Every so often a guest comes on the show and you can tell inside of five minutes that the hour is not going to be long enough. Episode 96 was one of those. My guest was Captain Ron, a cook I first noticed a few years back in videos he was making for Fogo Charcoal, almost always standing over a Big Green Egg with more energy than anybody else on my feed. He has since launched his own channel, Captain Ron Cooks, and he came on to talk about how he got here, what he sees backyard cooks doing the hard way, and to take questions live from the chat.

From a bullet smoker to a full-time barbecue career

Ron started the way a lot of us did. He always liked to cook, he started really liking barbecue food, and he figured he could save himself some money by learning to make it at home. That meant a cheap bullet smoker first, then a Big Green Egg he got for his birthday. His daughter told him to start an Instagram account, he did, and things went from there.

The turning point was an Eggfest in Melbourne, Florida. In his words, that took him from “I like to do this” to hooked. A few years later, Fogo asked him to come down and shoot a couple of videos. Then the pandemic hit, everybody was home cooking outside, and the company had more work than it could film. What started as two videos turned into a full-time job, right at the moment his old travel-heavy career came to a stop. He is not with Fogo anymore, but he is quick to say he is grateful for the run.

Cook to temperature, not to time

I asked him the mistake he sees beginners make over and over, and he did not hesitate: following the clock instead of the thermometer. Buy a pork loin, read “cook 120 minutes” on the label, set a timer, and hope. He says the day he started cooking to internal temperature was the day his food changed.

His two must-do items are simple. Cook to temp, not to time, and get yourself a good instant-read digital thermometer. Regulars here know I say the same thing about every other episode, and Ron made the point better than I do: he has cooked steaks expensive enough that guessing by feel was never an option. Swallow your pride and use the thermometer.

Simple food tends to win

His barbecue philosophy is that a lot of us overcomplicate it. He learned that the hard way at Eggfests. Early on he was building stuffed sliders with a long ingredient list, a lot of prep, and a lot of mess, and finishing fifth or sixth. Then he switched: roast a whole New York strip or a tomahawk with a rub, smoke it, and all day long slice a steak off it and caveman sear it right on the coals. He started winning.

He said something similar about the more extreme content going around, like dry-aging a steak in caramel sauce. He is not knocking the people doing it, and some of them are doing very well with it. His take is that it is entertainment more than cooking, and it may not be moving the barbecue world forward much.

Learn your vents before you reach for a controller

Ron is not a fan of fan-driven temperature controllers for backyard cooking, and he said it knowing it might not sit well with everybody. His reasoning is that the controller can do your learning for you. He loves the fire management and the vent management, and he thinks leaning on the fan can keep you from picking up that skill.

He does allow there is a time and a place. If you are paying travel and entry fees at a competition and you need 225 and not 227 all night, that is a different situation. But for a backyard cook, he would rather you learn the intake and the chimney on whatever you own, because every cooker works the same basic way. I told him about putting a fan controller on my first offset, which taught me the same lesson from the other direction. Those wood splits burn the way they burn.

Light the fire at the bottom, not the top

This one I am going to try. Most of us fill the firebox with charcoal and light it on top. Ron pointed out that the fire then has to burn down to reach the oxygen coming in through the bottom vent. So he flipped it: light a small fire at the bottom, get it going, add a chunk, then pour the rest of the charcoal on top. Now the air coming in the bottom vent hits the fire directly instead of fighting its way up through the pile.

That changed where he puts his smoke wood too. He is leaning toward chunks in and under the charcoal rather than on top, since the food takes on most of its smoke in the first couple of hours anyway. He is honest that there is an argument for both placements.

Fat side up or fat side down? Depends on the cooker

Pork butt, he goes fat cap up every time. Brisket is where the cooker matters. On a kamado the heat comes straight up from below and the deflector plate gets very hot, so he cooks brisket fat side down to protect the bottom. He has cooked plenty of good briskets fat side up, but on the kamado he found the bottom would char and stick to the grates.

He also pushed back on the old idea that the fat renders down through the meat and bastes it, which has not held up when people have tested it. Off the kamado, he is fat side up most of the rest of the time. I cook most of my briskets on the offset, fat side up, somewhere between 225 and 275 and usually landing around 245 to 250. Ron cooks his at 250 too.

Questions from the live chat

Which size Big Green Egg? He started on a large and still has it, but he is a fan of the XL. On the fuel-hog objection, he says they ran a five-hour burn test and the difference in charcoal used came out to a few ounces. His view: you can have too little cooking surface, but you cannot have too much. He also likes the MiniMax for the nights it is just him and one other person, though at 75 pounds it is only portable up to a point.

Salmon on the Egg? His favorite is direct on a cedar plank. Soak the plank a couple of hours, get a medium-hot fire, char one side of the plank, flip it, and lay the salmon on the charred side. You get the wood flavor plus crispy skin. Indirect, he runs about 250 with a light herb or dill-based seasoning and only a block or two of wood. He wants a kiss of smoke, not a heavy one, and he treats smoke as an ingredient the way you would treat salt.

Weber kettle or Smokey Mountain? The kettle is the more versatile of the two since you can grill and smoke on it. The WSM, in his experience, cooks somewhere between a kamado and a barrel smoker, and he has been happy with the one he picked up this year.

Cold weather on a ceramic cooker? Dress warm, first of all. Beyond that, expect to open your vents a little more when the ceramic is cold, and turn the bottom vent away from the wind. The tip worth writing down: when you shut the cooker down after a cold-weather cook, lay a piece of aluminum foil between the dome and the base before you close it. Otherwise the gasket can freeze to itself, and you will be out there with a putty knife trying to open it.

Be social on social media

We spent a good stretch on the community side of this, and it was my favorite part of the conversation. Ron credits a list of people who helped him early, including Chris Sussman of The BBQ Buddha, Ray Lampe of Dr. BBQ, Mel from Dark Side of the Grill, and Chris Grove of Nibble Me This, and he tries to pay it back now. The message he says means the most is somebody telling him they were ready to sell their cooker, watched a few of his videos, and now the family comes over every Sunday.

His advice for anybody trying to grow: it is called social media, so be social on it. Go to other people’s pages, like their work, leave a real comment, and be yourself even if you are not everybody’s cup of tea. And do not gatekeep. He proved the point live. A friend had driven four and a half hours from Tampa that same afternoon, on his own dime, with a ribeye roll, just to help him film a holiday video the next day.

Where to find Captain Ron

His channel is Captain Ron Cooks on YouTube, and he is moving his other handles over to that name. He says he answers just about every question he gets, so if you have one, ask him. Ron, thank you for coming on, and this will not be your last appearance if I have anything to say about it.

If you missed the live show, the replay is up on YouTube and the audio version goes out on your favorite podcast app. And if you want to keep this conversation going with other people who take their backyard cooking seriously, come join us in the Backyard SmokeMaster Society. It is free, it is not on Facebook, and nobody there is going to tell you your questions are too basic. Get out there and put some smoke on something.

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