like there was, for a while, there was this migration from Greenville to Charleston to open up, you know, restaurants in Charleston.
05:41And I went to culinary school in Charleston.
05:43And now there seems like this exodus from Charleston for restaurants to open in Greenville because it has such a budding industrialized community with all the industries, right?
05:56So BMW North America is there.
05:57Michelin North America is there.
05:59So there's lots of, like, interesting smart people, high income, net worth, you know, like really savvy and sophisticated people that are international travelers that are just in Greenville, which is kind of interesting.
06:10Growing up there, it was different, but there was the spark.
06:15There was always the spark.
06:17So I was born in Columbia, then moved to Greenville when I was about, I guess, maybe 12 months old or so.
06:23And then grew up in, you know, just like the public school system in Greenville.
06:29And then started working in restaurants when I was 15 years old.
06:33My first restaurant experience was a dishwasher at the Fish Market off of East North Street in the Lomans Plaza Shopping Center.
06:42If this is connecting with anybody, because I don't even know if this exists anymore.
06:46But it was that moment where I really had found my tribe.
06:50And I knew exactly what I wanted to do for a living.
06:53I knew who I was as a young man.
06:54Like, I really just wanted to work in kitchens.
06:56I loved hospitality.
06:57I loved the theater of the showtime of, you know, the first service and the first reservations rolling in.
07:06And I felt like I belonged in a lot of ways.
07:09So that was back in like the early 90s.
07:12I'm sorry, early 80s.
07:13And so by the time I was like in 86, 87, I had probably, you know, maybe three or four years of restaurant experience before I started working, before I ended up in culinary school in Charleston.
07:28So I worked at Ristorante Bergamo on Main Street, which is a great Italian restaurant.
07:35Nello Gioia.
07:36I think he sold it a couple years ago, but that's still there.
07:38And that was a really amazing restaurant.
07:41I also used to wait tables at Audie's Dutch Cafe.
07:44So this continental, you know, this global sort of position that Greenville seems to uniquely have, I got a little chance to taste, you know, different cuisines and different sort of management styles and different personalities and that kind of thing.
07:56And, again, I just loved all of it.
07:57Loved the hum of the restaurant.
08:00Loved the high touch of, you know, being in the hospitality business.
08:04And it really sort of transformed my whole life.
08:06And you could tell that, you know, and it was a different time.
08:08It was like the height of R.E.M. as a band.
08:13It was like that Athens music scene that was really starting to come online.
08:17And, God, I enjoyed it.
08:18I mean, my friends that I grew up with are still really good friends now, and we keep up with each other.
08:22And Greenville is just always such a super special place.
08:26And it just always feels so connected.
08:27Every time I go back, it just feels like it always feels like home to me, although I've been here in Northern California for almost 12 years now.
08:33Well, and Greenville's got all those great connections to farmers and farmers markets.
08:39And it just seems like there's, you know, there's so much access to fresh vegetables and all of that.
08:44That's really fueled it, too.
08:46Mm-hmm.
08:46It sure has.
08:47So, Tyler, what about at home?
08:49Tell me about the cooks in your family and who was kind of inspiring to you as a cook growing up.
08:57Well, you know, my dad was the youngest of eight kids growing up, and we always had some big event to go do every weekend.
09:05Every weekend was somebody's thing.
09:06It was, you know, because the youngest of eight kids, and all of a sudden we have lots of cousins and lots of aunts and uncles.
09:10Every weekend was some big event that we would cook for and, you know, pack up some covered dishes and take it to somebody's potluck supper someplace.
09:19You know, it was somewhere between South Carolina and Lincolnton, Georgia, where my dad's from.
09:24And we were always just sort of role-playing this kind of restaurant thing, which is really kind of nice.
09:29And my dad's a really good cook.
09:30My mom's a really good cook.
09:31My grandparents are both really inspirational for me as a chef because when I start thinking through those memories and especially those aromas when you walk into a southern kitchen, that immediately just takes you back.
09:44Have you seen Ratatouille?
09:45Of course you have, right?
09:46You know the movie?
09:46Oh, sure.
09:47Yeah, yeah.
09:48Oh, yeah.
09:48So, you know that movie, that point where Antoine Ego, the critic, tastes Ratatouille and he goes into his mind's eye.
09:56And he goes rocketing back into his childhood.
09:58Yeah, and he skinned his knee and his mom made him some Ratatouille.
10:01I have those moments all the time where, you know, you start to smell something really kind of wonderful in a true southern kitchen.
10:07And that's like, you know, collard greens cooking down on the stove with a big ham hock for hours or you smell that undeniable aroma of really good fried chicken or like smothered pork chops or, you know, my dad's really good meatloaf, which is kind of fun.
10:21So I think a lot of those southern moments really connect me as a chef.
10:24And when you go to my restaurants in San Francisco, you can tell there's a southern kid in the kitchen.
10:30We always have deviled eggs on the menu for sure.
10:32It always feels like a church picnic.
10:34We have black truffle to it, so it's a little fancy, but still it's a really good deviled egg.
10:38And then at Wayfair Tavern, our signature restaurant here in San Francisco, fried chicken is on the menu and it's such a huge hit.
10:47Food & Wine magazine said it was the ninth best fried chicken in America.
10:51And we did about $11 million in sales last year and it's a fourth of our product mix.
10:56Wow.
10:57The restaurant was built off fried chicken.
11:00So you can take the boy out of the south, but you cannot take the south out of the boy.
11:04I was going to ask you that question.
11:05You know, as someone who grew up in the south and spent so much of your life there and now you've been in California for a long time and, you know, whether you were bringing some of that southerness to your restaurants.
11:17There's always that sort of genteel level of hospitality that I think the south is really good at.
11:24You know, we do hospitality really well.
11:26And I think the charm and the charisma of being raised really well by great parents, you know, makes all the difference in the world.
11:34And there's a distinctive personality trait that I think, you know, being southern, I think just it is who I am as a person, you know, and I am a southern gentleman.
11:45And so I think kind of carrying that through with all of our restaurant stuff, it feels, you know, it's genuine.
11:49And I love what I do.
11:50I'm 53 this year and we have five restaurants in San Francisco.
11:55We have our sixth restaurant in Hawaii.
11:57We just opened up Miller and Lux at the Four Seasons Huala Lai.
12:00Thank you very much.
12:01And I think me being southern and who I am as a person is directly noticeable the second you walk into our restaurants.
12:13Our hospitality is so on point.
12:15Like we're genuinely excited to have you in our restaurants.
12:17And I think that's just part of my upbringing.
12:19Well, you know, I saw or I heard that you were talking on one of your episodes of Two Dudes in the Kitchen and you were talking about table manners pretty recently and the importance of table manners and what they are and what that means.
12:38How did you get that kind of instruction growing up?
12:42Like who was teaching you table manners?
12:45Where were you really getting that from?
12:47Well, I mean, growing up, my parents were divorced.
12:50This is sort of public information anyway.
12:52But I kind of grew up as like a latchkey kid, to be honest with you, right?
12:55So, you know, I would walk home from school and, you know, I had a key to the house on a rope around my neck.
13:02You know what I'm going to?
13:02And then I figured out that stove and refrigerator relationship pretty early as a kid.
13:08But I think the manners, the hospitality, the etiquette of everything, you really start to develop that as somebody who's just a student of restaurants.
13:17And, you know, from 15 on to where I am now, I've done one thing.
13:21All this – the food network and all this other stuff is really kind of fun.
13:25But I am a restaurant person through and through.
13:26Like I love hospitality.
13:28And, I mean, even on my desk right now, I have a copy of Emily Post's etiquette, right?
13:33I mean, there's rules of engagement, right, when it comes to just, you know, being, you know, a properly well-honed restaurant.
13:42And these are things that literally just live on my desk.
13:44I live with this stuff all the time because, you know, you have to have a why when you start training people.
13:49You have to have sort of, you know, an ethos of the restaurant business itself.
13:54And so – and that just – when you have a fine-tuned machine with lots of hospitality folks who just love what they do for a living,
14:01that's got to come from someplace.
14:03And, you know, with our company, it comes from me.
14:05And, you know, we just try to get better every single day.
14:08Yeah.
14:09I want to talk about the grill that you kind of grew up with.
14:12You had a great line in the book where you said you grew up with barbecue sauce in your baby bottle.
14:18So, you know, it's clearly something that goes back to the early days.
14:22But, you know, what was happening on the grill?
14:24I mean, was your dad, you know, grilling a lot when you were growing up?
14:28Or what was your kind of early exposure to that?
14:31Yeah, he sure was.
14:32My dad always had a really great grill.
14:34And I remember my dad, like, smoking turkeys when I was a kid for Thanksgiving.
14:38And when we were growing up, there was a barbecue place.
14:41I've got a blanket on the name of it because I haven't thought about it forever.
14:43But there was a barbecue place, and I'm sure it's closed down now.
14:46But there was a barbecue place just outside of Lincolnton, Georgia.
14:50So when we would go see my dad's mom, we would always stop and pick up a couple of quarts of shredded pork shoulder.
14:57And he would actually smoke two whole hogs every weekend, and it was just some place that we stopped off at.
15:03And so those kind of early food memories are really ultimately what I crave.
15:08I crave that all the time.
15:09I think barbecue is one of the world's greatest food concepts, specifically American-style barbecue.
15:15And then we can kind of jump into all that because, you know, the Carolinas are really good at it.
15:18But then you get Texas, and that's just the pinnacle of it.
15:21It is what it is.
15:22You know what I mean?
15:22Texas does barbecue better than anybody else.
15:25And once you get there and you taste the stuff, that's distinctive, super high-technique, super high-quality products that you just can't get anywhere else in the world.
15:34So if you went to France, and you went to a beautiful auberge, and you had an amazing sort of French experience with, like, escargot and frog's legs and foie gras,
15:42and you felt like, okay, I've had a distinctive, you know, beef bourguignon, distinctive French meal,
15:49I think a barbecue is a distinctive American experience.
15:53And I think it's so unique.
15:54It's so interesting.
15:55And it's really what sort of the new part of my emerging personality, because it's kind of what I do at home all the time anyway,
16:03and I'm such a student of it and such a fan of it, that we're kind of going there.
16:06So this summer, we're actually launching an eight-city barbecue festival called Masters of Fire.
16:12And our first festival is at the Paso Robles Wine Fest in sort of Central Valley, California.
16:19And myself and five other live-fire chefs are going to be slinging it out for a bunch of folks.
16:26We're going to be doing slow-smoked Wagyu beef rib with black truffle potato salad and green peppercorn salsa verde.
16:34We're also going to do a banana pudding, because you can't – if you're from the South, that is what it is, right?
16:38You've got to make a good banana pudding with barbecue.
16:40You've got to have it.
16:41You've got to have it.
16:42The rootstock of who I am as a person is deeply rooted in Southern cuisine and Southern culture.
16:47There's no doubt about it.
16:49And then once you get to other parts of the country and you sort of filter in other experiences, it evolves a little bit.
16:54But make no mistake, where I come from and the food that I love and what I like to think about
17:00and what I like to inspire other people about comes from the South.
17:03There's no doubt about it.
17:04It's the best food in the world.
17:06You might have some North Carolina people challenging you on that Texas barbecue comment.
17:11It's just –
17:11Some Tennessee people.
17:13Let's go.
17:14Let's go.
17:14We should – let's do it.
17:16So we go to the Memphis in May Festival every year, so we get a chance to try lots of different barbecue from all over the place.
17:21And all these things are distinctively different.
17:23Like North Carolina is about whole hog.
17:25South Carolina is about pork shoulder, right?
17:27They have sort of a similar barbecue sauce style, sometimes a little different.
17:30You go down to Alabama.
17:31They've got the Alabama white barbecue sauce, which is great.
17:34You go into Tennessee, right?
17:36Eastern Tennessee is still whole hog.
17:37You go out to western Tennessee towards Memphis and stuff like that.
17:42It's ribs, right?
17:43And they're dry rubbed, right?
17:44Which is really kind of interesting.
17:46Charcoal smoked and dry rubbed.
17:48It's nice.
17:49You know, don't – it's good.
17:50What I think is really interesting is the St. Louis barbecue scene, which is distinctively German.
17:55You know, so there's Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis, Missouri.
17:57There's lots of like German sort of food cultures that have sort of landed and propagated in St. Louis.
18:03And they make German – they make ribs.
18:06When I had it, I'm like, oh, my God, this is so weird.
18:09They seasoned ribs with paprika, and then they served it with applesauce.
18:16What is that?
18:17I don't know.
18:18The applesauce would not be my first choice.
18:21But, you know, you've got to have an open mind.
18:23No, but it was really good, but it's just barbecue that's just different, right?
18:26It's barbecue that's different.
18:27Then you go into Texas, and it just becomes like holy at that point.
18:30It's just like – because I was just there last week.
18:34I was down at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
18:37I'm working on a program with NASA.
18:39And, you know, there's like Truth Barbecue out of Houston.
18:42Whoa.
18:44Whoa.
18:44Like they do everything.
18:46I mean the beef ribs, turkey, sausage, ribs, pork shoulder, laser execution on everything.
18:52Side dishes are fun and, you know, creative.
18:55And the presentation, the slicing, the fanning, the platter that comes out, the big tray, oh, my God.
19:00That's so good.
19:01And when you go to like the Carolinas, like it's really – it's about pork barbecue that's chopped up, right?
19:07And you make a sandwich out of it.
19:08And I'm not dissing anything.
19:09It's great.
19:10I love it.
19:11You know, it's all special.
19:12Well, you know, it does seem like there's a little bit of a barbecue renaissance happening, you know, for lack of a better word.
19:19I mean it's just there's so much good barbecue out there right now.
19:22There really is.
19:23Crab barbecue is a thing right now.
19:24So many different kinds and so many different unique spins on it.
19:28It's a good time to be a barbecue fan.
19:30All right.
19:31So I want to get into grilling a little bit more, Tyler.
19:33So, you know, the one thing that everybody is doing, it's grilling season and people are cooking steaks, right?
19:40You've got a big steak on the cover.
19:43What's your – and I guess there's a million ways to do it, but, you know, if you were to kind of give someone some advice on they're going to cook, let's say, a New York strip, you know, what's kind of the tried and true – no recipe to follow, but, like, what would you tell them to do to make it just right, just perfect?
20:02You know, and inside American Grill, we cover all of that, which is one of the things I think from a language perspective, from a recipe writing perspective, we're really good at one-on-one.
20:12Like, we're really good, like, if you want the basic technique of how to make something perfect, I'm great at that.
20:19And we cover all of that inside the book.
20:21How do you cook a steak?
20:23Big question, right?
20:24And there's some good rules to follow, for sure.
20:27And I think most importantly is you've got to have a grill set up with two temperature zones, like we talked about a second ago.
20:34So we like just, you know, good charcoal.
20:38Give yourself plenty of time for the charcoal to come up to temperature and then begin to cool back down again so it's nice and evenly distributed so it's not a hot spot, right?
20:48So you want to make sure you've got, like, you can really hold your hand over the hot part of the grill and have to pull your hand away so it's that hot.
20:54If you had a laser thermometer on top of it, it would probably be around 800 degrees.
20:59You want it hot, right?
21:01But even, right?
21:02So let the coal ignite.
21:05Let it start to evenly distribute through the entire batch of charcoal that you have and let it start to go to coal, okay?
21:11Let it start to just evenly heat so it's distributed.
21:15Give yourself 30 degrees.
21:15So the temp is sort of steady.
21:17It's not, like, it's not still coming up and getting hotter.
21:20No flames.
21:21It's not on fire anymore.
21:22It's just smoldering, okay?
21:24So, and, and, which is a great way to describe it.
21:26It's smoldering charcoal.
21:27And, but give yourself 45 minutes.
21:29Like, give yourself plenty of time.
21:31Now, the steaks themselves.
21:33Now, there's nothing wrong with grocery store steaks.
21:35I eat them all the time.
21:36I love beef.
21:36Beef is probably one of my favorite foods in the world.
21:38I just, I'm passionate about it.
21:40We have a steakhouse in San Francisco, so beef is something that we're, we're just, you know, we love to talk about.
21:46I just did an amazing conversation at South by Southwest, and Dr. Temple Grandin was on my panel.
21:53And she just sent me this book.
21:54As a matter of fact, she's a buddy.
21:55Yeah, she's cool.
21:56So we're, as a matter of fact, she just, she just kind of drafted it up and gave me a nice little signature on top of that.
22:01So we're deep in the beef space.
22:03We love it.
22:04So we're passionate about making sure not only that people love beef and celebrate American ranchers, but also how do you cook it when you get it home, right?
22:11So there's something really nice about dry age, right?
22:14So at my restaurant, Miller & Lux in San Francisco, we specialize in dry age and not just any kind of dry age, 45 days of dry age.
22:21Three different things happen when you get a really good dry age program.
22:24The water weight loses itself by about 25%.
22:28So they'll dry age a whole primal, right?
22:32So if it's a ribeye, it's going to be what they call a 109 loin, which is basically kind of a seven rib whole section.
22:39It's like, you know, bone and ribeye uncut.
22:43And so that'll go into a dry aging room that is, you know, climate controlled and it'll dry age for, you know, 45 days.
22:50And like I said, it'll lose about 25% of the water weight.
22:52And that just concentrates the flavor, I'm guessing.
22:55Bang.
22:55When you're cooking, water is always the arch enemy of a cook.
22:59The water is what you want to get out.
23:01The water is in between you and the soul of whatever you're cooking.
23:04When you're sautéing something, when you're reducing something, the steam that's coming out is the barrier between the raw product and deliciousness is the water.
23:14You want to get it out, right?
23:16You don't want to overcook it.
23:17You don't want to dry it out, but you want to begin to pull the water out, right?
23:20So the dry age has a deeper concentration between the protein and the fat.
23:25And you lose the flabby water weight.
23:27Now, when you taste a grocery store steak, and the next time when you taste a steak you buy at the grocery store and it tastes flabby and wet, you'll know what I'm talking about.
23:39And not that it tastes bad or anything.
23:41It's just it's not like the high art of it all.
23:43So if you can find a great dry aging program, like with a butcher shop and somebody who's really specializing that, that's something you want to go for.
23:52The dry age is just amazing.
23:53And worth paying a few extra bucks if you're going to invest in a steak, like why not spend a few extra bucks and get the dry age one?
24:03Exactly, for sure.
24:04Now, the next thing that happens, which is really interesting, is the enzymes are starting to break down on the inside of the steak.
24:10The steak becomes incredibly tender, which is beautiful, right?
24:13So you get this like meltingness, almost kind of spoon soft texture of the beef, which is just spectacular.
24:18Now, the third thing that happens, which is arguably the most important, is the bloom on the outside of the steak starts to smell like charcuterie, right?
24:31Starts to smell like beef salami.
24:33It's the same bloom that happens on camembert, on brie cheese, on really great charcuterie, and it has this really spectacular umami flavor profile, which is just incredible.
24:44So those are the three things you're kind of looking for with a really good steak.
24:48Dry age, 38-day is really nice.
24:5145 is wow.
24:53Anything more than that is kind of overkill.
24:54But 45 is the pinnacle.
24:56Now, you want to make sure that your steak is as dry as possible.
24:59So when you get your steak, even if you get a grocery store steak, and again, there's nothing wrong with that, you want to take it out of the package, and you want to try to pat the outside of the surface of the steak and just get it as dry as possible.
25:10Because if it feels wet to the surface, the moisture content in the water will begin to steam before the steak begins to brown, okay?
25:20So you want it to brown before it has anything to do with anything that feels like water.
25:26So if you can pull off as much water off the surface, you're going to get a better sear, and you're going to get a better flavor profile.
25:34And so there's, again, the three things, right?
25:35The dry aging is really special if you can find it.
25:37Water weight is really important.
25:39You want to try to get that out because it's a tighter density between the protein and the fat.
25:42It's also much, much, much better flavor, right?
25:44Then, so the last thing is to season it, right?
25:47And I like to season with your salt.
25:48If you've got a great piece of meat, I like no pepper.
25:51Pepper will burn, okay?
25:52Pepper burns at a high heat.
25:54I like pepper.
25:55I like fresh cracked pepper at the end, but I only season with salt.
25:58So a little bit of olive oil on the surface of the steak also will improve the browning.
26:02But then also that gives the salt something to stick to on the steak itself.
26:07So a little bit of olive oil, nice piece of steak, good sear.
26:11If you get a little flame up, keep moving it around, right?
26:13And then you want to flip it over a couple of times.
26:17Try not to mess with it too much.
26:18Obviously, if you're getting flare-ups from the fat dripping on top of the coals, just kind of move it to a slightly cooler spot.
26:23But again, you want the color.
26:25And then you want to move it over to the cooler side.
26:27So you've got all your charcoal piled up in one side of the grill.
26:30Don't put it evenly distributed from one end to the other because you've got nowhere to run.
26:34If you're moving around sort of a nice cut that's got a little bit of fat on top of it, you're going to get flare-ups everywhere you want to go.
26:39So if you've got all the charcoal kind of piled up on one side, your hot zone, you get the color there and you move it over to the cooler zone without any necessary charcoal underneath that.
26:48Then you can begin to roast and then close the lid and just let it cook.
26:52Get nice and smoky, really kind of wonderful flavor profile.
26:55But that to me is like one-on-one on how to cook a great steak.
26:57And what's the temp, like, you know, when you close that lid?
27:01Yeah, a really, really hot temperature.
27:03And we like to get into, like, details, that kind of stuff, right?
27:05So if you have a laser thermometer, and those are – if you're a geek in the kitchen like me, like, sometimes those things are fun to have around because, you know, how hot is your oven, right?
27:14Sometimes the calibration in an oven will kind of fall off a little bit.
27:18And so if you have an instant laser thermometer, it's going to tell you exactly what it is.
27:21But a screaming hot grill is generally around 800 degrees.
27:25That's a screaming hot grill, right?
27:28And then the cooler side of the grill is probably going to be around, like, 400, 450, 500.
27:33And that's still pretty hot too.
27:35But when you close the lid, you want – you're grilling.
27:38You're cooking with high heat anyway.
27:40But the difference between 800 degrees, which obviously will burn something, and 500 degrees, which will kind of, like, hot roast something, is kind of night and day, right?
27:50Yeah.
27:50So – and then to me, when I serve a large cut around the holidays, specifically beef, I try to take it to medium.
27:59I know it kind of feels controversial, specifically coming from a chef who's like, everything needs to be medium rare.
28:04I like medium rare, but I notice when I serve things that are medium rare, or more importantly, a chef's medium rare, which is just north of rare, right?
28:13Some members of my guests, they think it's undercooked, right?
28:19So my position on this, if you're cooking for a big group of people, take it to medium, okay?
28:25That's going to be about a 132, 135 temperature, and take it out and let it rest, right?
28:32Because if you like it medium rare, you don't mind it medium, but if you like it medium, you don't like it medium rare.
28:39Right.
28:39So it's just a safe bet.
28:40Well, that's definitely the popular program in my house.
28:44Medium.
28:44You know, and if it's a true medium, I don't know.
28:46There's nothing wrong with that.
28:48No, it's great.
28:49And even better, honestly, because the fat really has a chance to melt and become really unctuous and delicious.
28:54Well, I think I'm going to have to go out and cook a steak tonight.
28:57Oh, we'd love to have you.
28:59So we're going to be in Greenville twice this year.
29:00And you're in Birmingham?
29:02Yep, yep.
29:03I love – Birmingham is so on fire right now.
29:05Chris Hastings is a good buddy.
29:07Yeah.
29:07You know, he's got the hot and hot fish house down there.
29:10And the food scene in Birmingham is on fire.
29:12Yeah, we have got – we've got a great, great food scene here.
29:15So many good restaurants.
29:16Yeah, for sure.
29:17You're a sports fan.
29:19Am I right?
29:20Yeah.
29:21I am.
29:21So, you know, you grew up in the South.
29:25You grew up in South Carolina.
29:26You're no stranger to a tailgate gathering.
29:30First of all, who's your team, really?
29:32I mean, who do you think of as your main team when it comes to, let's say, college football?
29:36Say college football.
29:37You know, okay, so I'm just going to call it like I see it.
29:39So my dad is a diehard Clemson fan, and my mom is a diehard Carolina Gamecocks fan.
29:46So I'm super neutral.
29:47Yeah.
29:48I try not to even bring it up.
29:50You know what I mean?
29:51Because it's pointless.
29:52Yeah.
29:52I live in California.
29:53What do I care?
29:53Right?
29:54You're a Warriors fan.
29:56Well, love the Warriors.
29:57So Miller & Lux, our steakhouse, is at the Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors.
30:02And the Golden State Warriors are my business partner in that steakhouse.
30:06So we love basketball, for sure.
30:08And I'm following the – although we're – unfortunately, we're out of the playoffs right now.
30:12But basketball is probably my number one sport.
30:15And then after that, I really like baseball.
30:16I grew up as an Atlanta Braves fan, big time.
30:19Back in like the – kind of like the late 80s when they were, you know, America's team with like Chris Chambliss and Dale Murphy and Joe Torrey was the coach.
30:29And, you know, there was like the America's team kind of era.
30:33And I just love baseball.
30:35Big Giants fan now, although I wish we had a better roster.
30:38You know, when it comes to – food and sports are like peanut butter and chocolate.
30:43Those two things taste great together, right?
30:44On last week's episode of Two Dudes in the Kitchen, we started jumping deep into the hot dog world, right, because I've got some thoughts on that too.
30:51But when it comes to tailgating, listen, there's so many great things that you can do to make something really kind of special because, again, I think that's that moment, right?
31:00Like you're just connecting the dots with friends, getting together with something you're going to go do and enjoy, and this really kind of fun pseudo-camping environment.
31:07There's lots of really kind of fun grills that you can take out and, you know, and take on the road with you, smaller grills, which are kind of cool.
31:15And so to me, we're just firing up the grill one more time.
31:19Coming over to your house is probably a pretty popular program whenever you're throwing a target.
31:23I talk about this all the time because my kids – I have teenagers now, and they have lots of friends and parties in the house all the time.
31:30I just insist on cooking because I think the kids are going to go back to their house, and their parents are going to ask them, oh, my gosh, you went to Tyler Florence's house.
31:39What did he make?
31:41And you can't say we put out a bowl of Cheetos.
31:44Yeah.
31:44You got to deliver.
31:46Yeah.
31:46I mean, every time.
31:47So, I mean, it's a gift and a burden.
31:50But I love what I do, man.
31:52I really, really love what I do, and I love the connection at it.
31:54And, you know, it's been this lifelong gift of just making people happy.
31:58And, you know, we get a chance to give joy for a living, you know, professionally.
32:02And I just can't think of any higher cause of what you'd ever want to do, you know, with your life.
32:08Well, I wanted to ask you about that, you know, speaking of loving what you do.
32:12And you talk in the book about how grilling is a kind of meditative thing for you.
32:18You know, it's a way for you to kind of escape and be with your thoughts for a minute and just kind of focus on one thing
32:25and maybe get away from some of the distractions and the craziness of life.
32:31And I'm just wondering, what does that mean to you?
32:33You know, you've put all this work into this book, but just on a personal level, when you're just out there by yourself cooking, what is that part of it for you?
32:40Well, you know, when you hit 50 years old, there's a little bit of retrospective.
32:45You know, welcome to the club.
32:46You start to think about life a little differently, right?
32:48And you probably got more years behind you than you do ahead of you.
32:51And life becomes a little more important.
32:52And you specifically choose to put the brakes on things to slow things down a little bit.
32:59Because you end up with these, you know, kind of long days and short years where the day, like, you work really, really hard.
33:05But then it seems to be, wow, is this 2024, 2025?
33:08Like, your kids, all of a sudden, they're, like, going to college and they're off getting married.
33:12And I'm like, whoa.
33:13Whoa.
33:14And for me, like, when I grill, when I fire up the grill, and I'm really, like, taking three, four hours to make dinner, it's just me and the charcoals and the protein and the flavor profile and, you know, the fat content and, you know, thinking about how I'm going to finish it and kind of picking out the plates and stuff like that.
33:31Like, I try to block everything out and just think about right now and just try to be 100% present and just think and just be grateful that you're here doing what you're doing.
33:42And to not try to be distracted and not try to take phone calls or I just want to cook and just meditate on this and really kind of think through what I'm doing because how wonderful it is just to be alive and just to be able to cook something that in an hour or so you're going to share with the people that you love.
33:59And it's going to be perfect.
34:01It's going to be absolutely perfect.
34:02And that joyful feeling, that self-confidence of knowing you just did something amazing.
34:06And even when you're choosing to grill things over charcoal because it's instinctively hard, right?
34:13It's not, you know, you're not pulling out chicken tenders out of the freezer, right?
34:17You're cooking something in a very rudimentary, primal way that is the high art of cooking.
34:24It's meat and heat and time.
34:26That's it.
34:27You got nowhere to hide.
34:28And it's perfect.
34:29And to me, it's just one of those moments where I feel like I'm connecting with something and in a world where things can feel like everything's out of your control sometimes.
34:39Sometimes things like you just feel like, okay, wow, I'm just kind of rolling with it today or rolling with it this week or this is what happened today, right?
34:45Like I get to control something, right?
34:47I can control everything what I'm doing.
34:49I can control the heat.
34:50I can control how long I cook it for.
34:52I can control the flavor profile.
34:53I can, you know, stick the dismount on the presentation and make it look just spectacular.
34:58And even if I'm cooking dinner, everything I cook is, I try to make it as, if it were the cover of Southern Living Magazine, you know, as special as possible.
35:07And it's this moment where you just slow down and go, okay, I'm here and I'm doing this and I'm not doing anything else.
35:12And it feels selfish in a way, but I think it feels like this is my time.
35:17This is me.
35:18And that's why I like to grow.
35:19Well, that's beautifully said.
35:20And it really comes through in the book.
35:22You can, you can, uh, you can see it on every page.
35:25And, um, I'm not sure why it took you, you know, 17 cookbooks to do the grilling one, but I'm glad you finally, finally done it.
35:32Well, it's, you kind of tap into this religion, right?
35:35I mean, it's like PGA or NFL or NASCAR, like people cook outside and it's a holy experience for everybody.
35:43If I had to break down my demo, right?
35:45Like I'm, my fans are 75% female and 25% male.
35:49And I think this one's for the fellas, right?
35:51I think this is a book that kind of probably connect with a lot of dads out there.
35:55A lot of people that just like to grow and like to cook.
35:57And this will be your go-to Bible because it's not just about grilling.
36:01It's about cooking outside.
36:03It's about, uh, uh, taking moments to yourself and celebrating the great outdoors with a range of things that you're going to absolutely love.
36:11There's really good one-on-one recipes in this.
36:13One in particular that I think is going to be very successful is our reverse seared chicken, which is kind of cool.
36:19You've heard of reverse seared steaks?
36:21Yeah, I have.
36:21And you've got a bunch of reverse seared, uh, recipes in the book.
36:24So I'm glad you brought that up.
36:26Yeah.
36:26The reverse seared chicken is the chicken version of the reverse seared steak.
36:30So you're going to pre-bake it, right?
36:33So there's a really great dry rub.
36:34So you're going to season it with, uh, salt, pepper, a little bit of sugar, lemon zest, and some herbs, right?
36:39And it gets, you toss the chicken, you put it onto a sheet tray and you're going to bake it in the oven as low as your oven goes to about 200 degrees.
36:46And you're going to cook that for about 45 minutes or so until the protein sets because protein hates high temperature.
36:51It likes it for a little bit, but the difference between like a creme brulee and, uh, hard scrambled eggs that you get at a diner that are just like pebbles, um, is time and temperature, right?
37:02Same ingredients, just time and temperature, right?
37:05So low and slow is always going to give you a better, better, uh, outcome because you get a chance to slowly cook the protein, but not lose the water moisture, which is going to be juicy or, uh, reduce the fat.
37:15So everything kind of stays locked in and it's juicy and delicious.
37:19So you, you pre-bake the chicken.
37:21And then the cool thing about this technique, and I think a lot of people are going to love this.
37:25You can bag it and take it to, uh, uh, a tailgate.
37:29You can bag it.
37:30Oh, that's great.
37:31Yeah.
37:31You take it to somebody else's house and then throw it on the grill for just a few minutes and you're going to, and you're done, right?
37:36Six to eight minutes and it's done.
37:38Yeah, that's great.
37:39So you're going to reverse sear the chicken and then you're going to finish it, uh, a little bit later.
37:43And so that high, hot, hard heat happens right at the very end where you get this beautiful caramelization, but you're not going from raw to cook.
37:51So, uh, I, I think that's one of the, going to be one of the most successful recipes out of the book.
37:55And we really dove into that and then offered like five different sauce profiles with that.
38:00So you can always have, you know, you can be the chicken King in your backyard.
38:03It's one recipe, one good takeaway recipe out of that.
38:05I think it's going to be the one-on-one reverse your chicken recipe, which is kind of a game changer.
38:09All right.
38:10I'm going to give that one a shot.
38:11It's great.
38:11All right, Tyler.
38:12Well, just one more question for you.
38:14What does it mean to you to be Southern?
38:16It's, uh, it's unique, especially out here on the West coast.
38:19Uh, and I've got a really good friend of mine.
38:20Who's, who's, uh, uh, she runs a magazine here and, uh, she is from, she's from Birmingham, Alabama.
38:26Right.
38:27And I get to talk like that cause I'm from the South.
38:29Those are my people.
38:29And I do a real good Southern accent, especially when I get on the phone with my dad, we start
38:34talking about this and like, it just kind of starts popping out.
38:36Tyler.
38:37Hi, Tyler.
38:38It sounds like sweet tea in my ears.
38:40It's just so good.
38:41Uh, but to me, there's, um, there's a, a, a food connection in the South that feels incredibly
38:51culturally specific because I lived in New York city for a long time.
38:56And it's about the hustle and bustle.
38:58Right.
38:59Uh, and it's not so much about the slow pace of life and out in California, there is more
39:05of that.
39:06Uh, and it's deeply connected to our farm system here in California.
39:10Like the farm to table culture is a thing here that plus my innate sense of creating things
39:15that are delicious, brown and good, right?
39:18Like a really good Southern cook where things are brown and good.
39:21And then you start to make a lot of, a lot of brown food.
39:24Yeah.
39:24A lot of brown food.
39:25And it's great.
39:26Whatever it is, right.
39:26It's just brown and good.
39:28Um, there's something to that, that I think gives me specifically as a chef an advantage
39:33because my food, I think feels more deeply rooted.
39:37It's, it's more deeply delicious.
39:39It's layered in flavor.
39:41There's lots of why when I start cooking, cause I've been around the block.
39:45I've tasted it.
39:46I've been there.
39:47I've cooked it.
39:47I've seen the authentic version of what's going to be.
39:50And, and to me, it, uh, it defines me as a chef.
39:54I got, I wouldn't trade five minutes of my life for anything else.
39:58I love my connection with the South.
40:00Uh, my 15 years in New York city polished me as a chef.
40:03I am my best self here in California, uh, because I, I, I think there, there's a freedom
40:07here, uh, uh, when it comes to the culinary perspective, uh, which is wonderful.
40:12And we've got really great lifelong friends and kind of raising kids in California has
40:15been great.
40:16Um, but I love coming home.
40:17I love coming back to the South and I can't wait to come to Greenville this year.
40:20It's gonna be good to be back.
40:21Uh, Carl Sobisinski in Greenville with Sobeys.
40:25He's just the King of the Hill.
40:26Like his restaurants are so good.
40:28He's a good buddy.
40:29So I always get a chance to go back and connect with them and also see, you know, some high school
40:32friends, which are kind of fun.
40:33But life is really great.
40:35And, uh, and I'm grateful to be from the South.
40:37Um, I love Southern living, you know, uh, Southern living magazines, the food section of
40:43those magazines going back to the seventies, uh, cause my mom always had a subscription
40:47to Southern living.
40:48It was sort of your connection to the outside world in a lot of ways, way before the internet.
40:53Uh, cause you guys got a chance to travel and see different cities and kind of see what's
40:57happening just beyond your borders, but still very distinctly Southern.
41:00And, uh, uh, lots of great, uh, inspiration has always come from your magazine.
41:06So I just want to thank you for connecting the dots on those things early in my life.
41:10Oh, thank you.
41:11Well, you got to come see us in Birmingham sometime.
41:13Come visit the test kitchens.
41:14We would love to, let's do it.
41:16Love to have you here.
41:17Can we do that?
41:17Yeah.
41:18That'd be great.
41:18I mean, Oh, come on.
41:19Yeah.
41:20Yeah, man.
41:20Bring the book, bring the book and let's do it.
41:22I would take over.
41:23Okay.
41:24I'm a hypothesize.
41:25Let me take over a whole month.
41:26Give me, give me the food section for a month and let's go down and let's just come up with
41:31some fun stuff and we'll just, cause it'll be like this kind of coming home episode and
41:35then we'll connect the dots and all that stuff.
41:36Well, let's just hand you the keys.
41:38For one month.
41:39That'll be good.
41:39Just for one month.
41:40Yeah, sure.
41:41Yeah.
41:41It'd be great.
41:42And then we'll, we'll, we'll make it really, you know, what we'll connect the dots.
41:44We'll ask readers what they want to cook and we'll come up with some great recipes and we'll
41:48make it a very kind of collective experience, but that'd be one.
41:50All right.
41:50All right.
41:51We got some planning to do.
41:52That sounds great.
41:53Well, Hey man, congrats on the book and the restaurants and the tour and everything.
41:58And thanks so much for being on biscuits and jam, you know, and thank you so much for having
42:02me.
42:02It's a great podcast.
42:04Congratulations on all your success here.
42:05And thank you everyone for listening.
42:07Um, you know, so a couple of things to pay attention to the great food truck race is coming
42:10out, uh, season 17 drops in June.
42:12It's the number one show in the network all summer.
42:15Uh, this is my 27th year on the network with food network.
42:18So thank you so much for everyone listening.
42:20It crazy, right?
42:2127 years.
42:22And so thank you so much for everybody listening to, you know, for being a part of that journey.
42:26And if you're ever out in San Francisco, we'd love to feed you in our restaurants and
42:29make sure you check out American grill.
42:30It's going to be your new favorite outdoor cookbook.
42:32You heard it here on biscuits and jam.
42:35Right on.
42:35Thanks.
42:36Thanks Tyler.
42:37I appreciate you.
42:37Thanks.
42:42Thanks.
42:43Thanks.
42:44Thanks.
42:45Thanks.
42:46Thanks.
42:47Bye.