The Story Behind Own The Fire® | Mike Riddle | 56 Years of Fire
This Was Never Just a BBQ Brand
How 56 years of cooking, 20 years in professional kitchens, and 25 years building global brands taught me what this was actually supposed to be, and why a cease and desist letter was the best thing that ever happened.
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10,000 views and counting. Long format. No shortcuts. The full story of what live fire cooking actually looks like when you commit to doing it right.
How This Started
It all started around my Santa Maria rig.
A bunch of friends. Good food. Cold drinks. A couple of New York guys hanging around a fire, talking about technique and trading stories. I put up a video. 56,000 views.
I thought, okay, I'm onto something.
Then came Reddit. 1.7 million views. Top 1% status in both r/BBQ and r/cooking. Five consecutive number one posts. A duck recipe with no pictures hit number three all-time on r/cooking, 487K views, 94.5% approval rating.
The audience was telling me something. I just had to listen.
This Was Never Just a BBQ Brand
Look at what was actually resonating.
Beef Rib Pastrami. A 10-day cure. That's charcuterie, not BBQ. Whole Roasted Duck with a honey bath technique, 3 to 4 day dry cure, Peking style. That's classical French meets Chinese technique. The Complete Turkey System with wet brines, dry brines, compound butter, port wine gravy, and three different cooking methods. That's professional kitchen methodology. Rigatoni alla Vodka, 1,500 views in 12 hours on YouTube Shorts, 100% approval rating. That's Italian cuisine from my Executive Chef days.
I wasn't teaching people how to smoke brisket. I was teaching people how to cook.
The evolution was clear. Own The Fire®.
Whether you're inside at the stove, outside at the grill, or raking coals at 5am and throwing splits on for your brisket, you own the heat. You control it. That's the craft.
Own The Fire — What It Actually Means
Fire isn't just the grill. Fire is the burner under your pasta water, the oven roasting your duck, the smoker turning brisket into pastrami, and the heat source you control every time you cook.
Own The Fire means mastering heat. Understanding when to go high, when to go low, when to pull, when to rest. It's not about equipment. It's about control.
Steel is the tools. The knives. The pans. The grates. The equipment that becomes an extension of your hands.
Fire and steel together is cooking. That's the whole craft. This was never supposed to be just a BBQ brand. It was supposed to be a culinary brand. The evolution made that clear.
Three Careers. One Education.
People ask how I can teach across so many styles, Italian, BBQ, charcuterie, live fire, comfort food, professional technique. It's because I've lived all of it.
56 years at the fire. Started cooking before I could see over the stove. Family meals for 30+ people at Thanksgiving since my twenties. Summer parties that went until 2am. A lifetime of feeding people I love.
20 years in professional kitchens. Dishwasher at 15 in a pizzeria. Worked my way up through prep, line, sous, to Executive Chef at a high-end Italian restaurant in New York. Everything from scratch. Plated with precision. Service after service.
25 years building global brands. When the restaurant purchase fell through, I pivoted into promotional marketing. Fortune 500 accounts. Every city meant new techniques to study, regional flavors to understand, local joints to discover. Then South America to learn Argentine asado and Brazilian churrasco from generational pitmasters.
These aren't three separate careers. They're one education.
What Reddit Actually Validated
When my content hit Reddit, 1.7 million views and Top 1% in both r/BBQ and r/cooking, it wasn't because I had better BBQ tips than everyone else.
It was because professional kitchen technique translated for home cooks is rare.
The duck post hit number three all-time on r/cooking. No pictures. Just technique. 487K views, 94.5% approval rating. That's not a BBQ audience. That's a cooking audience. Reddit validated what I should have seen from the beginning: people are hungry for real technique from someone who's actually done it. Not influencer content. Not affiliate-driven reviews. Actual education from an actual chef.
The Corporate Career That Made This Possible
Twenty-five years of Fortune 500 marketing taught me things I never would have learned in a kitchen.
How to build a brand, not just create content. Most food creators are doing promotion, viral moments that don't build lasting value. I'm building a brand. Consistent quality. Long-term trust. Education that compounds.
How to systematize knowledge. The Complete Turkey System isn't a recipe. It's a system. Brine, rub, butter, cook, rest, gravy. Each layer builds on the one before. That's how I was trained to think in corporate: processes that scale, not one-off wins.
How to think long-term. Viral moments fade. Trust compounds. I'm not chasing views. I'm building something that lasts.
The corporate career funded the passion. But more importantly, it gave me the skills to turn passion into something sustainable.
What Own The Fire Actually Is
It's not BBQ education. It's culinary education.
The Chef's Notebook has 100+ recipes across every category. Mains, appetizers, soups, sides, desserts, rubs, sauces, and cured and smoked. The Fire & Steel Chronicles teach the thinking behind the technique, the why that makes you a better cook, not just a better recipe-follower. This is what 56 years of cooking looks like when it finally gets organized and shared.
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The Lesson
Twenty-five years of building global brands taught me that the best brands aren't invented. They're discovered.
I didn't create Own The Fire. I found it. By paying attention to what resonated, what I actually loved teaching, and where my 56 years of experience could make the biggest difference.
A Santa Maria rig. A group of friends. A 56,000-view video that said keep going. That's how this started. Everything since has been the evolution.
See you at the fire.
Chef Mike Riddle
Founder | Own The Fire®
Command the Flame. Rule the Craft. Own The Fire®.