Bludso’s BBQ Cookbook Shows Kevin Bludso’s Big Personality in Book Form

Pitmaster, TV host, and restauranteur Kevin Bludso's book tells his story in detail. Plus: American Royal results, KC's Best BBQ, a Chili Espresso Steak recipe from The Grill Sisters, and more.

This week’s guest article is written by Monk, a native of North Carolina and co-founder of the Barbecue Bros blog. Along with his friends and fellow Barbecue Bros Speedy and Rudy, Monk has traveled around eating, rating, ranking, and reviewing barbecue joints since 2012. If you would like to write a guest article for The Smoke Sheet, please get in touch.

You may know pitmaster Kevin Bludso as a judge on two seasons of Netflix's Barbecue Showdown, competing in season 1 of BBQ Brawl, or perhaps from his ten appearances as a consulting chef on Bar Rescue. Before that, he made his name smoking barbecue in his hometown of Compton, California, at Bludso's BBQ. His namesake restaurant grew to as many as four locations around the Los Angeles area, and the operation maintains a strong reputation.

Bludso’s BBQ Cookbook is one of the most unique and personality-filled barbecue books released this year.

But as readers of Bludso's BBQ Cookbook: A Family Affair in Smoke and Soul (released earlier this year) will find out, this Californian is just as much influenced by the town of Corsicana, Texas. There, he spent summers working with and watching his "Granny" Willie Mae Fields, operate an illegal BBQ restaurant and juke joint out of her house. In addition to teaching Bludso how to cook barbecue "from the heart," Fields also helped feed and care for the community. Bludso still cooks briskets the same way his Granny taught him to this day.

Kevin Bludso has become a household name in the barbecue world, and he tells his life story in Bludso’s BBQ Cookbook.

Bludso begins his book by spending the first 30 pages telling that story and the story of his upbringing in the Watts neighborhood of Compton. Bludso came from a big family that influenced his barbecue journey. These important people include his Black Panther mother, his LAPD father, his Uncle Kaiser (who was an early barbecue teacher for his family), and his Aunt Beulah, who stepped in to raise his mom’s family when his grandmother was killed.