Season 2 of TLC’s BBQ Pitmasters show premiers this Thursday August 12 at 10pm / 9pm in CST. I’ll be on the Rib Throwdown episode cooking with Bigmista’s BBQ.

The schedule on TLC’s website is a little confusing – it looks like the Pork Shoulder episode is leading off, so “my” episode may not be first, even though it was shot first. Tune in anyway readers, because lots of familiar face are featured this season.

UPDATE: Danielle Dimovski of DivaQ.ca informs me that our Rib Throwdown episode will air on September 2, 2010.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve been a media whore the past couple of months. In June, there was the appearance on KCRW’s Good Food radio show coverage of the Que’n For Kids BBQ contest, which you can podcast. Also from this event was Eddie Lin’s video of  me making a bacon explosion.

Then my pal Neil of Bigmista’s BBQ gets the front page of the LA Times Food section, and a quote of mine gets used in it. Through this article and the sidebar story on Neil’s favorite websites (ahem, one of them is mine), someone from San friggin Diego found out about my Smoking 101 class and enrolled. Talk about media reach!

Last week, my photo ran in the TV Guide because I auditioned in February for the new Gordon Ramsay show that premiered this past Tuesday. Although I didn’t make the final selection, the producers chose my photo for their media promo package.  The premise of this game show is 50 amateur cooks compete for the silly title of MasterChef and a $250,000 prize. No, I didn’t wanna be on your stupid Fox network show anyway! Thanks for nothing, Ramsay.

Cooking at the Los Angeles cattle call for MasterChef

Moving forward now, here’s the biggest secret – I’ll be on Season 2 of BBQ Pitmasters, backing up Bigmista along with our teammate Sylvie. We’re competing against three formidable opponents: Johnny Trigg, DivaQ, and Big Poppa Smokers.  The show let the cat out of the bag this week by releasing the preview video, so I guess it’s safe to say my team is featured without breaking the nondisclosure agreement. Tivo TLC on August 12, and you’ll see how we did.

According to the the Huffington Post and the New York Post, DiFara’s, the legendary Brooklyn pizza shop, has plans to open outposts in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Texas and Arizona. Am I excited? Hell yes. But also concerned that it won’t be the same thing.

The 42 year old  Dominick Demarco, Jr. has plans to expand on the pizza legend built by his father. But here’s the thing – in the Brooklyn shop, Dom Senior makes all the pizzas himself, and has for decades until recent years when his health hasn’t been so hot. Sure, the Grande cheese and the other ingredients matter, but Dom Senior is what makes DiFara’s so good. Can Dom Jr. teach all the minute steps in the pizza making process to someone else? We’ll see about that.

Also according the the NY Post story, the Baker’s Pride deck ovens used in Brooklyn will be replaced with Wood Stone gas and wood ovens in the new locations. The domed Wood Stones don’t cook the top of the pizzas in the same way as deck ovens. I don’t know what Junior is thinking, but he’s already changing what works.

The NY Post story claims that Dom Junior wants to alter the local water to chemically replicate New York City tap water. The myth that NY pizza or bagels can’t be produced outsite of New York is bullshit, and I proved it during my own bagel baking experiments. See also the fact that Joe’s Pizza in Santa Monica is just like the Joe’s Pizza in Greenwich Village.  Joe didn’t foist the NYC tap water lie – Joe himself moved to L.A. and taught his staff how to make the dough correctly.  The fact that Dom Junior is already pitching the water myth sounds like he’s setting up an excuse for failing to produce pizza like his old man’s.

So bring it, Junior. I can’t wait to try the pizza, and I’ll be the first one to say I was wrong if you pull this one off.

Here’s a terrific HD video made at the recent Que’n For Kids BBQ Contest by Deep End Diner Eddie Lin:

The Bacon Explosion from Ed Lin on Vimeo.

I never thought that bacon can actually “lighten” a dish as calorically dense as the bacon explosion, but it does. In case you don’t know about the Bacon Explosion, it’s a mat of woven bacon wrapped around the sausage encasing a core of crispy, cooked bacon. It was an internet phenomenon a couple years back and I’m finally getting around to making one and blogging about it.

Listen – if you’ve ever seen an uncooked Jimmy Dean chub, it’s a fat cylinder the diameter of a soup can. If I were to cook this chub as is, sliced it into rounds, and served it, it would be a dense, 3 inch disc of meat, fat and gristle. The way to lighten this dense disc, ironically, is to press out the sausage into a thin layer first, wrap it around a core of crisp, coarsely chopped bacon, and reform it into a log. The bacon in the center actually breaks up the dense texture of what would be a solid slug of sausage and makes it much more pleasant to eat.

Now that we’re clear on the definition of “light,” do these jeans make my ass look “fat?”