Fire & Steel
Chronicles
Crafted in Smoke. Forged in Fire.
Behind-the-scenes stories, professional techniques, and lessons earned over 56 years at the fire. Twenty of those as a professional chef. The rest? Feeding family, hosting parties that neighbors still talk about, and never stopping learning. This is where experience meets instruction.
1.7M Views. Top 1% on r/BBQ & r/cooking.
Mike Riddle Chef
Five consecutive #1 posts. 1.7 million views across Reddit's BBQ and cooking communities. A 95.5%+ approval rating. Top 1% creator status in both r/BBQ and r/cooking.
Why this matters: Reddit doesn't hand out approval ratings. They tear apart anything that smells like BS. These communities embraced the techniques because they work — professional kitchen methods translated for home cooks who want real results.
This is what 56 years looks like when it finally gets documented. Every technique in these chronicles comes from the same foundation that earned the respect of 1.7 million people who don't give it easily.
Start Here
The chronicle that started it all.
Why I Built My Dream Smoker
After 15 years of fighting with store-bought smokers that couldn't hold temp, leaked smoke like sieves, and turned good meat into expensive mistakes, I decided to build exactly what I needed. Not what the market offered. Not what YouTube said was "good enough."
I've been cooking since I could reach the stove. 56 years. Not all of it professional — but all of it real.
Twenty years in professional kitchens taught me technique, timing, and what it means to execute under pressure. But the other 36? That's where the soul came from. Thanksgiving dinners with 30+ people in my house. Summer parties that went until 2am with neighbors still talking about them years later. Backyard cooks where I'd start the fire at sunrise and not stop plating until everyone had gone back for thirds.
These chronicles aren't content. They're not a marketing strategy. They're everything I know, finally written down. The smoker build I spent years perfecting. The Argentine techniques I flew to South America to learn. The cold smoking methods I've refined over three decades. The heat management approach that 1.7 million people couldn't stop sharing.
I'm putting it all here because I spent too many years learning the hard way — burning meat, wasting money on garbage equipment, and figuring things out through trial and error that someone could have just told me. Now I'm that someone.
If you're here, you're not looking for shortcuts. You want to actually understand why things work. You want to cook food that makes people stop talking and just eat. You want to stand at the fire and know exactly what you're doing.
Welcome to the Chronicles. Let's get to work.
See you at the fire.
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