#116： Southern Gentleman's Kitchen With Matt Moore
Episode Stats
Summary
On this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we talk with Matt Moore, our resident chef on the site, about why a man should know how to cook and how he became a cookbook writer. In addition to this cookbook thing, he also has a company that he runs with his friends called moonshine cologne, and he's done some other stuff too.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so if you've been
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following the site for a while you probably are familiar with matt moore he is our resident chef
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on theartofmanliness.com he's written the lion's share of the cooking content on our site and he's
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done stuff about how to make your homemade pasta how to make gumbo how to make chili how to cook with
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wild game all sorts of great stuff and the thing i love about matt is he makes cooking approachable
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and it's not intimidating and it's one of the reasons i love publishing his content on our site
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anyways matt's got a new book out it's a big deal it's with southern living magazine it's called a
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southern gentleman's kitchen adventures in cooking eating and living in the new south and today on
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the show we're going to talk about matt's really interesting background because he didn't start
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off being a cookbook writer in fact he started out as a musician in addition to this cookbook thing
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he also has a cologne company that he runs with his friends it's called moonshine cologne he's done some
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other stuff too it's one of my favorite cologne really interesting guy really interesting backgrounds
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we're talking about entrepreneurship then we're gonna talk about why a man should know how to cook
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we're gonna talk about his boar hunt from a helicopter and cooking that boar that he killed
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and we're also going to discuss the intricacies and the finer points of cooking the perfect steak
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uh really fun podcast with some really great takeaways as well i think you're gonna like this
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matt moore welcome to the show thank you so much you know for many many years it's only been me writing
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so yeah uh i get i get a chance to like ponder over every little word and now i might have to
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preface this if i say something stupid i apologize no i know how it goes man so for those of you who
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don't uh read the website regularly and just a podcast listener uh matt has been how long have you
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been writing cooking content for us writing together for i believe just around five years yeah that's
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great how did we connect you reached out to me about your first cookbook right i did yeah a buddy
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of mine had emailed me on facebook at the time that i had just launched the first book have a river for
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dinner and he was actually living in hawaii at the time and he said hey man you know i've come across
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this blog i think it's a great fit uh you should reach out to him and see if you could do a guest post
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and i remember emailing you and you got back with me pretty quickly and i pitched you on the whole idea
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of guys cooking for girls and uh we just kind of started our relationship there through the internet
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we met on the internet we met on the internet that's how it goes these days so let's let's start
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talking about your history because you have an interesting interesting background story right
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so you you just come with your new book a southern gentleman's kitchen uh done with southern living
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magazine big big deal and then you did the uh cookbook have her over for dinner you will talk
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about how you self-published that but like i was becoming like an expert like cookbook writer
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was that your initial goal when you started out your adult life or absolutely not so how did that
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happen what a long strange trip it's been um you know for me i was really fortunate grew up um just
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outside of atlanta georgia really really active in sports uh some of my friends have gone on to
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play in the major leagues and football and baseball and for many many years i thought that i was you
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know destined to become uh the next great baseball player but some injuries came along and i probably
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wasn't good enough in the first place you know let's not kid ourselves here uh and i went to the
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university of georgia and my second love was always music so i was uh in a band for about six years
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um four of those through college where we toured all over the southeast and much of the east coast
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uh and then i had a dream that i wanted to be in nashville tennessee came to nashville our band was
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was ready to go and hit the road and then the band broke up and uh i remember at that time when i
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had moved to nashville i reached out to a friend of mine it was the only guy that i knew here in town
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he was a songwriter he was the creative director of emi music publishing and i'll never forget it i
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sent him an email i said hey bruce you know i finally made it to nashville tennessee uh the band
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broke up but i'm here can't wait to do it and he said you know what matt that's great he said it's
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a 10-year town he said the problem is i just moved back down to athens georgia to start the music
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department for the university of georgia which is where i had gone to school so uh you often hear
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that many many times when it comes to um nashville and how long the process can be in the music world
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and i kind of kept myself fortunate uh in the sense that my first few years were really fun i got to go out
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and do a lot of great things as a musician as a performer and a lot of the guys that i know that
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i featured in this book that are near and dear to my heart are now at the top of the country music
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charts but to be honest with you brad i really kind of lost my passion for for music it really
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wasn't something that i uh had my heart into and i really loved writing i loved um teaching guys about
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uh some of the experiences that i had grown up with with food and that all started from playing music
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we would go down to new orleans and play shows uh all over the state of georgia and we bring back
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all this great food and sort of big parties and i kind of had this idea of sorts at that time that
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maybe writing a cookbook uh was a bit of a good idea and that's really a crazy path that led me into
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this whole world of food okay and your first cookbook was self-published right it was i had a buddy of mine
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who was working for uh one of the artist agencies paa here in town and i told him uh hey man you know
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i think i'm gonna write a cookbook and at the time he was like that's a great idea uh he was a young
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agent in the music business he never liked my music but all of a sudden he liked this cookbook idea
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and we we still laugh about it to this day so i kind of put together a book proposal
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and he uh flew out on a plane to los angeles to meet with the creative folks at creative artist agency
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and the first thing they said was like well this is real cute like i mean your friend doesn't have
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a platform he doesn't have a popular blog he's not a celebrity like you know why in the world would
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you ever think a that we'd be interested in signing this guy uh b he's not a chef so why does he want
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to write a cookbook and c they kind of made a joke to him they said all of our publishing department
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is based in new york and not la so we found out pretty quickly that uh i i say it to no avail we were
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so green back then that we just didn't know any better um which led me down the road of getting
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a thousand no's from basically every agent and every publisher in new york which led me to the
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self-publishing process and what was great about though it's it was a hit like the new york times
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called it one of the best cookbooks of when was this published i think it was like yeah that was in
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2011 um but that was a long road you know right now um the idea for books and even you know music
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albums and business i think we have this tendency that when it launches it's like that's our
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opportunity to seize the moment and you've got to build up this huge bit of momentum your business
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has to get this much funding or your album has to sell this many copies your book has to do this
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that or the other for me um you know coming out of the music business especially the independent
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music business i kind of just started to pepper and build a little bit of a following here uh in
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nashville and then just outside of atlanta where i was from and it was a slow build it was reaching
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out to folks like yourself that were starting out uh building blogs and trying to spread the word
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organically so quote unquote saying it was a success to be honest with you i was probably
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eight to ten months in post book launch and it was a fun period of my life you know i put up some
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money and scratched up what i had and kind of went out started promoting it and knocking on a ton of
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doors and um it wasn't like you know the new york times just got a copy and all of a sudden said this
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is you know one of the year's best cookbook it took a ton a ton of work and i'd say even more
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rejection oftentimes people you know see a story like mine and they're like man i could never do
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that but it's a marathon you know it's something that you have to wake up and i like to say every
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day i think we wrote an article about this back then that my goal every day whether it's a business
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or anything creative is that i want to wake up every day and hear the word no 100 times and if i hear
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that that many times uh a it tells me that i'm pitching hard enough because not everyone's going
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to like what you do but i also know that the more and more of those that you queue up uh you're going
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to start to get some yeses and it's hard to to hear the word no and for folks not to maybe like
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your ideas or what you're doing um but if you're constantly afraid and you're never putting something
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out there you're actually just never going to grow or get anywhere and that was a lesson that i learned
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by self-publishing that book and i have to attribute a lot of the later success to those early lessons
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that i learned well how do you get over that fear of rejection is it just a matter of exposing yourself
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to it as much as you can where you just sort of become desensitized to it or do you engage any sort
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of like mindset work to help you like bone you know steal yourself up for the rejection or is it
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just a matter of just you just get used to it you know it's like my favorite pink floyd song comfortably
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numb uh i'd say especially in the creative space if you're a writer or you're music uh you're a chef
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it's tough you know when people don't like what you do uh even as an entrepreneur it almost feels
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personal um for me i think that one of the biggest strengths that you can have if you're if you're
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interested in that space is to very quickly get over that uh you know value people's opinions i think
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i've been told no on a lot of ideas that i did not end up pursuing and in hindsight i'm glad that i was
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told the word no and i'm glad it gave me pause to maybe reconsider or adapt or change i mean even
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look when i turn in you know an article for you that you don't feel like is on point uh oftentimes
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that's a good chance for me to go back and reconsider what i'm trying to do at the same time
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you know you can be super passionate and i like to sometimes use the word no it's kind of more fuel
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to the fire uh those words that keep coming up and rejections just kind of provide me with
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a little bit more ammunition to keep pursuing and and being persistent uh and being even more
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determined to make sure that i'm doing everything possible to go out and achieve my goals awesome
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so before we get more into cooking we got to bring up the fact that the cooking thing the music isn't the
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only thing you've done you've also with along with a group of your friends started a cologne company
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the reason i bring that up because i'm in my closet right now and i there's a bottle of moonshine
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looking at me and if you guys haven't checked this stuff out no don't drink it no that would kill you
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you're a former attorney so yeah that we we basically put that on every part of the box
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but no it smells fantastic it's my my favorite cologne um so how did that happen right what did this
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happen like was this a plan for a long time or did this happen just at a spur of the moment thing
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uh how did you end up becoming or creating a cologne fragrance company you know i i think this is the
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important lesson that i want all the listeners to take away is you really never know where your path
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is going to lead right i think we can always try to make plans or study a certain venture and and try
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to force things down a certain path but if you pull anything from my story hopefully it's like
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you you never know what opportunity is going to lead you into the next one so i went to the university
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of georgia um really wasn't sure what i wanted to study my parents told me to study business so i
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ended up getting a degree in international finance and french uh i really like this girl that was in
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my french class throughout college and that's why i pursued it so heavily um but then you know you
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you heard the backstory of moving to nashville and doing the cookbook and then i hit this phase
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where even though i've had uh you know a bit of success critical success in the food writing world
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i i had this idea for the book that we we just now have published five years later and still even with
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you know the new york times and all the cool things that that led to uh could not find a home for the
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book and so i kind of was a little bit disenfranchised um just wanted to take a little
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bit of a bit of time off if you will it was i was tired of hearing the word no and i was on a long
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run one day and oftentimes that's that's kind of my creative space is to go out for a long run and
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just kind of let my mind wander and a buddy of mine that i went to college with was actually doing
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some male modeling and trust me we gave him a hard time for that uh for some brands where basically
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they were taking like polo shirts and instead of it being a horse they were putting i don't know
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like uh some other icon on it and repackaging it and calling it a southern brand and selling it
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and it seemed to be a successful venture and i had another partner of mine that was a good friend
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he's an attorney and i kind of pitched him the idea of like man i've never really known anything
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about fragrance but in the same way that i thought the cookbook publishing world was this antiquated
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world that was so driven by celebrity and hype uh i thought that the name moonshine cologne would
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really reverberate very well with like what i grew up with uh good old boys from from the south
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a lot of fraternity guys in college that maybe had never worn fragrance because they didn't want
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justin bieber to tell them what they wanted to smell like and so we just kind of stumbled onto it it
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was one of those things that were like you know what we're good friends uh this would be a cool
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business opportunity and at the worst case scenario we're going to have great christmas presents
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for you know our friends and family for the next three years now again being that green because we
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were just that green i mean the fragrance business is this crazy complicated business that's really
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managed throughout europe in the world the united states is actually seventh in the world in terms of
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per capita spending on fragrance so we launched in like the least profitable market we had to do a lot
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of international partnerships and in hindsight my parents are very happy because i'm finally using
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my degree in international business and speaking french with a lot of partners over there um but
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we saw a void in the marketplace and i think the big lesson learned is that we were maybe a little bit
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uh green and didn't know enough about it but we weren't phased by the major brands and the major
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players and we put our money where our mouth was uh it was a smaller investment i think oftentimes when
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people are looking at starting companies especially if they've come from the corporate world or they've
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come from a world where they're not floating uh the startup capital they think right on that you know
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we need a brand manager a graphic designer and a publicist and all these things uh we did everything
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ourselves and even to this day we still do everything to ourselves and that could be a fault based on the
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size of the company that we've grown but we just work our tail off every day um so it came about
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that came about very naturally and organically and we've even told the story on your site from
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starting out in my friend's parents basement you know hand bottling this fragrance and picking up
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the phone and calling stores throughout the country and literally selling it store by store it's just
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waking up and taking that you know first steps that first step forward every single day uh and we
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built it to a to a successful company and i think there's a lot of luck we're very humbled by it
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we're very grateful for it but even as we've matured as a company uh we've realized that we've got to
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continue to to nurture it and grow it and uh you know always keep it at the forefront that if you
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don't pay attention to it then you know a lot of those blessings that we receive from our hard work
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will go away all right so let's talk cooking here so you've sort of made it your mission in life
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to not just write about cooking but write it geared towards men why is that i mean what is it
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why do why are a lot of men apprehensive about cooking in the first place you know you're right
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it is kind of a mission statement for me um growing up i was fortunate to to be in a home where
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uh every night whether i came home from football or baseball practice uh my father not only said hey
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you got to get your homework done you got to clean the kitchen but you're also going to
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help mom out and and and be there as well so i you know attribute a lot of the strength of
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my family and the relationships we have and a lot of my upbringing to the nightly ritual of sitting
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around with my family uh not playing on the phone not watching tv not at the neighborhood restaurant
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but just sitting down and having a family meal uh when i got to college and beyond i kind of realized
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that uh men and women for that matter didn't really have the same experience that i had you know a lot
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of the the meals were outsourced to the local restaurant or there's a lot of distractions
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and the central idea of of cooking really nobody knew how to cook i mean it's kind of like you know
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most people don't think men know how to cook but it really was true for that generation because it
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just wasn't a common thing that they saw in the household uh for me i found a lot of joy and teaching
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others uh what i had learned from family experiences but i also came to find that i believe that men
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can become better men in the strangest of all places which is the kitchen and that's much of the subject
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of all the articles that i write for you i like to tell stories about you know what the end goal is
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it's not just a fried chicken recipe but it's a chance for you to try something new uh it's a chance for
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you to take on a bit of risk a little bit of adventure and then also the satisfaction that
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can result from you know uh doing something that you've never done before you've never had experience
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in doing and i think the niche that a lot of folks have left out and what's been my strong suit is
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making cooking super approachable yeah uh you know you turn on the tv you watch top chef you watch
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chopped i mean these are pretty amazing shows but you know nobody even knows how to boil water that's
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watching these shows yet they could discern to me and critique the the flambe style i mean it sounds
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ridiculous to me so instead what i wanted to do within my food writing is always really be careful to
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keep things as simple as possible um make it as approachable as possible make it affordable
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um if i'm trying to tell somebody to skip the the the restaurant down the street and make something
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at home i want them to spend less making it at home than they than they do uh just going out to
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eat and that's often a really tough thing especially if they're single guys or young couples um you know
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if i told you to make fajitas in your house and you wanted steak and chicken and shrimp and guacamole
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and sour cream and cheese and everything else i'd say you know what go down to the local restaurant
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because you'll never make it cheaper than what you can buy it for um so i'm always trying to tailor
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that for my audience and invite people into the kitchen and show them that it is something that
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they can do yeah that's one of the reasons we've loved having you write articles for the site is that
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you do make it approachable like even for me i'm i'm somewhat like my my go-to meals for when it's my
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turn to cook it's like hot dogs hamburgers chili you know just like eggs and pancakes but when i
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with all those man yeah nothing wrong with that good it's good stuff but like whenever you publish
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an article or just flipping through your the book the southern gentleman's kitchen i look at this
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stuff and i'm like i could do that right even though it looks amazing like it looks like it's
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something that you have to be a five-star chef to know how to do you look at the prep and the
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recipe the ingredients you're like wow that's actually not that hard yeah and that's a big philosophy
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for me um you know i always i'm really conscious about the ingredients i'm using uh the techniques
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that i'm using and let's get real you know i mean cooking is it something that you're just going to
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wake up one day and follow a recipe and it's just going to be ta-da everything's perfect uh you know
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there's nuances of learning and you can follow the written recipe to the t uh and that's one of the
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things i love about cookbooks especially the one that we just did is it was tested so many times that
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you should be able to follow it exactly and get the results that that it should yield but
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at the same time it is a learning process you know i didn't just automatically after cooking
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hundreds of meals with my mom uh leave and and go out and start to to become this wizard in the
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kitchen i had to burn some some steaks i had to overcook some things i had to uh to make a lot of
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mistakes um until i really learned how to perfect certain dishes or come up with just kind of a base of
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knowledge and so that's my biggest thing is whether or not you ever cook a recipe out of
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there i just want to intrigue folks that it is something they can do um it's it's a lifelong
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learning process you know we talked the other week about intellectual curiosity and it's like
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this never-ending search to be uh knowledgeable and and cooking is one of those rare things that
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you know whether it's different types of cuisine like smoking barbecue to the ramen trend that's going
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on to the perfect taco to the perfect chili and hot dog i mean you can constantly you know evolve
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and keep learning from those things and utilizing different ingredients so it's just such a cool
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place that people often forget about because i think it's just like a necessity like i gotta eat
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dinner i want folks to find some joy in that and also realize that they're improving themselves by
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actually cooking that dinner yeah yeah one of the things i love seeing uh on the instagram our
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instagram feed is like when people share the food that they made inspired by your post
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yeah absolutely it's like guys who never really they don't they like i never cooked before but i gave
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this a go and yeah it was awesome it was something they did with their like the noodle you showed us
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how to make like homemade noodles i had so many yeah people showing like you know pictures like here i was
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doing this with my daughter you know i was doing this with my wife i mean that's one of the great
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things that um about cooking at home is that it it's a great way it's not just about the food it's
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about the camaraderie and the fellowship that goes along with it absolutely you know being born and
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raised in the south uh i think one of our greatest attributes is hospitality and and generosity you
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know um in fact my wife and i are expecting our first here later this week and i've already got a
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train of friends saying you know what can we bring you in on what day and they're doing it by bringing
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you food yeah uh it's just a really really simple old tried and true tradition that we share throughout
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the united states it's not just something that goes on in the south um you know for me uh i like to and
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as i often talk about i enjoy at the end of the day maybe having a glass of wine or a bourbon on the rocks
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and it's my chance when i cook it's actually this great form of relaxation uh one of my favorite
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things going back into into history and into time you know one of the uh the problems when the assembly
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line came out uh the old ford plants was they found that workers were so disenfranchised in that
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process because they were basically just like a number on the blocks that were putting together a car
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and they never had the satisfaction of saying like you know what i built that uh for me cooking is one
00:23:57.280
of those rare things that within 30 minutes you can start with all these raw ingredients and then 30
00:24:02.380
minutes later end up with this meal that not only you're enjoying but that you're providing to maybe
00:24:07.120
your partner to the rest of your family and it's like man i conceptualized like i executed and i enjoyed
00:24:13.480
this one thing all in this 30 minute period and i know that a lot of guys you know especially young
00:24:18.580
in your career you don't feel like you're making an impact for me cooking was one of those things
00:24:22.640
that kind of allowed me to kind of justify to a certain extent or find a bit of satisfaction um
00:24:28.620
in what i was doing that i think a lot of people are crying out for it's awesome um so the book a
00:24:35.160
southern gentleman's kitchen uh it's all about southern cuisine and that's sort of a risky topic to take on
00:24:44.380
because i'm in oklahoma i'm oklahoma sounded weird i don't know if i'm in the south or the midwest
00:24:50.380
or the west we've been labeled all sorts of things but i do know that southerners take their southern
00:24:56.480
food extremely serious um and if you you mess it up they'll they'll just jump on you um so how did you
00:25:06.920
approach this book was it did you want to stay true to the tradition did you add any innovations to it
00:25:13.700
um i mean what was your approach to the book and as far as how you were going to um present the
00:25:21.420
recipes uh you know man i'll be honest i'm going to give you a shout out and a shout out to all your
00:25:27.280
listeners and to your readers uh writing on your site actually i think really prepped me uh to write
00:25:34.520
a book like this and you and i have tackled some pretty tall subjects you know the perfect chili
00:25:40.100
yeah uh to the perfect way to roast a chicken the gumbo one what i love what's that the gumbo that
00:25:45.700
was oh the gumbo you were nervous about that one you were you were really nervous about that one
00:25:50.500
yeah yeah whatever you said that you're going to make the perfect gumbo it's uh it's a tall order
00:25:55.300
but that being said i think what's so awesome is that you create a community for people to
00:26:00.240
not only share like oh yeah that's exactly how i do it um or you know you could never make gumbo
00:26:06.640
and put tomatoes in there or gumbo is only made this way um you know i've probably become a little
00:26:12.820
bit desensitized to some of the comments and and i'd say you know 99 percent of the time everything's
00:26:17.580
super favorable and everybody's really happy to see uh you know us taking on these types of subjects
00:26:23.420
but when it came to southern food i'll tell you one of the greatest things that my editor told me in
00:26:29.080
the process is i think very early on in the book i was trying to showcase uh everything that i knew
00:26:35.920
about let's just take like a pork shoulder you know you're going to smoke a pork shoulder it's like
00:26:40.460
i growing up and being fortunate to travel throughout the south i know how they do it in texas versus
00:26:46.100
north carolina versus georgia versus florida and everything else and i was trying to do like
00:26:50.680
within 250 words like showcase that everybody does it differently blah blah blah blah blah like make sure
00:26:55.340
i covered all my bases yeah and then gave my recipe and she was like you know you're not even
00:27:00.880
speaking in your own voice like just say that this is the way you do it if people have a problem with
00:27:05.440
it then who cares uh this is your book i mean this is your opportunity uh people are going to realize
00:27:11.940
that you know they may have some different changes and nuances to it but people really want to hear what
00:27:16.720
your style is and that freed me up so so much to say like hey this is this is my lifestyle this is what
00:27:24.620
my family experiences has been this is my south uh i encourage you to to take what i give you as a
00:27:31.340
template and maybe add in a dash of this or that or the other um but this is my opportunity to showcase
00:27:37.840
to you what my take on southern cuisine has been is right now and will become in the future so i really
00:27:44.600
owe a lot of credit to her in that collaboration to kind of give me the confidence to speak in my own
00:27:49.660
voice so one of the things i love about your cookbook is that it's like really nice to look
00:27:54.540
at right so like cookbooks there's a there's a ton of cookbooks out there right their cookbooks are
00:27:58.960
a dime a dozen and i we have a lot in our our kitchen and most of them i don't even look at
00:28:05.300
but yours like i just want to pick it up and i've had people come in because it's been laying
00:28:10.140
on our kitchen counter and there's like this is the greatest this looks great and like
00:28:13.980
the pictures are the pictures are fantastic um but the other thing i love about it is that
00:28:19.320
you weave in these stories that go along with the recipes um right like one of my favorites was
00:28:27.780
you talk about a boar hunt that you went on yeah right and then you have a recipe for how to cook a
00:28:34.760
boar so it tells yeah tell us about that boar hunt i mean that's really big i don't think a lot of
00:28:39.620
people understand like boar like pigs are a pest here in the south like we got a ton of them here
00:28:46.100
in oklahoma um so yeah tell us about the boar hunt man again another one of those random moments
00:28:53.360
where like life connections uh just work out to be this amazing experience my wife was actually
00:28:59.320
uh snowboarding out in utah and she met a gentleman uh with her friend that was unfortunately
00:29:05.880
not there his name's greg arnett and if anybody's ever uh worn or seen arnett sunglasses this is the
00:29:13.060
guy i mean the guy is worth quite a bit of money um but you would actually never know it and she was
00:29:19.020
telling him all about my story and what we were doing and he was like man that sounds like a cool
00:29:22.920
guy and and this is kind of that southern hospitality he said i own this 8 000 acre ranch in florida
00:29:28.600
you guys should come down one weekend he's a hunter he loves to uh to do adventure and
00:29:33.460
it's be a great place for you guys to do a photo shoot and uh you know just have a good time and
00:29:38.780
it was one of those things it's like careful what you wish for bro we're going to take you up on that
00:29:42.240
offer and uh so we did we went down and set a whole uh three-day weekend outside of uh his ranch
00:29:50.940
outside of orlando florida he also happens to be a helicopter pilot too so we basically read had like
00:29:56.100
the greatest man weekend ever like shooting bows and arrows uh grilling every night you know taking the
00:30:02.100
fan boat out and all the while capturing this whole narrative of a really common ritual if you
00:30:08.380
will it happened to be a wild boar hunt but it could be deer hunting or turkey hunting um and and what we
00:30:14.460
got out of it not only did we have the opportunity to actually harvest a boar and and create that
00:30:20.240
recipe and tell that story but it was an experience that uh will forever be ingrained um as as one of
00:30:28.240
the greatest things i got to do from writing this book now i know that you'll probably see it like
00:30:32.120
this cool picture of me hanging off a helicopter you're jumping out of a helicopter with aviator
00:30:36.760
shades yeah you know it was pretty cool i don't get to do that every saturday um but it was one of
00:30:45.920
those cool moments for me that even though we were capturing it and it was a it was a first time
00:30:49.540
experience for me and it might have been a bit over the top it was just a cool way for me to say man
00:30:54.320
what an experience what a journey um and it is something that people do especially in texas you
00:30:59.420
know they actually fly in helicopters and shoot with ar-50s you were actually flying into the land
00:31:04.220
and then sitting there for three or four hours because the helicopter was so loud um but what i
00:31:09.040
was trying to capture there more importantly for the book is it's adventure you know uh cooking is an
00:31:14.640
adventure and it doesn't matter if you are sitting in in your kitchen or you're going to the farmer's
00:31:20.180
market or you happen to be hanging out of a md 800 helicopter um i've met so many guys that they
00:31:26.800
can tell me the nuances i mean with pride about how they field dress a deer yet the idea of them
00:31:34.080
making an omelet in the morning doesn't sound manly enough and i'll kind of poke at them i'll be like
00:31:39.460
you know like actually you butchering and field dressing is just as cool and just as manly as you
00:31:45.580
perfecting an omelet which you and i have taken that subject off yeah um so that was really what
00:31:51.680
we wanted to get out of the whole board on that's really cool yeah and you've uh and for those who
00:31:56.060
are interested there are other uh game recipes in here as well and you've also written some
00:32:00.860
recipes for wild game on the site i think you had like venison chili um which i think some people made
00:32:07.880
and with great success so check that out yeah it's something that i the boar hunt is something i
00:32:12.520
want to do i got a friend here in town who does it with pit bulls and knives like that's all they do
00:32:19.220
you you got me beat there yeah i'll have to see some pictures of that we'll see how it goes down
00:32:27.040
like the pit bull like just like grabs the boar for you to can then like it waits there for you to
00:32:31.440
get there and then you just take your knife and you just stab it in the heart and then it's done
00:32:35.620
so that's uh that sounds a little bit risky make sure you come up from behind yeah for sure
00:32:40.880
so matt i always like to uh in these shows with some practical takeaways like something that a guy
00:32:48.560
can do today to put into practice like what we've been talking about so i mean here's a question if
00:32:53.460
there's like one cooking project that a guy any guy who's never really cooked ever before and he's
00:33:01.000
like okay i'm on the way home i'm gonna pick up some groceries and i'm gonna try to make is there
00:33:05.160
like one thing that you think that any guy could do that isn't lame like hot dogs right yeah but
00:33:11.880
that's a little involves a little work um and the payoff is awesome you know i'm it's funny you ask
00:33:19.420
that question uh we talk about flying helicopters and one of the things that i'm working on right
00:33:24.580
now is getting my pilot's license which is an incredibly humbling experience and i've got a guy
00:33:29.120
here that's uh in his late 50s he's been a pilot for 25 years he's been a great resource for me
00:33:35.620
uh part of that was the deal uh he takes me out when i'm not with my flight instructor so i can
00:33:41.220
actually relax with he's like you know i've never learned how to cook a but what i want to really
00:33:47.260
really really really get good at is cooking the perfect steak he's like so i'll take you up as much
00:33:52.760
as you want to practice your flying and give you experience but i want you to come over to my house
00:33:57.500
and teach me how to cook several different cuts of steak in the perfect manner okay and what's cool
00:34:03.520
about that is it is so simple to cook a perfect steak okay so that would be my challenge and what
00:34:11.480
it requires is just a couple different things uh it's going to require number one and you and i
00:34:16.240
talk a lot about this a cast iron pan okay so i'm not recommending that your listeners go out and
00:34:22.480
spend hundreds of dollars on on cookware this is something you can pick up in your hardware store
00:34:27.140
you can probably pick it up in any grocery store across america it's going to cost you 25 bucks
00:34:31.360
uh lodge cast iron they season their skillets they're ready to go uh then it comes to a cut of
00:34:37.740
steak and i think we've written everything from skirt steaks to fillets to flank steaks and everything
00:34:42.680
between but steaks are meant to be cooked extremely hot and extremely fast so i like to use a bit of
00:34:51.340
butter uh which allows you to get a nice caramelization mistake i love to use just simply salt
00:34:57.040
and pepper and in a cast iron pan over high heat get a great sear on the outside of the steak
00:35:03.380
give it a nice flip uh whether it needs to go in the oven based on the thickness of the steak or not
00:35:08.220
or if you're cooking it on an outside grill uh with cast iron on the grill uh you cook it up to
00:35:13.720
your temperature whether it's mid-rare medium hopefully it doesn't go beyond that point
00:35:17.180
um and that's one of my favorite if you can master that it's such like the classic man dish but so
00:35:24.600
many guys cook steaks uh so poorly and all it requires is a little bit of technique the right
00:35:30.160
piece of equipment being cast iron salt and pepper uh and if you can start there then i think you can
00:35:35.900
start to evolve into a lot of different great dishes awesome is there a particular cut of steak that
00:35:40.180
you think is pretty easy to work with you know one of my favorite cuts um you know obviously people
00:35:48.060
talk about your ribeye steak which i think is like the chef's choice steak um you know filet mignon
00:35:54.000
doesn't have enough fat but it's super tender um i happen to be a really big skirt steak guy uh for me
00:36:02.280
it's it's one of those cuts that you can typically find your butcher you can get them to uh to cut it a bit
00:36:06.920
thicker um so that way when i say thick you don't want something that's super super thin because
00:36:11.380
then by the time you get a nice sear on it it's almost going to be cooked all the way through
00:36:14.680
so if you can get something that's like an inch an inch and a half thick um it's got enough fat so
00:36:19.440
you get all that great flavor like you get from a ribeye but the way that it's cut and when you
00:36:23.960
serve it across the grain uh super super tender and tons of flavor and what i love is especially i
00:36:30.040
knew when i was starting out you know it's affordable you know rather than paying like twenty dollars a
00:36:33.840
pound for a cut of steak you can buy skirt steak for less than ten dollars a pound anywhere in the
00:36:38.260
country um and it's a really really big payoff dish that i love to serve awesome i just cook i just
00:36:44.180
cooked skirt steak for lunch oh look at you man it's great goodness you're eating better than i am yeah
00:36:49.100
you know it's another one of my favorite cuts that i've just gotten hip to is chuck eye steak
00:36:55.860
oh absolutely it's like yeah my butcher calls it's the poor man's ribeye yeah and it's for sure
00:37:02.600
delicious it's super good my um my grandfather was a butcher and we talk a lot about that in the
00:37:07.160
book but uh that's one of the things that he would always reserve like the chuck eye and the skirt
00:37:13.280
steak and all these other alternative cuts uh because that was his favorite you know that's what
00:37:18.400
had the most flavor and if you knew how to prepare it in the right manner um you know that's that's the
00:37:24.260
best way to do it in fact i've been really fortunate uh when we talk about skirt steak i do a lot of work
00:37:28.960
up in princeton we're not like canada and cook a lot of festivals there and the butcher it's a very
00:37:32.900
small small town if you ever have the opportunity it's like going back in the 50s beautiful place
00:37:37.280
we cooked skirt steak fajitas and when i ordered it the butcher told the uh the guy that was
00:37:43.360
organizing organizing the festival that it was trash trash steak and we had people lined up on the
00:37:50.260
street and just digging into the skirt steak and the butcher personally called me like three weeks
00:37:55.700
later and he's like i i have to compliment you because i've never sold so much trash to my
00:38:00.440
customers in my life i'm sold out of skirt steak because everybody's coming in demanding it so i
00:38:06.960
think if you bring a little bit of awareness and get people over the learning curve that's where you
00:38:11.200
have a lot of fun that's kind of a bit of my mission is not always the top cut but how do you
00:38:16.540
make something really humble even better that's fantastic well matt moore this has been a great
00:38:20.800
conversation thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure i appreciate it as always
00:38:24.440
our guest today was matt moore he is the author of the book a southern gentleman's kitchen you can
00:38:29.540
find that on amazon.com go pick it up it is it's a fantastic looking book i'm not a really big fan
00:38:35.300
of cookbooks because they all sort of look the same this one is awesome because it weaves in stories
00:38:39.240
great pictures and the recipes are super easy but they look awesome and they're delicious so check
00:38:45.440
it out amazon.com you can find out more information about his book at matt moore.com
00:38:50.460
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:38:57.400
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:39:01.580
the show i'd really appreciate it if you would give us a review on itunes or stitcher or whatever
00:39:05.540
it is used to listen to the podcast because that will help other people discover the podcast and that
00:39:09.180
helps us out and you know one of the best compliments you can give is just recommend the
00:39:12.700
podcast to your friends so until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly