Biographies of professional and amateur chefs:

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Meet the BBQ Guru - Kevin Taylor the resident Chef at RecipeGoldmine. I asked Kevin to let us have a little bit of information about how he gained his love of cooking.

Kevin has all ready let us have some of his articles to feature on Hub-UK and there will be more to follow. You will also find a lot more of them at RecipeGoldmine Don't forget to pay a visit to the website (click here). The recipes and articles which will be featured on Hub-UK are only a small sample.

I was born and raised in Negaunee, Michigan, a small town in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula. My wife, Lynne, and 11-year old Katie and 5 year old Kurt and I now reside in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

I attended the 'Hangin’ Around the Kitchen, Lookin’ Over Mom’s Shoulder' School of Cooking - the largest cooking school in the country. Mom was from a large Italian family and Nona, her mother, handed down all the Italian recipes from the Old Country. Subsequently, I was trained in the art of Northern Italian cooking.

After leaving home and getting married, I expanded my cooking portfolio and was attracted to classic French cuisine with their rich sauces and pastries. These were the type of recipes that took several hours to prepare and were very rich. About 60 pounds later, we started our family. The cooking really changed - have you ever tried serving Beef Wellington to kids? So, it was back to the more "traditional" meals - McDonald’s, peanut butter and jam, the famous Italian, Chef Boyardee, etc.

Through this whole period of time, grilling was always one of my favorite ways to prepare food.

I started smoking meats about fifteen years ago. The initial focus was on perfecting some homemade beef jerky recipes. Prior to this, I had made in the oven and in various dehydrator's but just wasn't happy with the outcome. I purchased a small inexpensive smoker that ran on electricity and had a variable temperature control and allowed me to use various woods to apply a natural smokey flavor. Just the ticket!! Thus started my outdoor cooking career.

It didn't take long to start experimenting with other meats and dishes. I also broadened my experiences with my kettle charcoal grill and also the new gas grill we had purchased. After several years on these units I became expert in their functionality and have probably cooked about every dish imaginable on those grills. It is not unusual for our family to not turn the oven on for many weeks over the summer months. Everything you cook in the oven can be done on the grill.

My smoking experience culminated several years ago when I happened upon a group of folks who traveled around the country cooking at various BBQ contests. My curiosity was peaked enough that I became a BBQ judge for several of these events. I finally stepped in and have been competing over the last few years. My BBQ experiences have also encouraged me to attend several chili cook-offs as well.

These experiences have further honed my BBQ capabilities and I now make a pretty good batch of ribs, chicken and beef. We travel around the Midwest in the summer months and head south for the winter months where we cook on a different BBQ circuit.

I have been featured in many newspapers and television stations around the upper Midwest and have taught several community classes on grilling. I have served as a local expert in all the communities I have lived where my mission is to spread the word on how to properly cook good BBQ. I now have several cookers and grills that help me to continue on the cutting edge of BBQ

If you would like to visit the RecipeGoldmine website click here