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http://www.chicagobusiness.com/arti...ingribs-into-one-of-the-nations-top-bbq-sites
How Meathead turned AmazingRibs into one of the nation's top BBQ sites
By H. Lee Murphy November 15, 2014
Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn of AmazingRibs.com
Credit: John R. Boehm
Barbecuers can turn to dozens of new cookbooks each year, hundreds of blogs, competing TV shows starring celebrity chefs and nationwide tours of cooking contests and tasteoffs, some paying serious money to winners. Then there's Craig Goldwyn.
Mr. Goldwyn, 65, runs AmazingRibs.com, a website he manages from his home in suburban Brookfield, where his backyard is populated by some two dozen grills in constant states of experimentation. The site, where he's known as Meathead, began on a whim in 2005 and has mushroomed into a serious small business, generating 3 million page views a month, enough to rank it among the top 25 food websites in the nation.
Mr. Goldwyn has a small cadre of employees laboring on his site and devising recipes and testing gear. Recently he even hired a camera crew and started a video cooking series to run online.
Revenue, mostly from advertising and referrals to vendor sites, has surpassed $500,000 annually. “I've become a classic Internet success story,” Mr. Goldwyn says. “I'm doing what so many bloggers want to do. I get up in the morning and put on an old T-shirt and walk down the stairs to work. When I'm tired of work I can take a walk around the block if I feel like it. I'm living the dream.”
HOW TO RUIN BBQ
It's a carefully calculated dream. Mr. Goldwyn has positioned himself as a sort of Consumer Reports of barbecuing, putting equipment and grilling practices to the test, with no fear of being heretical.
He's been preaching to audiences on food and wine for years. A native Chicagoan, Mr. Goldwyn got a degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago but went to work in the mid-1970s as a wine buyer for the Foremost Liquors chain. He wrote a wine column for Chicago Tribune before starting his own publication, the International Wine Review, which ran through the 1980s. When America Online was just an infant, he began writing online reviews of wine and food. Mr. Goldwyn has employed Ph.D. scientists to debunk a long list of barbecuing truisms.
For years, backyard cooks were taught to boil ribs before roasting to make them tender, but he has proved that water robs meat of flavor and vitamins and turns it mushy. The old phrase “so tender that it's falling off the bone” was thought to be the goal of any grillmaster, but Mr. Goldwyn has shown that the best rib meat retains some chew and, in fact, does not fall off the bone.
His contrarian approach has won legions of fans. “Most blogs are all about ego and about peoples' opinions,” says Barry Sorkin, chef-owner of barbecue restaurant Smoque BBQ in Chicago's Irving Park neighborhood, who has followed Mr. Goldwyn for years as a fan. “Craig is different. He looks for real answers to serious questions. People will argue that barbecue cooking is a magical process. He's brought science to it.”
How Meathead turned AmazingRibs into one of the nation's top BBQ sites
By H. Lee Murphy November 15, 2014
Credit: John R. Boehm
Barbecuers can turn to dozens of new cookbooks each year, hundreds of blogs, competing TV shows starring celebrity chefs and nationwide tours of cooking contests and tasteoffs, some paying serious money to winners. Then there's Craig Goldwyn.
Mr. Goldwyn, 65, runs AmazingRibs.com, a website he manages from his home in suburban Brookfield, where his backyard is populated by some two dozen grills in constant states of experimentation. The site, where he's known as Meathead, began on a whim in 2005 and has mushroomed into a serious small business, generating 3 million page views a month, enough to rank it among the top 25 food websites in the nation.
Mr. Goldwyn has a small cadre of employees laboring on his site and devising recipes and testing gear. Recently he even hired a camera crew and started a video cooking series to run online.
Revenue, mostly from advertising and referrals to vendor sites, has surpassed $500,000 annually. “I've become a classic Internet success story,” Mr. Goldwyn says. “I'm doing what so many bloggers want to do. I get up in the morning and put on an old T-shirt and walk down the stairs to work. When I'm tired of work I can take a walk around the block if I feel like it. I'm living the dream.”
HOW TO RUIN BBQ
It's a carefully calculated dream. Mr. Goldwyn has positioned himself as a sort of Consumer Reports of barbecuing, putting equipment and grilling practices to the test, with no fear of being heretical.
He's been preaching to audiences on food and wine for years. A native Chicagoan, Mr. Goldwyn got a degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago but went to work in the mid-1970s as a wine buyer for the Foremost Liquors chain. He wrote a wine column for Chicago Tribune before starting his own publication, the International Wine Review, which ran through the 1980s. When America Online was just an infant, he began writing online reviews of wine and food. Mr. Goldwyn has employed Ph.D. scientists to debunk a long list of barbecuing truisms.
For years, backyard cooks were taught to boil ribs before roasting to make them tender, but he has proved that water robs meat of flavor and vitamins and turns it mushy. The old phrase “so tender that it's falling off the bone” was thought to be the goal of any grillmaster, but Mr. Goldwyn has shown that the best rib meat retains some chew and, in fact, does not fall off the bone.
His contrarian approach has won legions of fans. “Most blogs are all about ego and about peoples' opinions,” says Barry Sorkin, chef-owner of barbecue restaurant Smoque BBQ in Chicago's Irving Park neighborhood, who has followed Mr. Goldwyn for years as a fan. “Craig is different. He looks for real answers to serious questions. People will argue that barbecue cooking is a magical process. He's brought science to it.”
