My Thoughts on “Ainsley’s Barbecue Bible”

 

(This is a screenshot from an episode Ainsley’s Barbecue Bible, the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲 to be exact, showing the logo or title card of the show.) 

Bet you didn’t think I’d be reviewing Ainsley’s Barbecue Bible did you? Well, you probably should because I left a hint at it in my post about the Cartoon Network Groovy on Atom Ant ⚛️🐜. In the second to last paragraph, I say that the Groovy is sensational. I even underlined it so that you would notice, and know that it was a hint 😉. How is the word “sensational” a hint? Well, if you actually watched the show and were caught up on and brushed up on your Ainsley lore, you’d know that in the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲 of this series, during the breakfast section where Ainsley cooks up some pineapple French Toast 🍍 with a side of Blue Mountain Coffee ☕️, he describes the Blue Mountain Coffee ☕️ as “sensational.” Maybe if I said “lovely ❤️” instead, people might’ve gotten it (as if anyone has actually read it besides me), but I thought the word in that particular moment, and I thought it would be nice little deep cut hint for anyone who has seen the full episodes of this show (not just the short clips on YouTube put out by the channel Good Foods), and has memorized all of the lines (all of the dialogue so to speak) like I have. 

For those that aren’t aware, Ainsley’s Barbecue Bible is a food/cooking miniseries originally put out by the BBC. It’s a show from the 1990s presumably—Ainsley says it’s the 20th century in the Thailand episode 🇹🇭, so it had to have been from the 1990s before the turn of the century and the beginning of the new millennium—, it was hosted by celebrity chef 👨‍🍳 Ainsley Harriott, and the whole show in him going around the world trying the barbecue food of different countries, and then cooking a few of them himself, reinterpreting them so that people at home watching the show can cook the recipes themselves. 

 

Sometimes, he cooks his own recipes that are tangentially related to the culinary traditions and cuisine of whatever country he’s in that particular episode. Like, he the lamb special 🐑 in the South Africa episode 🇿🇦, or the pineapple French toast 🍍 in the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲. And the catch is that it’s all cooked on the grill, it’s barbecue cuisine, or “barbie” as Ainsley calls it in the show. He is British 🇬🇧, and this is a British show 🇬🇧 on British television 🇬🇧. Can’t get anymore British 🇬🇧 than the BBC, it literally means British Broadcasting Corporation 🇬🇧. Given that this was a British show 🇬🇧 that aired on the BBC, it never aired in the US 🇺🇸 at any point as far as I know, like it never aired on Food Network like the original Iron Chef (usually referred to as Iron Chef Japan 🇯🇵 in retrospect due to the amount of Iron Chef spinoffs that have been made over the years) did. 

It also based on an idea by a guy ♂︎ named Jeremy Hicks. I don’t know who that is, but I assume that he’s a producer of some kind, and he works for the BBC. He probably came up with the basic idea for this show, and then pitched it to Ainsley to convince him to be the host. I wonder how that conversation went. “Hey Ainsley, I got an idea for a cooking show, and I want you to host it,” “Oh really, what it is?” “You travel to six different countries including the UK 🇬🇧, and cook barbecue,” “Oh that sounds lovely ❤️, but I don’t know how much mileage we’ll be able to get out of that concept considering most countries don’t actually do barbecue,” “Oh, it’s okay Ains, we’ll just construe it and stretch it to make it seem like it’s barbecue even though it actually is,” “Alright then, I’m in.” It’d probably be easier if Jeremy Hicks was already a friend of Ainsley’s or at least a business associate of his, but I don’t know if he was or is. But either way, this show was his idea, not Ainsley’s. You wouldn’t really know that from watching it though since the show feels so him, it feels like Ainsley’s vision, and it’s infused with so much of his personality and eccentricities. You wouldn’t know that it was the brain child 🧠 of some random BBC producer who no one’s even heard of, and probably doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. 

 

So, most Americans 🇺🇸 were pretty much unaware of this show’s existence or of Ainsley’s existence until the age of the Internet 🛜 and YouTube came onto the scene. I realize that the Internet 🛜 existed in the 90s and in the early 2000s, but it wasn’t quite what it was when YouTube was created in 2005, and what it would eventually become. People only ever knew of this series and of Ainsley through the memes that were created, especially from the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲. 

 

Now as I sort of mentioned before, unlike Iron Chef, which is purely meant to entertain, this show is actually educational, it’s meant to teach you something, you are supposed to learn something while you’re watching. The cooking is presented in a way you can actually pick up the recipes and make them yourself at home after you’re done watching it on TV or while you’re watching it on TV. Now, that the series has been uploaded on YouTube, it’s easier than ever to watch it and cook at the same time, cooking exactly what Ainsley cooks in each episode. But, despite the educational cooking tutorial element, the show is still entertaining, especially because it has a charismatic, flamboyant host who feels like he’s making a sexual innuendo every time he talks. He talks about food in a very seductive way, like it feels like he’s flirting with the food, flirting with those around him, and flirting with you while you’re watching. No wonder YouTube Poopers and meme creators had so much material to do sex jokes with him. 

The reason why I’m even talking about this is that I felt like I had actual things to say about this series and about Ainsley as a celebrity chef 👨‍🍳 and a TV host, and I didn’t feel like relegating it to just a foreword in a repost. That, I felt, wasn’t doing the show any sort of justice. I mean, no one else is really talking about it, on the YouTube or Blogger space, beyond just the short clips that people have seen over and over again. No one has engaged with this series beyond just the memes. No one has made videos or written blog posts talking about the man ♂︎ himself. 

 

He’s often been compared to Bob Ross, he’s the “Bob Ross of cooking,” and yet no one has actually made a video about Ainsley, and yet plenty of people have made videos about Bob Ross, the man ♂︎ who people compare Ainsley to. What gives? So, I guess I gotta step in, I gotta be the one to write it. I’m thinking of doing the same with Iron Chef. I’ve already written at length about Iron Chef in the foreword of my Rick Worley post, where I talked about Rick Worley being an transphobe and a JK Rowling defender. He basically defended JK Rowling’s transphobia, and pretty much sides with her on trans issues 🏳️‍⚧️. 

 

He also likes Megalopolis, and made a nearly hour long video defending it and unironically said that anyone who doesn’t like it is an idiot, which should tell you everything you need to know about him. Just a completely contemptuous, humorless individual. But, I have a lot more to say about Iron Chef, and I don’t think it would do it justice if I just wrote about it in a foreword of an otherwise unrelated repost. I’m also writing this on Daylight Savings Time. I started writing this on the day Daylight Savings started (Sunday March 9, 2025), but didn’t finish it and post it until the next day (Monday March 10, 2025). 

 

March 10th is also Mario Day, or Mar10 Day, so Happy Mario Day 🥳. I wrote a post about Mario Day last year, that was when they officially announced the sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), which won’t be coming out until 2026, next year. But, I didn’t write about Mario Day this year because I was working on this post, and plus, there just wasn’t any big news that felt worthy of a blog post, no big announcements like last year. Just the typical Mario Day celebrations. So no, Mario Day post for 2025, but you can read the one I wrote for 2024, I’ve already proved a link to that one. Click on it if you want to read it. 

 

 

 

(This is a map showing all of the countries in the world that observe Daylight Savings Time. The ones in blue are the ones who observe Daylight Savings Time and are in the Northern Hemisphere, the ones in orange are the ones that observe Daylight Savings Time and are in the Southern Hemisphere, the ones in light grey are the ones that used to observe Daylight Savings Time but don’t anymore, and the ones in dark grey are the ones that never observed Daylight Savings Time at any point in their history.)

 

 

 

I woke up at 10 o’clock this morning because my clock ⏰ said 9 o’clock, but my phone 📱 and laptop 💻 both said 10. So, I woke up late, because I hadn’t set my alarm clock ⏰ forward. BTW, the alarm clock ⏰ I use is a Guardians of the Galaxy themed. It’s shaped like a cassette tape, it says “Cosmic Mix Vol.1” on it (which is what it was called in the animated series that was aired on Disney XD), and it has a little Baby Groot on it, he’s holding the tape. I didn’t buy that of own volition, I got it as a Christmas gift 🎄 from my aunt, she’s always getting things like that for me for Christmas 🎄. 

 

But, I decided to keep it and use it because I didn’t want it to go to waste or be unappreciative. I don’t actually use it as an alarm clock ⏰, I use my phone 📱 as an alarm that to wake me up in the morning, so I just use the Guardians of the Galaxy clock ⏰ to tell time, to show me what time it is when I don’t want to look at the time on my phone 📱 or on my laptop 💻 or on the Mario clock 🕚 I have on my wall. A lot of times, when I’m in bed 🛏️, I look at that clock to see what time it is to see what time it is and it’s almost time for me to wake up or if it’s still not time yet and I can go back to sleep 😴 because I get up to pee a lot at night. 

 

I deal with what is called nocturia (I learned that from Rena Malik, M.D., a urologist YouTuber who I’m currently subscribed to, you can watch this video to learn more), which is when you get up to use the bathroom to pee at night more than once, and that’s part of my overactive bladder that I deal. I don’t know what it’s causing it, considering that I’m 26 years old and I shouldn’t be dealing with that sort of thing at my age. Maybe it’s just because I drink too many liquids, especially at night, I drink more liquids than I eat food, I’m talking coffee ☕️, water 💦, tea 🫖 (iced and hot), juice 🧃, and soda 🥤 (I’m not much of a snacker, I don’t snack a whole lot). Maybe that causes an imbalance in my system where I’m peeing more often than I used when I was a kid or a teenager (which yeah, teenagers are still kids, but you know what I mean). I don’t know, but that is what I’m dealing with, and that’s why I get up at night, and why I look at the time on my clock ⏰ to see what time it is when I get up and then go back to bed 🛏️. 

 

 

 

(This is a photo of the Guardians of the Galaxy alarm clock ⏰ that I was talking about. I took this photo at 2:00pm as you can see on the clock ⏰ itself.)

 

 

 

 

But yeah, Daylight Savings Time, of all the things Trump administration has been trying to abolish and get rid of, why haven’t they gotten rid of Daylight Savings Time? That’d be the one thing that everyone across the political spectrum would be okay with them doing away with, it would have bipartisan support. The fact that they haven’t gotten rid of Daylight Savings Time yet shows that they’re not truly on the side of people. I mean, I already knew that already, but them keeping Daylight Savings Time while dismantling everything else is further evidence that they’re only working to serve themselves and their rich buddies 🤑 than serve the people, the lower class and the middle class. 

 

 

 

(This is a map of the United States 🇺🇸 showing all of the states that observe and practice Daylight Savings Time. As you can see, Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states in the Union that don’t observe Daylight Savings Time. That little blue circle 🔵 surrounding that little orange splotch in Arizona in the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation observes Daylight Savings Time while the state of Arizona itself does not. None of the unincorporated territories like Puerto Rico 🇵🇷, American Samoa 🇦🇸, Guam 🇬🇺, the Northern Mariana Islands 🇲🇵, and the United States Virgin Islands 🇻🇮 observe Daylight Savings Time either.) 

 

 

 

Now, like a lot of people, I first learned of Ainsley through the memes. I first saw that one where he says “Give your mean a good ol’ rub 😏” and says “Hot and spicy meat 🌶️, He-Yeah boy!” which were both from the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲. I think I might’ve first seen it in a YouTube Poop, remember when those were a thing? I mean, they’re still a thing, but they’re not as prominent as they used to be, and the ones that are still being made aren’t as good as the ones that were made a decade ago in the 2010s. All of the best YouTube Poopers have either retired and left the platform or have completely shifted to making different content entirely. Like EmperorLemon 🍋 is a video essayist now, he doesn’t make YouTube Poops anymore, but the editing skills he gained from making YouTube Poops has aided him in making video essays. 

But anyway, after I had seen those clips in YouTube Poops and other meme videos, I watched those original short clips put out by the YouTube channel BBC Food, now called Good Food, not just the jerk chicken one from the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲 (which is where the memes come from), but the pineapple French Toast one 🍍 also from the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲, the lamb special one 🐑 from the South Africa episode 🇿🇦, and the lamb patty 🐑 one from the Australia 🇦🇺 episode. That was before I even really knew that his name was Ainsley Harriott, I hadn’t quite made that connection yet despite the title of the show being the titles of those clips on YouTube. Before that, he was just the “jerk chicken guy ♂︎.” Then at some point, I watched the full episodes, or at least I watched the full Jamaica episode 🇯🇲 because that’s the majority of the memes surrounding Ainsley came from. And it had been many years since I watched them until recently when I decided to watch these episodes again. 

 

I don’t exactly remember what made me decide to revisit this show, I might I’ve watched something that made me think of Ainsley, or I watched one of the clips I mentioned before, and that made me want to watch the full episodes again. Whatever the reason, I started rewatching each of these episodes, starting with the Jamaica one 🇯🇲 and going from there. And I’ve been rewatching them on a pretty regular basis, whenever I’m bored and I have nothing else to watch on YouTube. The Jamaica one 🇯🇲 is the one that I rewatch the most, though the South Africa one 🇿🇦 comes in at the close second, if only for that lamb special 🐑 bit. The UK one 🇬🇧 is the one I watch the least, with the Greece one 🇬🇷 coming at a close second. A bottom second that is.

 

 

 

(These are the flags of the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, Greece 🇬🇷, South Africa 🇿🇦, Thailand 🇹🇭, Jamaica 🇯🇲, and Australia 🇦🇺.) 

There were only six episodes of this series, which is why I called it a miniseries earlier. This means that Ainsley only visited six countries during the filming of this particular series. Those countries include the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 (his home country), Greece 🇬🇷, South Africa 🇿🇦, Thailand 🇹🇭, Jamaica 🇯🇲, and Australia 🇦🇺, in that order. Of course the last episode is in Australia 🇦🇺, the show starts in a predominantly English language country and then ends in a predominantly English language country, it’s where the term “barbie” comes from and is most commonly associated with. People don’t say “shrimp 🦐 on the barbie” for nothing, even though that’s not really a thing Australians 🇦🇺 say. But, they do say “barbie,” and that’s all that matters, so do the New Zealanders 🇳🇿. I’m kinda surprised they didn’t do an episode in New Zealand 🇳🇿, I guess they thought that Australia 🇦🇺 was sufficient for the Pacific/Oceania experience. 

It is kind of a shame that this show didn’t last a little bit longer, and they could’ve done a couple of episodes in a couple more countries. Like, they could’ve done an episode in Japan 🇯🇵, since they do sort of have a barbecue culture (though not to same extent as the UK 🇬🇧, South Africa 🇿🇦, Jamaica 🇯🇲, the United States 🇺🇸, South Korea 🇰🇷, and Australia 🇦🇺), they have street food just like Thailand 🇹🇭, particularly in Osaka, and they have food that you could construe as barbecue, like they cook eel on the grill which they call unagi. Or, they could’ve done an episode in South Korea 🇰🇷 since they have Korean barbecue. That one should’ve been a no brainer 🧠 since it’s literally in the name, Korean BBQ, it’s one of the first things people think of when they think of Korean food 🇰🇷. I guess British people 🇬🇧 weren’t ready for Korean BBQ yet, neither were Americans 🇺🇸 to be honest. Maybe they thought that since they were already doing an episode on South Africa 🇿🇦, they didn’t want to do another episode with another country that has the word “south” in its name.

 

Or, since I mentioned it, why not do an episode set in the United States 🇺🇸? If there’s any country that’s the most associated with barbecue (arguably more than Australia 🇦🇺), it’s the United States 🇺🇸. I mean, I associate barbecue with those two countries (the US 🇺🇸 and South Korea 🇰🇷) than I do Greece 🇬🇷. I mean, barbecue is not the first thing I think of when I think of Greek food 🇬🇷, the only Greek food 🇬🇷 that sort of be construed as “barbecue” is, as Ainsley said in the episode itself, souvlaki spit roast. The Greece episode 🇬🇷 is interesting because it’s not set on the Greek mainland 🇬🇷, it’s set on one of the islands, Alonnisos to be exact, which is located in the Aegean Sea, the sea that Miles Bron misidentified and called the Ionian Sea in Glass Onion 🧅. 

 

The UK one 🇬🇧 is probably the least interesting to me even though it’s the first episode, it’s basically the pilot. It’s just Ainsley going around his backyard, talking to his neighbors (or some random people that they producers picked to be interviewed by Ainsley and cook with him), talking about the different grills that are available for the average audience member watching (including homemade makeshift grills including one made with a grass container and chicken wire, one made with a cookie tin, or biscuit tin as they call it since they call cookies 🍪 biscuits in Britain 🇬🇧, and a normal grill rack, and one made with a flower pot and a cake pan; those ones are ones you make if you’re really poor and can’t afford a professional store bought grill or if you’re willing in a post-apocalyptic world), teaching the viewers how to start a grill (he mainly focuses on charcoal grills in this episode and in all of the other episodes) and cook food on the grill, and then it ends with them having a banquet, with Ainsley donating his pork calypso, which was one of his mom’s recipes. Even he food he makes in this episode isn’t even that exciting, like he makes veggie burgers 🍔, then he makes some barbecue sauce and salsa, and then he grills some sausages. 

 

The most interesting thing he cooks in that entire episode (at least to me) are those pork chops, which he calls “Uncle’s Pork Calypso” because even though it was his mom’s recipe, it was his uncle’s favorite dish, his favorite thing that his mom cooked. He made a special marinade for it with minced garlic 🧄, minced ginger 🫚, muscovado sugar, allspice, pineapple juice 🍍, salt and pepper, some type of oil (he never specified but he said you can use peanut oil 🥜, or groundnut oil as he calls it, those Britons 🇬🇧 man, they gotta have a different name for everything, or sunflower oil 🌻), and then rum 🍹. 

 

It’s a Jamaican recipe 🇯🇲, so of course it’s going to use rum 🍹, though you’ll definitely notice that Ainsley uses a lot of rum 🍹 in his dishes, especially when we get to the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲. He cooked the chops on a charcoal grill with some rosemary branches and orange, lemon, and lime skin 🍊🍋🍋‍🟩 added to the coals to further flavor the meat and give it a nice aroma, and they weren’t thin cuts either, they were thick cut pork chops. It looked really good 🤤, and I would definitely want to cook that, or have someone else cook that for me. If I ever met Ainsley in real life and he offered to cook me up a meal, this is one of the dishes I would ask him to cook. 

 

The only part I don’t like is the rum 🍹, but that’s only because I’m a non-alcoholic, I don’t like alcohol, I don’t want to drink it or use it in cooking or have anyone unless it in cooking unless they can absolutely assure me that all the alcohol will be burnt off, and it won’t get me drunk 🥴 and it won’t damage my liver. The best line or part of this episode is when Ainsley is explaining why the pork chop dish is called Uncle’s Pork Calypso, and he quotes his uncle and says “Boy, Peppy, that Pork Calypso smells sweet, girl ♀︎!” That part was funny, it got a laugh outta me 😄, sometimes I like to quote that line in my daily life. 

But once we get this introductory episode in Great Britain 🇬🇧 out of the way, that’s when the show really starts getting good. We start seeing the different cuisines of the six countries that Ainsley visits in this series, and we get to see Ainsley some more of exciting recipes than just veggie burgers and sausages like in the first episode. My favorite episode by far is the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲. You could probably tell since I keep bringing it up every chance I get. It’s the episode with all of the memes, the ones that people remember, that ones that penetrated the zeitgeist and stuck. 

 

Everyone knows the bit where Ainsley says “give your meat a good ol’ rub 😏” and “He-Yeah boy!” even if they don’t know it was from. It’s the one that you tell that Ainsley had the most fun doing (besides maybe the Thailand 🇹🇭 one). Even though Ainsley’s British 🇬🇧, he’s of Jamaican descent 🇯🇲, his mother was from Jamaica 🇯🇲, and she likely immigrated to the UK 🇬🇧 some time before she had him, or after she had him. I don’t know if Ainsley was born in Jamaica 🇯🇲 and then moved to the UK 🇬🇧 with his mother as a kid, or if he was born in the UK 🇬🇧 after his mother moved there. 

 

So, this episode was a chance for him to reconnect with his roots, and take back his cultural identity as a Jamaican 🇯🇲. He is a proud British-Jamaican 🇬🇧🇯🇲. I love how his accent becomes more Jamaican sounding 🇯🇲 in this episode, like the part at the beginning when he’s cooking that pumpkin (he grills a pumpkin and stuffs it with grilled vegetables), his accent in the narration sounds really Jamaican 🇯🇲. I was wondering if he was going to talk like that through the whole episode, but then he went to having a more posh-sounding English accent 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, but he does slip back into a more Jamaican accent 🇯🇲 in a few other parts in the episode, like the part where he’s making some Anaheim chilies (we here in New Mexico call them green chilies) stuffed with goat cheese for that Jamaican woman 🇯🇲♀︎ he was hanging out with and had made him those hot pepper shrimp 🦐. 

 

Speaking of the beginning, I love that goofy little dance he does when he’s listening to music that was being performed by a band nearby where he had that grill setup to make the stuffed pumpkin (I know he refers to it as “pumpkin curry,” but I call it stuffed pumpkin because it’s a hollowed out pumpkin stuffed with vegetables and other ingredients). The music played at the beginning is what Ainsley refers to as “reggae-a-calypso music” because they are two different genres of music, reggae and calypso are two distinct genres within the Caribbean, and that song that he was dancing to that was being performed live in front of him was a fusion of those genres. 

 

BTW, since I mentioned the Caribbean, I do find it interesting that Ainsley pronounced “care-a-be-in,” like how a lot of Americans 🇺🇸 pronounced it when the Pirates of the Caribbean 🏴‍☠️ movies were coming out (and frankly still pronounce it to this day), rather than the “proper” pronunciation of the word, “carib-be-inn.” Every line in that episode, everything Ainsley says, is quotable. I was able to memorize everything Ainsley says in that episode, especially in the jerk chicken section, the pineapple French Toast 🍍 section, and the rum punch 🍹 section, and sometimes I say them out loud just as Ainsley is saying them, like I’m talking along with him, just like how people sing along with a song that they really like and know all the lyrics to. And the episodes features the most dishes that I would actually want to try, both to cook and eat. 

I’d especially want to try the jerk chicken, which is an adaptation or a reinterpretation of a recipe by the indigenous Jamaican group 🇯🇲 the Arawak and Taíno tribes called “jerk pork.” It was a slow cooked recipe, the meat takes 7 hours to cook, and Ainsley simplified it, made it easier and more feasible for your average person to cook for dinner anytime they want, not just for special occasions. I mean, for one thing he changed the protein from pork to chicken, and chicken is generally easier to deal with than pork, like anyone who knows how to cook can cook chicken and anyone who knows how to barbecue can barbecue chicken. No slow cooking required. The part that takes longest is the marinade, like according to Ainsley’s recipe, you have to let the chicken marinade for 24 hours at least or 48 hours at most for optimal results. It looked insanely good, I would love try to jerk chicken, either to cook it or eat it, especially eat it 🤤. The only part I would probably change is the choice of chili. 

The recipe, both the original Arawak and Taíno recipe and Ainsley’s recipe, call for the use of habanero chili (or Scotch Bonnet pepper as they kept referring to it as since British people 🇬🇧 and Jamaican people 🇯🇲 generally refer to habanero chilies as Scotch Bonnet peppers), which is of course one of the hottest chilies on Earth 🌎 🥵, it’s the hottest chili you can buy at a grocery store (you can’t buy ghost peppers or Carolina Reapers, they’re just way too hot 🥵 for most people). When I bought hot wings one time that had habanero sauce on them, I was only able to finish one, I couldn’t finish the other ones, so I can attest that habaneros are pretty hot 🥵. But then again, I tried that hamburger that McDonald’s sold many years ago (back in the early-to-mid 2010s) that supposedly had habanero sauce (they said it was habanero sauce), and it was pretty mild. 

So, I don’t know what the actual peppers themselves would taste like, how hot 🥵 they would be, but I imagine that they are really hot 🥵. I doubt my grandma would ever go for habanero. So, if we were to make jerk chicken, we’d probably replace the habaneros with a milder chili in the marinade. We’d probably use jalapeños, or Serrano peppers, or what we call yellow hots (which is a pepper that actually originated from Albuquerque as I learned while writing this review), or even green chili (what the rest of the world calls “Anaheim chili”). 

 

Speaking of chili, during the jerk chicken section, just before he starts making the marinade, Ainsley gives a little bit of a crash course on chili, taking about their level of hotness 🥵, and when he gets to the habanero (again calling it Scotch Bonnet pepper), he does a scream 😱 to demonstrate how hot 🥵 it feels. It’s so hot 🥵 that it might just make you scream 😱. That part was really funny 😆, I got a huge laugh 😆 out of that. I’m surprised that moment didn’t become a meme. There are certain things that you think should become memes but don’t, Ainsley screaming 😱 like that is one of those moments for me.

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from an episode of Ainsley’s Barbecue Bible, the Jamaica episode  🇯🇲 to be exact, showing Ainsley screaming 😱 as a way to demonstrate how hot 🥵 the habanero pepper AKA the Scotch Bonnet Pepper is.) 

 

 

 

 

I’d also like to try the pineapple French Toast 🍍. It’s not like typical French Toast because rather than being one piece of bread (usually Texas toast) coated in an egg and cinnamon mixture and cooked a butter filled pan 🧈 (like butter 🧈 is used instead instead of cooking oil), it’s a sandwich with crushed pineapple 🍍 in the middle. Like, you butter two slices of bread, then take pineapples 🍍 from a can like chunks of pineapples 🍍 or pineapple rings 🍍, fork them down, take out all the juice, add some mixed spice and demerara sugar, mix them together, put the crushed pineapple mixture on the butter side of the bread, and then put the top bread on top butter side down. Then you do your egg mixture by beating two eggs 🥚, adding 2 teaspoons of mixed spice and 1 or 2 teaspoons (or tablespoons) of rum 🍹, and you dip your sandwich in that egg mixture and then cook it like you would a normal French Toast, with a pan with melted butter 🧈. Then once the sandwich is cooked on both sides, you add more mixed spice and and more demerara sugar, and then it’s ready to eat. 

 

It looks like a nice recipe, it looks like it would be fun to make, and good to eat. And of course I’d like to try some of that Blue Mountain Coffee ☕️, the Jamaican sourced coffee 🇯🇲☕️ that Ainsley describes as “sensational,” and says that connoisseurs from all over the world say is the “finest” coffee ☕️ you can ever drink. He described the coffee ☕️ as having “the richness, the delicateness, and the mellowness of the beautiful country, Jamaica 🇯🇲.” He also said it was the coffee ☕️ that Ian Fleming decided to have James Bond drink in his novels 📖, and that it was his visit to Jamaica 🇯🇲 that inspired him to write the James Bond novels 📖. 

 

It’s crazy expensive, some of the most expensive coffee ☕️ available on the market, but I’d still like to have at least one cup of that, please. Also, this whole section is where we get that story about Errol Flynn getting shipwrecked in Port Antonio (something that Ainsley describes as “lovely ❤️”), and deciding to live in Jamaica 🇯🇲 upon seeing how beautiful it is. More beautiful than “any of his women ♀︎.” I don’t know how true that story is, but it is a lovely moment ❤️ from Ainsley. It gives this part some more personality than it would otherwise have if Ainsley wasn’t the one hosting the show or cooking the food. Most of the Millennials and Gen Zers who heard that story from the short clip on YouTube probably have no idea who Errol Flynn is, or was since it’s been over 66 years and he’s long dead now; in fact, he was already past his relevancy when he died in 1959, his heyday was really in the 30s and 40s. 

 

The only part I would change is the rum 🍹 in the egg mixture, that’s the only part I don’t like because like I said, I don’t like alcohol and want nothing to do with it. I do like that Ainsley actually gives you the option to not use rum 🍹 in the recipe if you don’t want to. He said that instead of using rum 🍹, you could use pineapple juice 🍍 instead, which is what I would use if I was following Ainsley’s recipe almost exactly. I say almost exactly because since we don’t have mixed spice or demerara sugar here in the US 🇺🇸, we’d have to substitute those with cinnamon and brown sugar respectively. To be fair, Ainsley does give you the option to use cinnamon in the final sprinkling after you finish cooking the sandwich. 

 

Then there’s the grilled banana 🍌 and grilled pineapple 🍍 dessert with rum butter glaze and coconut ice cream 🥥, that also looks pretty good and I’d like to try it. Again, the only part I would change or leave out is the rum 🍹, that’s a pattern that you’ll notice with a lot of food and drinks that Ainsley makes in this episode, three of call for rum 🍹. And when he adds the rum 🍹, he adds extra than what is actually necessary, like when he was adding the rum 🍹 to the egg mixture for the pineapple French Toast 🍍, he said “make it tablespoons,” and then in the part where makes the grilled banana and grilled pineapple dessert 🍌🍍, and specifically when he’s making the rum butter glaze, he says “add couple of tablespoons, or two, or three, four” and then finally when he’s making the rum punch, he says “add five or six measures of that, oh yes, pour it in. Remember the more rum 🍹 the more dancing. Was that five or six? Make it seven!” This guy sure loves his rum 🍹, maybe a little bit too much. Are we sure he’s a full-on alcoholic? Oh, and instead of using coconut ice cream 🥥, I’d probably just use vanilla ice cream. I mean, that rum butter glaze already have vanilla in it (fresh vanilla, as in vanilla pods, not vanilla syrup or vanilla extract), so why not 🤷‍♂️? 

 

Lastly, there’s the rum punch, which is another one of Ainsley’s mom’s recipes. The full name of this drink is rum pu punch, and indeed that’s what it’s called in the recipe on the actual website, but in the episode itself, he just calls it rum punch. Again, like with all of the other recipes, the only thing I’d leave out of this is rum 🍹 and other alcoholic beverages. Because it isn’t just the rum this time, there’s also the Angostura bitters, which is a type of tonic. It’s a concentrated bitters based on gentian, herbs, and spices, and is produced by the House of Angostura in Trinidad and Tobago 🇹🇹. It’s mostly just used for flavoring and you’re advised to not to add too much, but I don’t want to take any chances. I wouldn’t add it in if I was making this drink. Since it wouldn’t have rum 🍹 or any other alcohol, it would just pu punch, which is fine by me. Even that hot pepper shrimp 🦐 that one woman ♀︎ makes for Ainsley looks pretty good, I’d try that as well, but like with the jerk chicken, I’d replace the habanero with a milder chili like jalapeño, or Serrano, or green chili. 

Besides the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲, I also like the South Africa episode 🇿🇦, that’s my second favorite one of the bunch, there’s some really cool recipes in there. Of course, as Ainsley says in the episode, they don’t call barbecue or barbie in South Africa 🇿🇦, in South Africa 🇿🇦, they refer to it as “braai,” which I think is pretty cool. My favorite one is the lamb special 🐑, which is basically a butterflied lamb leg, studded with garlic 🧄 and rosemary spikes, like it’s basically a clove of garlic 🧄 poked with a little sprig of rosemary, and you cut several small incisions in the lamb, and put those spikes inside. Then you drizzle the meat with sherry and some oil (Ainsley never specifies what kind) warmed slightly and infused with lemon 🍋, lime 🍋‍🟩, and orange skin and pepper corns. And of course, you throw it onto the grill and cook it. 

 

Even though I’ve never eaten lamb 🐑 before, the way this guy makes it look absolutely delicious 🤤, I would try some if it was cooked like that. The only I’d probably leave out is the sherry, but I don’t know if there’s a cooking sherry that’s non-alcoholic or if there’s only alcoholic sherry. If there is, then I’ll leave the sherry out. But, that oil infused with lemon 🍋, lime 🍋‍🟩, and orange skin sounds like it would be really good, it would add so much aroma and flavor to the meat. That onion side dish 🧅 that he also makes where he sticks peeled onion slices 🧅 on a stripped down rosemary stem and coats it with powdered sugar I guess (he refers to it as “icing sugar” because again, Britons 🇬🇧 have different names for pretty much everything), looked interesting, I would consider trying it only because it was cooked on a grill and has that charred charcoal flavor. But, it could be one of those things where I try it and it ends up not being my thing. 

 

Then there’s those awesome yellowtail that one guy ♂︎ cooks on an open patio with sunflower oil 🌻 and butter 🧈, and seasons with lemon juice and garlic 🧄.  Ainsley cooks some mussels to along with them. That one looks amazing, even if yellowtail isn’t available at all where I live and is probably insanely expensive, but Ainsley does say that if you can’t get yellowtail (which is most people including myself), then you can substitute it with salmon or sea trout. 

 

The funniest thing about this episode is that there’s this part where Ainsley visits this farm (it’s right before the part where he cooks the lamb special 🐑), and he’s talking to the farmer’s wife, and he tells her that he’s feeling hot 🥵 because South Africa 🇿🇦 has a pretty hot climate 🥵, and she says that she has a wonderful refreshment for him, and he says “Ooh, that sounds good, let’s go, let’s go.” He says it in a seductive and almost flirtatious way, and the way that interaction plays out, it makes you think, “Are they about to have sex?” They don’t, she just makes him some fruit punch using fresh fruit from the farm and some white wine, but that little moment, that little interaction happened, it makes you think that they’re about to fuck. There’s a lot of sexual tension between those two in that episode let me tell you. 

Then there’s the Australia episode 🇦🇺, which closes out the series. There’s a few stand out dishes to me like those lamb patties that Ainsley makes on top of that mountain ⛰️. I know that those lamb patties are most likely just meant to be eaten as is, kind of like Salisbury steak, but I wonder how they would taste if you made them into an actual hamburger 🍔 with a bun. Especially considering that they already have lettuce 🥬, onions 🧅, and tomatoes 🍅 (specifically semi-sundried tomatoes) already baked into them, like Ainsley mixed the lamb mince with the lettuce 🥬, the onions 🧅, and the semi-sundried tomatoes as well as basil, garlic 🧄, white breadcrumbs, hard goat cheese, and toasted pine nuts (as well as olive oil and salt and pepper). They would be the most interesting hamburgers 🍔 you’d ever tasted. Besides maybe buffalo burgers 🦬🍔, burgers 🍔 with buffalo patties 🦬. 

 

Those T-bones steaks 🥩 looked pretty good too, but I’m not sure about that “simple marinade” Ainsley made for them since it requires wine 🍷, not like white wine or wine vinegar (like in the marinade for the jerk chicken), it is red wine 🍷, the real deal. He poured a whole swing of that into the bowl for the marinade. I don’t know if I’d be on board with that. Maybe my mom would, but I wouldn’t. At least that palm trick Ainsley did with his hand ✋ to ask how you want your meat cooked (like what level of doneness do you want) was pretty cool. Apparently, it’s something only certain people can do and Ainsley happens to be one of the people who can do it, because he refers to him and others like him who can palm trick as “palmies,” and I couldn’t do it when it I tried it on my own hand 🤚. 

 

That barramundi dish with the bok choy and the shiitake mushrooms that one Australian chef 🇦🇺👨‍🍳 made in front of Ainsley also looked amazing, I’d like a taste of that 🤤. He did say that if you can use salmon, trout, or sea bass as an alternative since not everyone has access to the barramundi. The barramundi is a fish 🐟 that’s only available in Australia 🇦🇺 and other countries that border the Pacific. And even though the US 🇺🇸 does border the Pacific, on the West Coast, I live in a landlocked state, so even if the barramundi is available in the West Coast, I wouldn’t be able to get it here in New Mexico, and even if I could, it’d probably be crazy expensive because of the extended travel it had to do to get to New Mexico. 

 

You honestly wouldn’t be able to get sea bass either since that’s a fish 🐟 that’s only really available in countries that border the Pacific, and has gone up in price due to people almost overfishing them to extinction. There are some tight regulations when it comes to sea bass fishing that they had to put in place to protect the species and prevent it from going extinct. So, I’d either have to settle for salmon or trout. I’d personally pick salmon. And those lobsters 🦞 that Ainsley makes, oh my god, give me some right now 🤤! My favorite part of that section is when Ainsley is sitting there with his sunglasses on 😎 smiling and nodding in approval 🙂‍↕️ to what that chef is saying, that’s an iconic moment. There is a short clip of this section too on the Good Food channel, and one of the comments there said that someone should make a GIF of that moment, of Ainsley smiling and nodding 🙂‍↕️, and that’s exactly what I did. It’s also pretty fitting that the episode and the entire series ends with Ainsley doing a fruit flambé 🍓🍑🔥 on the grill while flailing his arms and dancing around and also mugging at the camera every chance he gets. 

 

 

 

(This is a GIF that I had made of the moment in the Australia episode 🇦🇺 of Ainsley’s Barbecue Bible where Ainsley smiles and nods 🙂‍↕️ to what that Australian chef 🇦🇺👨‍🍳 was saying.) 

 

 

 

Then there’s the Thailand episode 🇹🇭, and there aren’t a lot of dishes in that particular episode that excite me nearly as much or make me want to try them as the ones in the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲, the South Africa episode 🇿🇦, and the Australia episode 🇦🇺. The ones that came away from that episode wanting to try the most is that red snapper recipe where he cooked a fresh caught red snapper on the grill, smothered with a red curry paste (with coconut milk 🥥), topped with chopped garlic 🧄, chopped green onions, and lime slices 🍋‍🟩, and then wrapped in a banana leaf. He said that if you can’t find red snapper, you can use red mallet, tilapia, or sea bass (which he says with whisper, emphasizing the two ss at the end), and if you don’t have any banana leaves, just use good ol’ fashioned tinfoil. 

 

Then there’s the Pad Thai, which Ainsley first sees a guy ♂︎ cook and then cooks himself. I’ve wanted to try Pad Thai for a long time, especially ever since I saw that short clip of Ainsley cooking one himself, so of course it’d be a stand out dish to me. That part also gives us a classic Ainsley moment when he lets that other guy ♂︎ (the guy ♂︎ who cooked the Pad Thai the first time) taste his Pad Thai and that guy likes it, and Ainsley says, “I’m a happy man ♂︎! Wahoo!” Is it a bit cringy? Maybe, but it is a great moment, and shows you how much Ainsley enjoys his job. 

 

That’s why Ainsley is probably my favorite celebrity chef 👨‍🍳 of all. It’s why I like him more than Gordon Ramsey. He seems like a genuinely good guy ♂︎ who would be nice to be around, and who really enjoys what he’s doing and wants to be there. He almost always has a smile 😁 on his face, and every other word out of his mouth is “lovely ❤️,” “fantastic,” “sensational,” “beautiful,” “magnificent,” and “a bit special” (“a bit special” is pretty much his unofficial catchphrase) those are the words he uses to describe his food and pretty much everything else. The comparisons to Bob Ross make perfect sense once see him in action in this show or any of his other cooking shows. 

 

The fact that he is normally an optimistic and jovial guy ♂︎ makes his reaction to learning that he’s descended from a slave owner in that one episode of that ancestry show, Who Do You Think You Are? feel all the more raw, sincere, and impactful 😞. He even says “fuck me!” when he learns that, which is the time I’d ever heard him swear in anything and it was a full-on F bomb too, and totally appropriate. You just feel bad for him in that moment. I’d probably feel the same way if I learned that I was descended from a Spanish conquistador who raped and killed Acomas, chopping their feet off by the ankle. That would be the Acoma equivalent to a black person finding out that they’re descended from a slave owner. The comments on the clip from that episode where Ainsley learns the bad news are a lot more sympathetic and understanding than I expected them to be. 

 

Certainly more sympathetic than the comments underneath the clip from Finding Your Roots (an ancestry show by PBS) where Sunny Hostin (one of the hosts of the morning talk show The View) finds out that she’s descended from a slave owner. A slave trader to be exact, as well as Spanish conquistadors. People hated and made fun of her for that, and used as a way to discredit her and dismiss any of her arguments. Like, “oh, you’re descended from a slave trader? That means everything you say against Donald Trump or any other Republican or right-winger is invalid 👎. That means you have no right to criticize anyone ever!” 

 

What happened to “you aren’t defined by what your ancestors did?” Or does that only apply if you’re white or male ♂︎? People let Ainsley off the hook 🪝, they didn’t give him a hard time for being descended from a slave owner. But not why not Sunny Hostin? Why does she get all the hate for pretty much the same exact thing? Is it just because of what she said in regards to people who are descended from slave owners? Is it because people like Ainsley and view him as a national treasure, and they don’t want to piss on a national treasure, while people here in America 🇺🇸 don’t view Sunny Hostin as a national treasure in the same way people in Britain 🇬🇧 view Ainsley Harriott as a national treasure? It could be, but personally think it’s just good ol’ fashioned sexism. That male privilege ♂︎ really does show in the damndest places. Like, when the chips down, men ♂︎ will be easier and more sympathetic to men ♂︎ than to women ♀︎ even if they experience the same thing. 

 

Most of the people who hated on and made fun of Sunny for that are conservatives, conservative men ♂︎ who hate her because of her political beliefs, because she doesn’t like Trump and doesn’t say nice things about him. They don’t particularly care that she’s descended from a slave trader, most of the people who typed those comments and said those things about Sunny probably are descended from slave owners themselves or at the very least, racist bigots (some of them could be descendants of Confederate soldiers), and most of them would be proud of that fact. That they have white supremacy in their blood 🩸, that it’s apart of their heritage. They’d get a cool plantation mansion out of it. they just want to find any reason to hate her and discredit her and make her look bad. Pointing out that she’s descended from a slave trader is a good way of doing that, even if they themselves don’t actually care that she is and wouldn’t care if the shoe 👟 was on the other foot 🦶, if they were descended from a slave trader or a slave owner. 

Then there’s the Greece episode 🇬🇷, which is my second-to-least favorite episode of the entire series. I like it more than the UK episode 🇬🇧, but less than the other ones. I don’t know, it just didn’t interest me as much as the other ones. The best looking dishes in that episode are the squid 🦑 stuffed with rice 🍚, fresh mint, caramelized onions 🧅, and grilled spinach, and the feta rolls, which are feta cheese (or mozzarella if you can’t find feta), tomatoes 🍅, basil, sundried tomatoes, and black pepper wrapped in grilled eggplant slices 🍆. Now, in the episode itself, Ainsley refers to the eggplant 🍆 as aubergine because like many things, it has a different name in Britain 🇬🇧 than it does in America 🇺🇸. In Britain 🇬🇧, they call eggplants 🍆 aubergines instead, though interestingly enough, Australians 🇦🇺 and New Zealanders 🇳🇿 also call them eggplants 🍆. 

 

It’s funny how Australia 🇦🇺 and New Zealand 🇳🇿 are in the Anglosphere, they’re apart of the Commonwealth, and their accents sound very similar to the British accent 🇬🇧 (more similar to the British accent 🇬🇧 than the American accent 🇺🇸), and yet they use the same name for eggplants 🍆 that we do. The UK 🇬🇧 is the odd one out in this situation. I do like the part when he’s making the eggplant dip 🍆  with Greek yogurt 🇬🇷, and he says that the Greek yogurt 🇬🇷 gives the dip “a wonderful creamy taste,” I’m surprised that part didn’t become a meme. Imagine all the smutty jokes people could make with that, people could get real nasty with the sex jokes on that one 😏. Oh, and the part in the squid section 🦑 when he’s talking about stuffing the squid 🦑 with the rice and mint and whether or not to use a spoon or use your fingers, and he says “use your fingers because I like to use my fingers 😏” was also quite naughty, another moment that I’m surprised never became a meme, imagine the possibilities with that one 😏. 

I also learned that Greeks 🇬🇷 apparently use more olive oil 🫒 in their cooking than Italians 🇮🇹 do. We usually associate olive oil 🫒 with Italian food 🇮🇹, but if there’s any form of cuisine that should be associated with olive oil 🫒 more, it’s Greek food 🇬🇷. Even the Greek music 🇬🇷 they play throughout the episode sounds very similar to Italian music 🇮🇹, you could easily get them confused. I guess it’s that general Mediterranean culture, Italy 🇮🇹 and Greece 🇬🇷 are both Mediterranean nations. They’re both the inheritors of Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece respectively. Speaking of music, that dance that Ainsley does on that mountain cliff ⛰️ while cooking that kleftiko, set to that song, “Aponi Zoi” is a truly magical Ainsley moment. 

 

The show does have music, it has a lot of licensed songs, especially used during transitions between the different sections, “Aponi Zoi” wasn’t the only one. They include  “New Sensations” by INXS in the Thailand episode 🇹🇭, “Walking On Sunshine ☀️” by Katrina & The Waves in the UK episode 🇬🇧, “Umphefumulo Wami” by Vusi Ximba in the South Africa episode 🇿🇦, “The Whole of the Moon 🌕” by the Waterboys 💦, “Weather With You” by Crowded House, and “Lucky You” by the Lightning Seeds ⚡️ in the Australia episode 🇦🇺, and “My Boy Lollipop ♂︎🍭” by Coyabalites in the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲. 

 

But, I personally like the cooking sections themselves where there is no music whatsoever, it’s just the sound of Ainsley talking, the sound of the food cooking, meats, fruits, vegetables, and herbs being chopped up, eggs 🥚 being whisked, oil, vinegar, and other liquids being poured into bowls, and food sizzling on the grill, and the ambience of wherever he is. Those moments are what give this show its relaxing feeling, when it really starts feeling like The Joy of Painting 🎨 (the show that Bob Ross hosted) but with food instead of painting 🖼️ 🎨. 

 

I’d also like to quickly mention the editing in this series. For some reason, in certain episodes, there are these abrupt cuts. Like, it didn’t smoothly transition to the next section, just abruptly cut. You’ll see what I mean, when you watch certain episodes, the episodes that I noticed these type of abrupt cuts were in the Greece episode 🇬🇷, the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲, the South Africa episode 🇿🇦, and the Thailand episode 🇹🇭. The South Africa episode 🇿🇦 just briefly cuts to black for a second or two, and then it comes back. It happens during the transition from the section on the farm to the section on the beach with the outdoor kitchen (that’s the part with the yellowtail). The same thing happens in the Thailand episode 🇹🇭, when it’s transitioning from the section where Ainsley cooks the Pad Thai and the section focuses on the food market. I don’t know if that’s just a quirk of the versions they uploaded to YouTube, or a quirk caused by them uploading them to YouTube, or it was always like that even when it was originally aired on TV. Regardless, it’s pretty weird, and kinda takes me out of the experience, if only briefly. 

 

Also, you know how each episode ends with the credits and sneak peek of the next episode and Ainsley says “tune in next week, I’m going to this country next?” Well, in the sneak preview for the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲, there is no narration from Ainsley, it’s just silent, only playing the saxophone 🎷 music that plays in the end credits at the end of every episode, while footage from the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲 plays in the corner. They gave away pretty much the whole episode, showing pretty much everything. I know that they did that with every episode, but still, it was really noticeable when they did it with the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲, but maybe that’s just because I know the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲 so well, pretty much inside and out. 

I don’t really do ratings or ranking in my reviews anymore, but if I were to rank them, from best to worst or favorite to least favorite, would go like this: the Jamaica episode 🇯🇲, the South Africa episode 🇿🇦, the Australia episode 🇦🇺, the Thailand episode 🇹🇭, the Greece episode 🇬🇷, and the UK episode 🇬🇧. Like I said before, all of the episodes are available free to watch on YouTube. They were uploaded by the Good Food channel, formally called the BBC Food channel since it was apart of the BBC. You know how PBS has all those YouTube channels associated with them? Well, the BBC is very much the same way. 

 

So, if you want to watch this series, if this review convinced you to watch it, you can click this link here. For some reason, the actual full episodes themselves have no comments on them. The Greece episode 🇬🇷 is the only one that has a comment on it, and it’s a nonsense comment. Those short clips I’ve mentioned multiple times throughout this review have way more views and comments than the full episodes themselves. So, please when you watch these episodes (any of them), be sure to leave a comment below. Oh, and don’t forget to let your fingers get in there and have a good ol’ rub a-dub 😉.