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A colossal heap of split oak towers in the backyard of The Skylight Inn in Ayden, North Carolina, the legendary BBQ joint where pitmaster Sam Jones got his start. It’s a fitting monument to the generations his family has been smoking whole hogs, since the 1830s, when his great-great-great-grandfather sold smoked pork out of a covered wagon.The Skylight opened in 1947, and Jones grew up working there alongside his father and grandfather. In many ways, Jones was destined to be a pitmaster, but he was initially hesitant to devote his life to it: “When I was young, I was a little bit embarrassed of Skylight," Sam admitted. That changed after Jones wrote a college term paper on the history of barbecue and realized it wasn’t just about slogging away, elbow-deep in coleslaw: “I saw it no longer as a job, but as a way of life.” Jones dropped out of school to help out back home after his grandfather fell ill, and he never looked back. After the Southern Foodways Alliance made a short film about Skylight, fame followed. In 2003, Skylight Inn was awarded the James Beard "America's Classics" Award, and he opened a second location, Sam Jones BBQ, soon after. He’s traveled the country to tell his family’s story, and it's a heritage you can smell, see, and taste when you cook with him in our BBQ class. “BBQ is a primitive food that doesn’t need a lot of adulteration,” he says. “My family has cooked whole hog BBQ for over 100 years, and you don’t spend the time and energy cooking whole animals over wood to mask it with sauce.” That means when you bite into his pork, cleaved by hand into a pile of juicy meat and crispy skin, you taste pig, smoke, and the slight tang of his iconic Carolina-style vinegar sauce—in that order. Most home cooks are used to grilling on a searing-hot flame. But Sam Jones will show you how to turn down the heat to harness the smoke: it’s what makes the pork succulent, the ribs toothsome but tender, and the chicken moist with skin that’s golden, not burnt. Of course, it wouldn’t be a full-on BBQ without the sides, and Jones’s approach couldn’t be simpler or more satisfying. His cornbread combines only a few ingredients before it's “oven-fried” in bacon fat; his baked beans and sweet slaw are uncomplicated, but represent a long legacy of pitmaster tradition. We know you’ll enjoy not only the true taste of Carolina-style BBQ, but also the BBQ “way of life,” which requires less panache than it does patience. So get those coals smoldering, pull up a chair, and pop open a cold one: a sensational meal awaits!Sam's Restaurants:Sam Jones BBQ (Winterville, NC) The Skylight Inn (Ayden, NC)

You wouldn’t expect a six-foot-tall native Vermonter to serve as America’s premier Thai food buff. Not until Ricker rolls up his sleeves to get to work, that is: his arms are inked with a traditional clay mortar and wooden pestle, bird’s eye chiles, and stylized Thai herbs. But his dedication to the cuisine is more than just skin-deep.Sugary pad thai and chicken skewers with candy-sweet peanut sauce may have shaped America's understanding of Thai cuisine, but Andy Ricker is setting out to change all that. As the chef-owner of Pok Pok restaurants in New York City and Portland, Oregon (where he's now based), he cooks food that tastes like it's from half a world away—because it is. He's been traveling to Thailand for over twenty years to bring its true flavors Stateside. His phat thai, speckled with salted radish and redolent of sour tamarind water and palm sugar syrup, boasts a precise balance of sweet, tart, and umami-rich flavors. His kai yaang, brined whole and stuffed with aromatics, was inspired by an old friend in Chiang Mai who spent 30 years spit-roasting young chickens alongside a wall of glowing charcoal. His first visit to Thailand was simply one of many stops he made while backpacking around the world, picking up odd jobs from New Zealand to England to support his travels. But his second trip there marked a watershed moment in his culinary career. He still remembers the one dish that blew his mind: a Northern-style mushroom curry. “It was like seeing an entirely new color," he recalls in his best-selling cookbook, Pok Pok. "From then on, my eyes were open.” Ricker dedicated himself to language lessons and befriended home cooks and street vendors, talking his way into their kitchens. His flavor quests became more systematic: he’d taste something outrageous, then try versions of it everywhere he could to understand how to recreate it. At times, his love affair with Thailand made him a hard hire back in the States, because he’d return every year. Eventually, he decided it was time to open his own restaurant.Ricker’s ambassadorship of Thai cuisine has boomed into an empire over the last two decades: in addition to his Pok Pok restaurants, he’s the founder of Pok Pok Som (a drinking vinegar company) and managing partner of Pok Pok Thaan (a charcoal importing enterprise). He’s also a two-time James Beard Award-winner and best-selling cookbook author. Even after decades of traveling to Thailand, Ricker doesn’t consider himself an expert: “I'm a student like everyone else who's interested in Thai cooking," he says. "My experience with Thai cooking is concentrated heavily on northern Thai food. Central Thai is something I'm learning more about. Southern Thai is almost an entire mystery to me.” His approach to Thai flavors is nearly sociological, and his devotion to ingredients keeps his dishes very close to their source. Ricker may not consider himself an expert, but he's undeniably a chef who’s passionate about creating food that tastes like it’s straight from Thailand. In his cooking class, you'll learn not only about the flavors and ingredients that define Thai cuisine, but the techniques, as well—the unique way street vendors shred green papaya for a classic salad, for instance, or how to use a traditional clay mortar. With every palate-piquing bite, you’ll understand anew why this is a cuisine that could spark a lifelong obsession. Andy's Restaurants:Pok Pok (Portland, OR)Pok Pok Ny (Brooklyn, NY)Whiskey Soda Lounge (Portland, OR)Andy's Book:Pok Pok (2013)

Vivian Howard, chef-owner of Chef & the Farmer in North Carolina, was a locavore way before it was cool. As a daughter of tobacco- and hog-farming parents, she ate with the ebb and flow of seasons in her hometown, Deep Run, North Carolina. But as an aspiring journalist, her dreams felt too big for butter beans and biscuits: she was plotting an escape to New York. “I just wanted night to sound like car horns and people instead of frogs and crickets,” she writes in her James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, Deep Run Roots.After college, Howard got a job in advertising, but when she found herself hiding on a vacant floor to take naps during her lunch break, she quit and finally gave in to her passion for food. From a server at Greenwich Village’s Voyage, she worked her way up to being a member of the opening team at Jean­-Georges Vongerichten’s Spice Market. But eventually, Howard's roots called her back home, where she opened Chef & the Farmer to preserve, stew and transform the foods of her childhood into her own cuisine. The intimate relationship between chef, ingredients, and hometown became the subject of “A Chef’s Life,” the Peabody and Daytime Emmy award-winning series that also earned her a James Beard Award for Outstanding Personality/Host in 2016. “The ingredients are characters who shape my life," she writes. "Eastern North Carolina is my Tuscany, my Szechuan, my Provence.” Of course, hints of Italy make themselves known in her crunchy endive salad with Parmesan and pine nuts, while Southeast France peeks through in her spicy fish stew.Like Howard herself, her dishes may start out local, but they succumb to wanderlust. The recipes she’s made for Panna are no exception: BLT Dip, a blissful concoction that reimagines the flavors of an iconic American sandwich, includes a touch of tarragon and anchovy; her glazed pecans—aka "Viv's Addiction"—are tossed in a powerful mix of paprika, cumin, chipotle, and coriander. We can't wait for you to turn Howard's kaleidoscopic Southern dishes into traditions of your own.Vivian's Restaurants:Chef & the Farmer (Kinston, NC)Boiler Room (Kinston, NC)Benny's Big Time (Wilmington, NC)Vivian's Book:Deep Run Roots (2016)