Food Network Magazine - (06)June 2020

ou learn a lot about yourself, and

your family, when you spend

insane amounts of time quarantined

together. Now that cookout season

has arrived, my husband finally knows the

truth: I have never, or at least not once in

my married life, lit the grill. He realized

this one recent night during our lockdown

when he was on a conference call and

asked me to get dinner going. We have a

Weber Kettle grill, which seems to take

forever to light and involves newspaper,

a chimney starter and I’m not sure what

else, and I had to admit that I didn’t know

how to do it. I’m basically a modern-day

’50s cliché: I leave the messy business of

charcoal and fire for Wylie, the man of

the house, and I play the part of the dutiful

wife, handling the appetizers, side dishes,

dessert, cocktails, table-setting...you know,

the other 90 percent of the meal.

I’m not alone here. Setting aside the

success of some amazing women pitmasters

(check out their stories—and recipes—on

page 58) and our own test kitchen barbecue

whiz Melissa Gaman, there is

still a pretty serious gender

divide at the grill. When we

polled our readers about their

cookout habits, they reported

way more men in charge of

versus 37 percent). Honestly, we don’t

care who’s searing the food at your place—

we just want it to be easy and fun, so we

created a month’s worth of grilling recipes

on page 34. You’ll find an idea for every day

in June, and I hope the story will inspire you

to try something new.

Like many of you, I’ve been powering

through this insane time by cooking—

a lot—and I’ve never been so happy to get

to grilling season. Planning a miniature

family cookout for four, lighting some

outdoor lanterns, eating outside at the

picnic table...all of this makes me feel like

life is sort of back to normal. To that end,

I figure I should do my part to make our

cookouts feel like old times: Wylie can light

the grill.

Maile Carpenter

Editor in Chief

@maile__fnmag

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12 FOOD NETWORK MAGAZINE ●JUNE 2020

CHARCOAL: LEVI BROWN. CARPENTER PORTRAIT: TRAVIS HUGGETT.

editor’s letter

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o's Grillin

grilling than women (63 percent

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