Great Food, Great Craic
Viral videos in beautiful locations and that’s before you taste the BBQ. RUPERT BATES talks to Jim Moore, as the Northern Ireland fire cook and content creator launches his first book
This is a book where, to quote its Irish author, “You dog ear the pages and make wee notes.”
That’s the gritty glory of BBQ cookbooks. They may look good enough to eat when freshly minted off the press, but don’t let them gather dust as ornaments on the coffee table. Get dirty or go inside.
How to BBQ Everything is Jim Moore’s first book – hard to believe given his status in the live fire firmament, be it cooking at festivals and events, or creating, in partnership with his wife Rom, brilliantly inventive and paced social media reels, with the stunning mountains and seascapes of their Northern Ireland homeland the favoured backdrops.
You could argue the book title leaves little leeway to write a sequel, but judging from the quality of this tome there will be more. As well as everything, it is also pitched at everyone.
“I wanted a book that anyone, whatever their level of cooking, could tuck into, offering hints and tips and different processes to take your BBQ up a level,” says Jim.
It is very collaborative in its cooking too. It is not one of those didactic ‘do it my way or call the doctor/dentist/fire brigade’ books. “Someone might recognise a base recipe, but I can give them a few ideas to change and elevate. Don’t be afraid to do your own version and fold in the flavours and ingredients you like.”
It is what Jim does himself, albeit to a far more exalted level than most. Rarely cooking the same recipe twice, he might look at a cookbook, but then tweak it and go off on tangents, always looking to evolve and experiment with food and flavour.
“Also, while I naturally encourage people to barbecue outside, you can cook these recipes inside too.”
Any book is a formidable if exhilarating task, but when you are such a prolific cook as Jim Moore is, you must wonder where on earth to start – and finish.
“I had about 150 recipes scribbled up – on notepads, on my phone, or photos of restaurant menus from all over the world. Everywhere I go I am taking pictures, recording great dishes and working out what the chefs did to make them so memorable. Then I look to recreate something similar with a few twists.
Rom and I are both foodies and love cooking. We travel extensively and naturally seek out restaurants with fire the hero,” says Jim, lighting grills across the USA, Australia, Mexico, the Middle East and Europe.
There definitely needs to be a BBQ hall-of-fame category for grannies, who invariably are the original inspiration and loving mentors for chefs I speak to all over the world.
“I remember being dropped off at my grandmother’s house and her cooking on a wood-fired griddle. There was something magical about the creating and all the mixing bowls, before pancakes emerged covered in butter hot off the grill and handed to me,” says Jim, growing up just outside Belfast, which is still home.
“I think that was my cue to go away and leave her in peace! But I was mesmerised by the fire. As I got older, I was allowed to help with the mixing and the flipping, which kept us kids entertained.”
As a teenager, he worked in an American-style diner, exposing him to a whole new raft of cooking styles, techniques and flavours.
“I originally worked in the bar, but every time I was in the kitchen I was asking questions, chatting to chefs as they prepped and cooked, absorbing knowledge, and my love for food and cooking exploded. I also realised how incredibly hard they work.”
Some family barbecues as a child were the familiar stories of burnt burgers and raw sausages, but now Jim has his parents cooking quality BBQ food, understanding zones and temperatures.
“The child now teaching the parents! But also symptomatic of how live-fire cooking has been elevated right across the board, with everyone far more tuned in and aware of just what can be done. And, now our sons, Caidan and Orin, love to borrow a BBQ and take it down to the beach or to the top of a mountain.”
Jim and Rom are blessed with having a beautiful coastline to work with. “I may be biased but our scenery here in Northern Ireland is up there with the best in the world. I love to showcase our wee country when creating content, using ingredients unique to the area. We have fantastic produce here,” says Jim, a veteran of the BBQ competition circuit alongside Conor Dawson and the late Mick Duffy, with Smokin Yankees BBQ Belfast becoming two-time Irish champions.
Jim’s @onlyslaggin brand launched on social media in 2011, with slagging an Irish term for affectionate teasing, and his handle, across platforms, now has over two million followers.
“In Ireland, slagging is a bit of good-natured banter between mates. It is an ode to friendships and humour and embodies the joy of gathering around great food and having fun with loved ones,” writes Jim in the book introduction.
As well as taking his grill, table and storyboard to the mountains of County Antrim and County Down in his Land Rover Defender, Jim is blissfully happy cooking at home too, and very popular on his street, always asking if anyone is planning to hang out the washing, before he starts, with neighbours never going hungry on non-laundry days. Further afield, there are Texas tours alongside his great friend Elky Whittaker, The Smokin Elk, guiding guests to the best of US BBQ stateside.
Lockdown was brutal for many, but suddenly BBQ, with people forced to stay at home, was the go-to cooking in the hot weather, and for live-fire chefs like Jim there was content to create for brands, such as Kamado Joe, where Jim is an ambassador.
More recently, his content caught the attention of Gordon Ramsay, the buzz of celebrity engagement immediately tempered by Ramsay’s reputation for, well, a coarser definition of slagging.
“I was really nervous when I suddenly got messages about his post, where Gordon was commentating, almost frame by frame, on an old video of me making a steak sandwich, and I hadn’t seen it. What does he say? Watching it was the longest 90 seconds of my life, but Gordon was actually very impressed!”
His book does indeed cover everything, and my first dog ear was on the first recipe – smoky, sticky bacon-wrapped onion rings as a starter or side. As for his mac & cheese, that would start a fight not just a fire.
Before the food comes plenty of instruction: top tips, temperature, fuel, fire management, creating zones, the Fire Triangle, seasoning and smoking, rubbing and resting, not to mention his Flavour Profile Guide – a wagon wheel everyone should have beside the barbecue.
When it comes to the vegetable recipes there are, of course, potatoes, but my favourite is BBQ-seared leek barrels with smoky Romesco sauce. Pork (pulled pork with cider mop and tangy slaw please); seafood (scallops always get my vote, in this case soy-glazed with ginger and spring onion); lamb (try the Sunday roast recipe); chicken (pass the sticky peanut chicken skewers); beef (Texas inspired smoked brisket) – there are protein showstoppers across the chapters, and that’s before you get sweet with smoky grilled peaches with Cointreau and Rosemary. There’s a section on rubs, sauces and condiments too, as well as compound butters.
Throughout the recipes are nostalgic nods to place, where the inspiration came from and, as for Jim’s last BBQ on earth, it would have to be the simple pleasures of a tomahawk or ribeye steak on the North Antrim coast, adding some crushed potatoes and garlic butter.
“BBQ food hits all the senses and can stop you in your tracks. Where you are amplifies the emotive experience still further.”
One standout travel memory is eating in the Asian-inspired, wood-fired restaurant Noko in Nashville. “We ordered everything at the chef’s table, and it was the best meal I’ve ever had in my life. Every dish was amazing, pushing boundaries.”
Closer to home the Belfast food scene continues to hot up, such as the zany pizza creations by Flout! where Peter Thompson really does flout the rules to international acclaim.
Meanwhile, Jim is planning his own Irish road trip with his cookbook, before heading to Europe for collaborations with chefs. Should you see Jim grilling atop an Irish mountain, stop and say hi. There’ll be a bit of slagging, and, if you time it right, some of the best fire food you’ll ever taste.
How to BBQ Everything by Jim Moore (Ebury Press). Photography by Liz and Max Haarala Hamilton.
