From Chicago to BBQ Hall of Fame: The Story of Dr. BBQ

Ray, what did you want to be when you grew up?

As a child growing up outside of Chicago, my dream job was to be a radio DJ, but I wasn’t doing anything to head in that direction.

Toward the end of high school, I considered becoming a diesel mechanic. But then, a month out of high school, my father died, and he had a small trucking business.

So I jumped into his job at 18 years old because my family needed me to do that, and I ended up doing that for 25 years. It was a great career, and I really enjoyed it.

I understand that you learned to cook at a young age. Is that right?

I always enjoyed cooking and had signed up for a food class in high school, even though it was primarily geared toward girls at the time.

But all of a sudden, it was a different time, and guys were starting to sign up for these sorts of things.

They literally didn’t know what to do with us! We did it as a joke at first so that we could hang out with the girls and eat. But I liked to cook from day one.

So from 15 years old on, I would often cook dinner at home. I would make cakes; I learned how to make quiche and blueberry muffins. Simple stuff like that, but I always cooked.

When did BBQ become your passion?

While working in the trucking industry, I discovered my passion for barbecue as a hobby in 1982 when a friend signed us up for a BBQ rib cooking contest.

I was 25, I liked to cook, but I never cooked BBQ. I had to borrow a Weber kettle from someone. We went to the field in downtown Chicago, and we had coolers of beer, a grill with fire, and big chunks of meat, and there were 400 groups of mostly guys like us.

And I was like, these are my people because I like to cook, but I also like to hang out in the park, drink beer, and do nothing all day, and that’s what BBQ was. It just changed my life. It was my hobby for 20 years.

And you have to remember that in those days, to learn about a new cuisine, you couldn’t just Google it and become an expert in 20 minutes. I had to scrape and scratch to get any kind of info.

As I was learning about the BBQ cook-off world, I used to drive down to Kansas City, which was the closest place to Chicago that had a True BBQ culture to it.

So Friday at noon, I’d quit working and drive to Kansas City, which was a seven and a half hour’s drive. When I would get there, I would either go to a BBQ cook-off and cook or judge or just eat in a bunch of restaurants.

The BBQ society’s headquartered there, and I would go to their office. I was doing everything I could to learn about it. So yeah, it became my passion real quick.

So, how did you transition from trucking to barbecuing?

Eventually, the trucking business ran its course and wasn’t going to be there anymore. You know, nobody called the local cartage company anymore.

So I saw the writing on the wall and jumped into the BBQ thing, which was the other thing I knew how to do.

I’ve had this weird two-career life that both fit me very well. So, was it really my dream thing when I was a kid? Probably not, but it sure seems to be at this point! I look back, and I think I did what I was meant to do.

How did you get the name Dr. BBQ?

It was back in 1992 or 1993. I was really getting into the BBQ cook-off thing and needed a van to haul my stuff around.

So I bought a minivan, and just at the same time, Illinois started to allow vanity licence plates of more than three letters.

So I called them, and they sent me this card. I filled it out with my three choices and mailed it in. I don’t remember what my first choice was; I think BBQ Guy, BBQ King, or Mr. BBQ.

You know, those kinds of 5-6 letter things. And Dr BBQ was one of them, and that’s the plate they sent me. It was just a funny license plate for my van.

It never crossed my mind back then that it would stick and that 40 years later, it would be my brand, and I would trademark it and have it on many different things over the years. So it didn’t have a great start, but I managed it pretty well. I took advantage of it.

You won many awards over the years. Is there one in particular that means more to you than others?

Yes, there is — the Hall of Fame trumps everything. I mean, I basically don’t even talk about the other awards anymore.

Once you’re in the Hall of Fame, none of that other stuff holds a candle to it, so that’s that for me.

I also haven’t competed actively in a long time. I decided to get back into it a little bit, and I did win a couple of contests and did pretty well, but I didn’t have the time or the interest in going full bore with it, so it’s been probably 15 years since I actively cooked in the competition world. So those awards, frankly, are getting a little old.

I mean, I still get recognized here and there for things that I do, but once you’ve made it into the BBQ Hall of Fame, you’re sort of there.

So yeah, that changed everything for me. It was a pretty amazing thing to have happened. In my Hall of Fame speech, I was like, you work hard your whole life doing stuff.

And you think you have done pretty good. But you never really know who’s paying attention and acknowledging what you’re doing.

And when you get elected into the BBQ Hall of Fame, it’s a pretty safe bet that people understood what I was doing and see that I’ve accomplished this much.

It’s just so gratifying that you’ve been acknowledged. You know, winning a trophy for cooking a brisket? That’s fine, but that’s a black-and-white kind of thing.

With the Hall of Fame, your peers have acknowledged that you did a pretty good job, and it’s a lifelong thing.

If you could share one cooking tip with your fans, what would it be?

Patience. Don’t try to rush. That’s a mistake we make a lot in cooking, but it certainly doesn’t work in grilling and barbecuing.

If you determine something’s going to cook for two or three hours, it doesn’t always go that way. It may take five or six hours, but you also may take an hour to prep it.

The fire may take a little longer to get hot today, and it’s live fire cooking; we’re cooking with real fire; it’s not a microwave or an instant pot.

You have to roll with it a little bit, so it’s always best to start early and allow yourself some time. And also, you’re going to enjoy it more that way if you leave yourself some free time to sit there and enjoy the fire.

It’s going to take a little while to cook, and that’s OK. And then you get it just how you want it because there’s a thing we always say in BBQ: “It’s done when it’s done”, and it’s absolutely true!

Trying to rush things doesn’t work. So I think allowing yourself enough time to cook it properly is something that we have a hard time doing in today’s world.

We might say: “OK, I’ve got 3 hours to do this”, but it may not agree with you on that time frame. And that’s OK. So give yourself five hours, and if you get an extra hour, you’ll be lucky.

Can you tell us about some of your latest projects?

I’ve got four BBQ rubs that came out in March. One is a Chicago-style steak and chop seasoning. That one’s really good; it’s a home run. I love it! I use it all the time.

There’s another one that’s a Chicago-style Italian beef seasoning. I wanted to make this so I could simply dump it into the gravy.

Put X amount of it into the pot to make the perfect Italian beef gravy. But it also works great if you want your steak to have a bit of an Italian flavor with a little bit of herbs on there.

It’s also great for garlic bread. I’ve been finding myself smearing a baguette with butter, putting some of the seasoning on there and warming it up in the oven or on the grill, and it’s making excellent garlic bread.

I also have a hot chicken rub that I did years ago but never brought to market. Nashville Hot Chicken is a thing, and no one has really done a good grilling seasoning for hot chicken.

Frankly, like many things, we’ve sort of watered it down. If you go to the original hot chicken places in Nashville, it’s hot. You better have a couple of cold beers there because the first one may go fast.

And it’s intended to be hot. So to mellow that out into something that’s not hot doesn’t make sense to me. So my hot chicken seasoning is hot!

And then, last but not least, I made one that’s more of a traditional BBQ rub, and it’s two flavors that I love. In one of my old cookbooks, I made a recipe for Peachipotle BBQ sauce. Peaches and Chipotle, which is smoked jalapenos.

We had that BBQ sauce, we used it at the restaurant, and it may come back for sale one of these days. But I turned that same flavor profile into a seasoning. So Peachipotle is my sweet BBQ rub.

Would you like to share an event or anecdote from your BBQ career?

I don’t know where to go with this. I mean, there’s been a million situations that have just been, you know, hard to fathom that happened.

I think the amazing thing that has happened is that we have spread the word. While we thought we were just having fun, cooking some barbecue, and trying to make the better brisket than everybody else, somewhere along the way, we educated the public to the point where it’s pretty easy to talk to people about BBQ now.

Looking back at it all, it’s amazing that we just thought we were goofing around, and somehow those of us who have been doing it for a long time have changed the world.