From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman and this is good food.

Father's Day is upon us, and maybe it's marketing around Dad's Day,

or maybe it's the early days of summer that calls us to dust off the barbecue.

Cooking over live fire is one of humanity's oldest culinary traditions.

Nearly all of us come from a culture where meat is bathed or rubbed with ingredients that

carry flavor and cooked over fire.

Many of us stand over the fire carrying on family traditions, but some of us like to expand

our repertoire each summer.

This year, I suggest turning to social media phenomenon

Tony Ramirez, whose barbecue has caught the imagination of nearly two million on TikTok. His new book

is Backyard Barbecue with Fire and Spice. Hi, Tony. Welcome to Good Food.

Hey, how's it going?

Thanks for having me.

Oh, we're so pleased to have you.

You grew up in the Bay Area, and I understand that barbecues sort of played a role in your family life with your cousins and hanging out.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

So we all had, you know, a lot of food backgrounds with our parents, but none of them ever really

cooked in the backyard. And as kids growing up, that was just our thing, you know, playing in the

backyard, climbing trees.

And then as we got older, I think it was my older cousin that ended up buying a barbecue pit.

And then from there it was just everybody taking turns, manning the barbecue pit.

And then the love for barbecue sparked around that time.

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