About BBQHQ

BBQHQ is a structured reference for cooking over fire: foods and the cuts they come from, cookers and how they move heat, fuels and smoke, methods, timings, food and fire safety, the traditions the techniques come from, and the relationships between all of them. It exists to answer “how do I cook this, on that?” properly — with a plan, a realistic time window, the safety guidance that applies where you are, and the sources behind all of it.

• Foods and cuts — what a piece of meat, fish or produce is, how it behaves over fire, and what the same cut is called in a different butchery system.
• Cookers and smokers — what each family can and cannot do, how it makes heat, and where its smoke comes from, which is not the same question.
• Methods and cooking guides — direct, indirect, low-and-slow, reverse sear, skewers, and what each is for.
• Safety — food, fire, carbon monoxide, gas, electrical and burns, kept as separate domains because they are separate risks with separate authorities.
• Troubleshooting — what went wrong, why, what to do now and how to avoid it next time.
• Flavour — sauces, rubs, glazes, smoke woods and pairings, each labelled with how it is known.
• Traditions — the live-fire cooking cultures the techniques belong to, kept specific rather than flattened into a generic barbecue.
• Tools and planners — for choosing a cooker, choosing a cook, and working backwards from the time you want to eat.

Every figure traces to a named source that somebody actually read. Where two authorities disagree, both are shown with their jurisdictions rather than averaged into a number neither of them published. Where nothing has been established, the page says so instead of estimating — which is why some foods here have a full time window and others have none.

Safety is treated separately from doneness throughout, because they are different questions with different authorities behind them, and food-safety guidance is jurisdictional: where BBQHQ holds no rule for your territory it tells you, rather than showing you somebody else’s and hoping.

It is not a recipe site. Recipes are a thin layer over a knowledge graph, and building them first is why most cooking sites cannot answer “what else can I do with this cut” or update a safety figure across their catalogue when a regulator changes one.

It is also not an AI-generated content farm. Where no source exists, the page says so rather than filling the space with something plausible.

And it cannot see your food. Cooking times depend on the piece in front of you — its thickness above all — and a thermometer in the thickest part is the only thing that settles doneness.

The catalogue currently holds 126 foods, 40 market cuts across 3 butchery systems, 11 cooker families, 6 methods, 10 live-fire traditions, 44 safety rules and 31 troubleshooting problems, built on 138 named sources.

Where a claim has no source, that is recorded rather than filled in: there are currently 56 open research gaps published alongside the answers.

• How we know things — the evidence policy.
• Sources — what each one may be cited for.
• What we don’t know — the open questions.

BBQHQ is published by HEKNO LTD, company number SC895711. Registered in Scotland. Registered office: Borthwick Farm Cottage, Gorebridge, EH23 4QZ, United Kingdom. It is one of the HEKNO reference products, and sits under HEKNO’s central privacy notice and terms.

If something here is wrong, tell us. Corrections are the messages this site most wants to receive.