BBQ Talk With Captain Ron: Stories, Tips, and Live Q&A

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpPDCYHGReY

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 Ne