Whether sampling some tender brisket, tangy pulled pork, delectable ribs, or some other awe-inspiring morsels, there’s nothing quite like smoked meats for any meal, get-together with friends, or party before a big game. No one knows that better than Jeremy Yoder, aka “Mad Scientist BBQ.”
This smoked meat sensation from Louisville, Kentucky, is bullish on all things barbecue, and his YouTube channel now has more than 763,000 subscribers, and his videos have been viewed more than 102 million times.
The 35-year-old married father of two has parlayed a love of barbecue and a degree in biochemistry into a full-time job. His channel involves much more than taking a few videos and posting them online. Yoder takes a deep dive into the science behind those scrumptious flavors, with high-end production that has resonated with fellow barbecue fans.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
“Even though I don’t obviously work as a chemist anymore,” he says, “I still use that kind of mindset when approaching barbecue.”
BBQ Master: Passion to Pitmaster
Turning backyard barbecue videos into a career didn’t come immediately. It all came simply from enjoying smoked meats and a desire to find a new hobby.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
“I was living in L.A. at the time and was working full time as a school teacher when I was in graduate school, and I just needed some kind of outlet, something to do where I wasn’t thinking about work,” he says.
Getting his own smoker seemed like an obvious choice. After a trip to the hardware store in 2016, Yoder was the new owner of a $300 smoker and started cooking every weekend. That morphed into every weekend and a couple of times during the week. The burgeoning pitmaster was soon transfixed on creating perfect brisket, ribs, and chicken – trying to protect the craft.
Barbecue Tips and Tricks!
A year later, Yoder believed he could make some videos of his progress and share them on YouTube. His wife Erica is creative, and he recruited her to pitch in. After buying a cheap camcorder on Amazon, the couple started filming, and Mad Scientist BBQ officially launched.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
Those early videos did fairly well, and the BBQ team kept uploading videos with new creations and smoking experiments, pleasing meat-eaters around the world. A carnivorous career change soon followed.
“Eventually, I quit my job teaching and started doing barbecue catering in L.A. full time,” he says. “Then the pandemic hit, and the catering business was really starting to do well. But then the pandemic meant no gatherings of 10 or more, which is not great for a catering business. So I was like, ‘Well, what can I do? I can cook in the backyard and post YouTube videos.’
“So I started doing that consistently, about one video per week. The channel really started taking off. That became my main thing by the end of 2020.”
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
Craftsmanship & Experimentation
Creating a successful YouTube platform isn’t easy. It involves much more than just breaking out an iPhone and recording for a few minutes. Mad Scientist BBQ is a real production that seeks to educate others looking to break into barbecue and comes with hours of production and editing for each video.
Yoder tries to educate, much more than just extracting perfect slabs of meat out of a metal box filled with smoke. He also experiments with different cooking styles and techniques, cluing viewers in on what worked and what didn’t.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
“I approach barbecue through the lens of science,” he says. “You can do a thing 10,000 times and become an expert at it, or if you understand everything that’s happening, you can shorten the learning curve and do it maybe 10 times before you really have it mastered. So that’s what I try to focus on.
Amateur Perfection
“I know the vast majority of my viewers are not professional cooks, and so I try to give them the tools to understand what’s happening, so that with their smoker at their elevation, they can figure out how to get the same kind of results I’m getting. That’s what they’re after. Then I test things and run experiments to find answers. The things I understand I’m happy to explain, and the things I don’t understand I try to test and look for answers.”
However, sometimes that means leveling with the audience and admitting that he doesn’t exactly understand, scientifically, why a technique works, but he offers up some tasty results. So far, his blend has been a recipe for YouTube success.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
“Other channels typically focus on barbecue recipes, but I think YouTube videos aren’t ideal for recipes because you either have to write them down or come back and revisit the video if you ever want to try to execute the recipe,” he says. “So what I focus more on is barbecue technique – what kinds of things will give you these types of results.”
YouTube Barbecue Baron
The Yoders have now made the endeavor into a real business, and for a barbecue fan, a real dream come true. Jeremy is in charge of the cooking while Erica films and edits. There is plenty of work involved, but the BBQ platform, which also includes numerous followers on TikTok and Instagram, has become a real labor of love.
The new life has been great, but it also comes with a hefty grocery bill. The Yoders spend about $2,000 a month just on meat. Living near the family certainly has its perks.
“My neighbors eat well,” he says. “Smoked meat is universal. It’s not an acquired taste. There’s something primal and visceral about cooking with fire. You can go to a parking lot, and if you just start cooking with fire, people will show up and ask you, ‘Hey man, what are you cooking? What is this? What kind of wood are you using?’
“It just inevitably happens. I think that’s what makes it popular. People have been cooking with fire forever, and it’s been interesting forever. It continues to be interesting. And I would imagine that even far into the future, cooking meat with fire will be interesting.”
If it’s meat that can be smoked, it’s a good bet that Yoder has cooked it. That can range from chicken thighs to Argentine asado tri-tip to Asian-style pork belly. He also offers tips for smoking meats on a budget.
With a growing audience and a high-quality show, this BBQ master has even attracted sponsors, but he notes that the brands he endorses are products he was already a fan of and would use anyway.
The YouTube factor
Looking back, getting on the meat-smoking YouTube train was certainly the right choice and has turned into an amazing opportunity. Yoder admits he would never have thought the journey would come this far and be so successful.
“I made the first YouTube videos just for fun,” he says. “If nobody watches it, who cares. If people watch it and like it, then great. Then, kind of in the back of my mind, ‘I bet I could make some money doing this.’ But that was never really part of the plan. Then I started barbecue catering businesses to make money, because in L.A. there were all kinds of food … but they didn’t really have Texas-style barbecue, so I thought that was a niche I could potentially fill.
“I put full effort into that, and then it was only when I was forced to stop operating due to COVID restrictions that I leaned into putting out a new YouTube video every week. We started that and have been doing that ever since. I did not see the end from the beginning, and we sometimes talk about how cool it is that we get to work from home, be around our kids, and see each other every day. So we’re tremendously fortunate and very grateful.”
That Tailgate Party Tips
Football seasons may still be a few months away, but a smoked brisket or slab of ribs can be the perfect addition for any fiesta. This master smoker offers a few tips for making that perfect meaty treat when the kickoff approaches.
1. Quality of fire – Managing the fire will produce great results. “If you’re managing your fire poorly, it doesn’t matter how great the seasoning is or how well you trim the meat; it’s not going to taste good,” Yoder says. “So managing the fire is king.”
2. Change only one thing at a time – If you’re changing 10 things every time you cook, and get good results sometimes and bad results sometimes, you don’t know what to attribute to success or failure. “If you only change one thing, then you have a reasonably good chance of isolating the difference in result to that one thing that you changed,” he says. “So If you change temperatures, don’t change anything else. If you change how you season, don’t change anything else.
3. Monitor temperatures – Keeping tabs on the temperature of the meat allows you to be far more successful. Yoder adds about smoking at differing temperatures: “You might get it right, but you’re more likely to get it wrong. But if you have an accurate digital instant-read thermometer or an internal probe that you put in and you can monitor the temperatures, you’re going to be far more likely to be successful.”
