OWN THE FIRE® · The Craft
From Executive Chef Mike Riddle
How a twenty-year executive chef thinks about a cook.
Most cooking content teaches you what to cook. The Craft teaches you how to actually cook it.
The Craft teaches how chefs think. The Chef's Notebook is what they cook from.
That difference is everything. Two decades of professional service taught me that heat, timing, and restraint matter more than another recipe ever will.
Here you will find complete cooks, fire management, and the techniques that separate restaurant cooking from recipe following. A ten-day pastrami cure. A whole duck and the honey bath every French chef knows and nobody talks about. What the vodka is actually doing in the pan. Every piece is here for one reason, to explain the decision behind the cook. Free to watch. Free to print. No signup.
Those techniques have reached more than 2.2 million people and earned Top 1% status on r/Cooking.
Scroll through. Watch the cooks. If you find yourself wanting the written sheets behind them, there is a door at the bottom of this page.
These are not recipes assembled from other recipes. Every technique here was earned behind the line, in kitchens where every plate had to be right, every service.
If you have ever wondered why the same dish comes out of a professional kitchen better than it comes out of yours, that gap is what this page is about.
Real technique. Real reasoning. No shortcuts.
Every cook below teaches one professional technique.
A Round of Applause for the Asador. The Title You Earn at the Fire.
¡Un aplauso para el asador!
In Argentina, the asado is not a cookout. It is an hours-long ritual, and the asador is its undisputed hero. The one who wakes early for the best cuts. The one who stands in the smoke and patiently commands the coals so everyone else can enjoy the day.
When the final cut hits the table, the meal ends the way it always ends. With a round of applause for the asador.
That title is not bought. It is earned at the fire, over years. This is the story of earning it.
Full Cook · 13+ Minutes · Live Fire Multi-Protein Asado
This is traditional Argentine asado. Multiple proteins, one fire, hours of managing heat and timing to bring everything together at the perfect moment.
Wagyu Picanha. Tomahawk ribeye. Seven-bone plate rib. Each cut demands different technique. This cook shows how they all come together over live fire on a Santa Maria grill the way the asador tradition was built to do it.
Fire & Steel Chronicles Vol. 4 · Own The Fire®
The fire management behind this cook, the heat zones, the timing, and the reason each cut comes off when it does, is written down in The Chef's Notebook.
Fourteen Pounds. Five Hours Over Live Fire. One Iron Cross.
Full Cook · Asado a la Cruz · Argentine Vacío on the Iron Cross
Fourteen pounds of Argentine vacío goes on the iron cross with Maldon salt and nothing else. The thick end goes down. The fat faces the fire. From there it is slow radiant heat and patience while the rest of the asado comes together around it.
As the vacío renders, the drippings fall straight into the cast iron below and the potatoes cook in beef tallow. Salmuera keeps the surface honest through the long hours. Then, after five hours over the fire, we make the cut.
Professional recipes, techniques and dishes from behind the line.
The iron cross and the Santa Maria running this cook were built in the shop. See the custom grill and asado fabrication work.
Cochinillo with Wagyu Tri-Tip. Skin That Shatters When You Bite It.
Full Cook · 14:26 of Live Fire · Asado a la Cruz
This is not backyard BBQ. This is traditional Argentine asado. A whole suckling pig butterflied and mounted on an iron cross, cooked low and slow over live fire for hours until the skin goes to glass.
Paired with Wagyu tri-tip finished over the coals. Two proteins. One fire.
Fire & Steel Chronicles · Own The Fire®
The suckling pig is not in The Chef's Notebook. The fire control behind it is, on every main in there, with the temperature, the doneness cue, and the reason.
A cure that runs nearly three weeks. Cherry wood smoke. Bourbon brown sugar glaze.
Full Process · Nearly Three Weeks of Real Curing · Reverse Flow Smoker
This is a real cured and smoked ham built over nearly three weeks. Wet cure brine, pink curing salt, full ham injection, hung in a reverse flow smoker over cherry wood, finished with a bourbon brown sugar glaze.
No shortcuts. No pre-cooked center. The kind of ham that earns a spot at the table because the technique earned it.
The ham is not in The Chef's Notebook. The cure work is. Beef rib pastrami, duck pastrami, pancetta, salami, bacon, and salmon pastrami, every sheet with the salt weighed and a safety block on it.
Quebracho coals, Patagonia rub, and a hot honey lime butter wrap.
Two Racks · Four Hours Over Live Fire · Quebracho Lump
Ibérico pork ribs are not a substitute for St. Louis or baby backs. They are their own animal. The fat marbles deep into the muscle instead of sitting in a cap on top of it, so it renders cleaner and it renders faster, and that one fact drives every decision on this sheet.
Seasoned with Patagonia from Ember & Salt Co., rosemary, smoked fleur de sel and aji amarillo. Finished with a Lady Bug hot honey lime butter wrap that turns the foil into a sauce you pour back over the meat before anything gets sliced.
Free PDF · No signup · Built to print
This sheet is built to the same standard as every page in The Chef's Notebook. Same layout, same print-first format, same reasoning behind every step. This one is free. There are a hundred more.
The Ten-Day Cure That Changed Everything.
Ten-Day Cure · Pepper-Coriander Bark · Smoke Ring
Pastrami is a technique, not a cut. Delis run it on navel because it is cheap and it holds up to a long brine. Plate ribs take the same treatment and give you what the deli case never has, which is bone.
Three numbers, and each one has a reason. You brine long because the meat is thick and the cure has to travel in from both faces. You smoke to 160°F and stop, because past that the surface tightens and the meat stops accepting smoke. You steam-braise to 203°F, because collagen does not break down below about 200°F and getting there in open smoke would dry the bark to leather before the inside went soft.
That is what the sheet gives you. Not the sequence. The reason behind every number in it.
Beef Rib Pastrami is one of six cures in The Chef's Notebook. Duck pastrami, pancetta, salami, bacon and salmon pastrami are written the same way, with the salt weighed and a safety block on every sheet.
Watch The Full Cook
Full Process · Ten Days of Curing · Stout Steam Finish
No pictures. Just technique. The post that proved people want the real method, not the polished feed.
How to roast a whole duck with crispy skin every time. The restaurant method.
Three-to-Four Day Dry Cure · Honey Bath · Peking-Style Finish
The three to four day dry cure is not optional. Neither is the honey bath, and that one takes sixty seconds. Everything people try instead of these two is a shortcut, and a shortcut is how you end up with rubber.
The cure runs with salt and a daily rotation. The bath tightens the surface into a lacquer that air-dries tight enough to shatter. The trim comes off before any of it and gets rendered down to tallow, because nothing on a duck gets thrown away.
That is what the sheet gives you. Not the sequence. The reason behind every step in it.
Whole Roasted Duck sits in Main Dishes & Proteins in The Chef's Notebook, alongside the Santa Maria leg of lamb, the coffee-rubbed tri-tip and the grilled lobster tail. Every main carries a wine pairing and the reason behind it.
Watch The Full Cook
Full Process · Honey Bath Method · Restaurant Peking Technique
The dish everyone gets wrong. Done right.
Cold-pan pancetta, a real flambé, and pasta that never touches a colander.
Cold-Pan Render · Real Flambé · No Colander
Most vodka sauce recipes treat the vodka as a garnish. Splash it in, cook it off, move on. That misses what it is there for.
Alcohol is a solvent. It reaches aroma compounds in tomato that water and fat both leave behind, and it is volatile enough to carry them into the air while you eat. That works whether or not you ever strike a match.
What the flame does is narrower than people claim. It burns the harsh surface vapor off in seconds instead of the several minutes a simmer needs, and it browns the surface slightly while it goes. Speed and a little sugar development. That is the honest version, and it is still the difference between sauce and tomato cream.
Everything else on the sheet is restraint. Cold pan, patient fond, no colander. Restaurant kitchens almost never drain pasta, because the sauce is the final cooking liquid, not a topping poured over at the end.
Free PDF · No signup · Built to print
The Craft teaches how chefs think. The Chef's Notebook is what they cook from. Same standard, same reasoning behind every step, a hundred more sheets.
Watch The Masterclass
Full Technique Breakdown · Vodka Flambé Method · Restaurant Pasta
Three live fire turkey methods. Two brine techniques. One guide, from prep to carve.
Rotisserie Method · Wet Brine · Compound Sage Butter
Whether you are spinning a bird over live fire, smoking low and slow, or grilling hot and fast, the fundamentals do not move. Proper turkey brine. Compound butter under and over the skin. Pull early. Wrap and hold.
Pull the bird at 155 to 160°F in the thickest part of the breast, then wrap it and let it sit. Carryover takes it the rest of the way to a finished 165°F. The hold is not resting time you can skip, it is part of the cook. Pull at 165 and it climbs past it while it rests, and that is how a breast goes dry.
Spun over live fire with compound sage butter under and over the skin. Even render, crisp finish, juicy interior.
Spatchcocked and air-dried 24 to 48 hours. Low and slow over smoke. Compound butter under the skin. Deep flavor, even cook.
Two-zone indirect heat. Hot and fast for crisp skin and tender meat without the smoker commitment.
Own The Fire® · The Chef's Notebook
Open the Notebook. One payment. Yours permanently.
Beef Rib Pastrami, 213K views on r/FoodPorn. Whole Roasted Duck, 511K on r/Cooking. The Iron Cross Suckling Pig. The full asado on a Santa Maria grill. None of it is a fluke. It is twenty years of professional kitchen technique, earned behind the line, written down the way it actually gets cooked.
Everything on this page is a window into one library. Appetizers, soups, mains, sides, sauces, fire foundations, cured and smoked, and desserts. The temperature, the doneness cue, the mistake to avoid, and the reason behind every step.
White page, no photography eating the layout, type sized to read at arm's length. Print it, get it dirty, print it again.
Multi-chapter guides that turn one cook into meals for days. The whole lamb. The complete turkey, all three methods.
Beef rib pastrami, duck pastrami, pancetta, salami, bacon, salmon pastrami. Salt weighed, safety block on every sheet.
Not a bottle name dropped at the end. The pairing and the reason it works against what is on the plate.
100+ Recipes · 8 Categories · Yours Permanently
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