I set up Old Man's Meat Lab on Memorial Day weekend, 2025 as a fun little experiment and a place to house my recipes on the web and then let it grow from there.

I'm Cameron, and I've been grilling and smoking a variety of barbecue styles and cuts of meat for well over two decades (we won't mention how "well over"), which pretty much qualifies me to several as an "Old Man." I'm not that old, but old enough to feel like yelling "Get off my lawn" every now and then.

While I started with the typical backyard hamburger and hot dog fare, I started to really get into outdoor cooking when I got a smoker. My first one was a little water pan smoker that had a bowl for charcoal and wood and another bowl to hold the water. I definitely got my use out of that smoker, though I never liked the design. Basically when you opened the door to add fuel, it would also let heat and smoke out of the cooking area as well. But it got me into the hobby.

It likely also contributed to my preference for "stick burners" as opposed to electric smokers or pellet grills, though I know those are handy. I have several friends and family with the fancy pellet smokers that have turned out some delicious meat, and the high tech guy in me loves the simplicity and the ability to track and control a bunch of variables from your phone. But there's another part of me that considers the wide swings in variability from manually throwing in chunks of pecan or mesquite a little more art than science. Maybe it's like baking versus cooking. I like to do both, but the methods differ. To each their own though and you can get tasty results either way.

I am a technology guy from a career perspective, so I always have two or three or twelve different online pursuits going on. But my interests range across a wide spectrum of hobbies and crafts, from guitars to beer brewing and more. If I were to share my TikTok For You page or my Instagram feed, they're full of skateboard videos, funny dog clips, DIY Halloween decorations from July to November, woodworking, and of course, barbecue and cocktail recipes. So when I was planning my Memorial Day weekend menu, I thought maybe I could document it and get my own recipes out there as well. And after a few different research ideas and looking for domain names, Old Man's Meat Lab was born.

I love the idea of building a community of people around grilling and backyard cooking so everyone can eat the best tasting food and have a lot of fun with family and friends. And I have big ideas that I hope I can make happen to bring even more stuff to that community. So from my little repository of recipes I had been building in a Google Doc to here, I hope you find something you like and get cooking.