If you’ve often thought the food at your barbecue was good enough to stamp your name on our guess is it costs a lot less than you think. For a very reasonable $14.95 you can have your own personal aluminum branding iron complete with 55 changeable letters and 8 blank spaces on a two line track. So not only can you remind folks who grilled their food you can also use your new branding iron to burn in customized messages for special events like ‘Happy Birthday’ or for special …

Tim Cuprisin of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provides us with a great interview of Food Network’s Bobby Flay. Cuprisin has a relaxed conversation with Flay and is able to cover a wide range of topics including-

Flay’s becoming a celebrity chef (back then cooking wasn’t cool)
The evolution and direction of the Food Network
The controversy he unknowingly created by standing on his cutting board in his Iron Chef battle against Morimoto.
On how nowadays ‘real men’ have become ‘ok’ with home cooking
Much respect for Julia Child
And not so much for Guy Fieri, …

63% of you prefer Bobby Flay?
If you’ve read KW for any length of time you know we’re very cynical about . . . well most things really. So generally speaking when companies conduct their own consumer surveys (95% polled love Kitchen Warfare, 3% can’t read, 4% can’t count) we tend to take them with a grain of salt. But that doesn’t mean we don’t like to read and ponder.
So up for roasting today is the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association’s (HPBA) national consumer poll on backyard barbecuing. After all …

Yep its time once again to pick the best Chinese restaurant in America. Actually since this is the 5th year and the contest starts in February and ends with an announcement the following January there doesn’t seem to be much time that we’re NOT picking the Top 100 Chinese Restaurants. But no matter everyone loves a contest, especially one that serves everyone’s self-interests. Restaurant owners get to remind us of who and where they are, we get to see what other people think of them and maybe just maybe …

Some of the best recipes and food related stories come from the local news. While we don’t know exactly where YOU live, here are a few local stories from across the world that caught our eye last week.

In Storm Lake, Iowa, Pilot-Tribune Editor Dana Larsen compares fast food to ‘grocery food’ by eating nothing but for two weeks (each).

In the Rapid City Journal (South Dakota), Tanya Manus claims that beets are one secret to a moist and delicious chocolate cake and she backs it up with a easy recipe.

In …

It’s back for a 4th season and this time network heavyweight Bobby Flay is on the selection committee full time. Also on the line up this season are guest judges Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray, Giada De Laurentiis, Alton Brown, Cat Cora, Sandra Lee, Gina and Pat Neely, Masaharu Moriomto, Tyler Florence, Michael Symon and Season Two winner Guy Fieri.
Challenges this season include everything from a late night race through Manhattan to teaming up with the Girl Scouts to fix healthy meals.
Also Food Network will allow online voting in …

Here’s an interview (of sorts) with one of our favorite TV Chefs, Masaharu Morimoto the 3rd and perhaps best known Iron Chef Japanese from the original Iron Chef (Japan). Morimoto speaks of experience as an Iron Chef and his cooking style in general.
Also in case you haven’t heard, the original Iron Chef will be returning to television on May 5th at 11pm courtesy of the Fine Living Network.

There is a great article written by Linda Shaprio on Slate critiquing Gordon Ramsay’s (him again!?) new book ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food’ in which Ramsay like so many celebrity chefs attempts to convince that the only difference between your cooking and theirs is a few tips and recipes ultimately worth about $25.
Shaprio writes-
Fantasy has always played a big part in beat-the-clock cookbooks; in fact, the category relies on it, as Ramsay’s book makes clear. Despite the shopping lists, the step-by-step directions, the time-saving tips, and the authors who insist …

Do you KNOW that you could mop the floor with the chefs on Bravo’s smash hit cooking competition series?
Well no, some of those pointy haired folks are pretty slick but if YOU do Bravo is inviting you to try out for the next season of their hit cooking reality show Top Chef. If you’ve never seen it, Top Chef is by far the most cerebral of the popular cooking reality shows. If you’ve been soured by Hell’s Kitchen which is more about the yelling (fun its own way) …

Food Network announced today that Michael Symon will replace fired host Robert Irvine on “Dinner: Impossible”
Symon won last years Next Iron Chef competition and appears on Iron Chef America. Food Network will begin taping new episodes this week to air later this summer. The new show will be one hour.
According to the AP Symon said-
“I’m really looking forward to the challenges that are going to be thrown my way and nothing gets me more pumped than someone telling me that something is ‘impossible’”.
Associated Press Story