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For three seasons on FX's The Bear, actor and comedian Joel McHale portrayed an abusive chef so realistically that it was triggering to real-life kitchen workers. But aside from one short stint working at a Seattle deli under a manager with an incredibly short fuse ("This guy was a screamer—and he was fired," McHale says), the kitchen has been a place of joy for McHale.
“If I'm home, I'm the cook,” says McHale, who also hosts the Fox cooking competition series Crime Scene Kitchen and is a spokesperson for Seattle's Best Coffee. "I am very good at cooking meat.” In fact, he tells me he has plans immediately following our interview to roast a couple of chickens for guests he has joining him for dinner.
Last year, in what McHale calls “one of his finest cooking moments,” he got to show off his steak-searing skills as a guest on restauranteur and chef (and friend) David Chang's Netflix show, Dinner Time Live. “I was not expecting you, on live TV, to actually cook a beautiful steak," Chang said on the show. "And I'm wrong."
Below, McHale shares some of the tools and gear he uses to master the grill as well as the pantry items he always keeps stocked.
A monster smoker
McHale takes his meat smoking seriously—and that means using some pretty serious tools. “I have a Pitts and Spitts, a brand out of Texas, which is as tough as a Sherman tank," he says. “I can smoke a pork tenderloin like nobody's business, and a few months ago I made a chateaubriand.”
Other favorite recipes in McHale's rotation: "For Thanksgiving, I smoked a bunch of tri-tips. Two nights ago I made this dish where I take a whole chicken breast with the skin and part of the bone, then season them up a little bit, sear the outsides off, and then I put them into a tomato and Iberico ham sauce.”
Instructions from an all-star
For burgers, McHale says he uses Gordon Ramsay's burger blend method—a 70/20/10 ratio, with 70% chuck steak, 20% short rib, and 10% fat, as Ramsay explained on Masterchef.
Good, old-fashioned tongs
“I had a whole argument with David Chang about tongs," says McHale. “He thinks tongs are amateur hour.” But McHale has no shame in using the tool—"I'll send [Chang] photos of tongs resting on the side of a dish," he says—especially in a pinch.
“When I cooked the steak for Dinner Time Live, [using the tongs] had to be done because I only had, like, 25 minutes,” McHale says. To get a beautiful, golden crust on the steak, "I salted the hell out of it and put it in oil. Then I put weight on top of the meat to spread it out, and flipped it.” McHale finished his dish by frying eggs in the beef fat left in the pan for steak and eggs.
Ghee and Wagyu beef tallow
For cooking fat, McHale likes to use Wagyu beef tallow or ghee. “Using ghee makes you look like a cook,” he says.
A caffeine fix
“I grew up in Seattle, where I worked at a coffee cart for years and drank tons of coffee," says McHale. “I continue to—I probably had eight cups so far this morning, which is about average.”
While Seattle's Best beans take McHale on a trip down memory lane, he's also recently been enjoying one of the brand's new launches. “For the summer, Seattle's Best released all these limited edition Coffee Roast Mallows” in collaboration with XO Marshmallow, says McHale. "All the marshmallow flavors are inspired by the different blends of their coffee”—which, it turns out, is exactly where McHale likes to put them. (Why should hot cocoa get all the fun?)
A supply of ramen
Much like a munchie-fueled college student, McHale always has a stash of instant ramen on hand—although his go-to brand is a little more gourmet than Cup Noodles. “Chang's Momofuku ramen is amazing,” says McHale, who snacks on them at night instead of dessert. “They're in my closet right now. Well, the pantry, not my closet—they're not just in there with my winter gear.”
Find more grilling and smoking must-haves
- These are the best pellet smokers we've tried
- And here are the charcoal and gas grills we recommend
- You're gonna need a grill brush to help you clean up—we tested over a dozen to name a winner