There are hobbies for the masses and hobbies very few learn to enjoy. When looking at its history, barbecue has been something that few people would even try for several reasons. The most significant reason is that few people are willing to stay up long nights tending a fire as they cook low and slow for 12-18 hours. In years past, this eliminated ninety percent of all people from cooking barbecue. The second reason is that of the remaining ten percent that try to cook barbecue. They end up ruining significant, expensive cuts of meat because it is difficult for a beginner to control fire to maintain a clean burn and proper temperatures, all while knowing what to do with the meat and when it is done cooking. After staying up all night without sleep and seeing less than desirable results with the food they cook, ninety-eight percent of the remaining ten percent give up and never cook barbecue again. Then you have the remaining one-thousandth of a percent of those who stuck through all the trials, learn small tricks along the way while actually enjoying the failures of one night's cook and seeing progress from previous failures now being successful. Slowly, the barbecue begins to get better and better until one day, that person finds they are a full-blown pitmaster, and the entire town's taste buds light up at the sound of hearing their name. Real pitmasters are few and far between, and some regions have no pitmasters at all.

However, none of the above is true today to an extent. Yes, it was all true until recent years, and I learned the art of barbecue, just as you have read above. Today, however, technology and the internet have changed barbecue as we know it. Before 2010, there were very few barbecue cooks compared to 2024. A Discovery Channel show called BBQ Pitmasters altered the world of barbecue. This show featured several competition barbecue teams cooking at Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned barbecue competitions, which made for great TV, and people took notice of this thing called barbecue. By 2011, with barbecue and the internet gaining popularity, more and more pitmasters were willing to share time-honored secrets learned, some passed down for generations. There was a growing interest in barbecue coupled with the increased and easily accessible knowledge of how to do so. The results showed that barbecue was gaining popularity for cooks and not just for those who ate it at dinner time. While they had been around a long time but were not inexpensive, by 2016 or so, pellet cookers like Pit Boss Cookers were brought to mainstream box stores with budget-friendly options for everyday families to put in backyards everywhere. These pellet cookers will self-maintain temperature throughout the night so you can sleep. For this reason, along with the rise of other assistance tools and the internet coupled with a show that made barbecue cool and exciting, we have the rise of the backyard cook.

Some barbecue cooks, after learning, may even decide to sell the automatic pellet cooker and learn to cook barbecue with wood and fire. Only when one can cook a large cut of meat using wood and fire, without modern gadgets, automatic cookers, or even temperature gauges, can one be called a pitmaster. To look at the smoke, the coals, and the wood fueling the fire, listening to the drippings of rendered fat falling from the meats, feeling the heat by hand, and knowing everything is cooking as it should is truly a great feeling. You are a genuine pitmaster when you can do that and produce delicious food using these processes!

So consider learning the art of cooking barbecue, and you might find your next passion in life!