Summer officially began on June 21th, but it’s been summery-hot since April here in San Antonio. Grilling and BBQing are intrinsically tied to summer, so I thought for this Hypercooking episode I’d take the camera outside. This go-round I’m covering BBQ chicken, but I also talk a bit about grill basics, BBQ sauces, BBQ rubs, and the difference between gas and charcoal grills.

If you take nothing from this video, remember this: grilling and bbqing should be social events. Standing over a fire cooking food should be a spectacle. Practice a few times and then have a party (don’t get too drunk until you finish cooking). Cook with flair. Have some drinks. Tell some jokes. Share good, homecooked food with your close friends. Don’t pay a restaurant for the privledge helping you and your loved ones create memories. You can do that yourself, with much better food, in your very own backyard.

Quick clarification: BBQing is when low, indirect heat cooks the food over a long period of time. Usually there is smoking involved with this process. Grilling is simply cooking over a grill. In this episode I use the terms pretty much interchangeably, and I realize that will irritate some people. Sorry.

During this episode, I mention Chef Todd Mohr’s YouTube cooking show “Cooking Coarse.” This is the episode I was referencing. I highly recommend watching Chef Todd’s other episodes, as they are all excellent.

Also, this is the basic ingredient list I used for my BBQ Rub. Feel free to adjust it to your taste (mine is fairly spicy).

1/4 cup dark brown sugar
3 tbs black pepper
3 tbs kosher salt (only use kosher; if you use table salt you will have to adjust the volume)
1 tbs hickory smoked kosher salt
2 tbs sweet paprika
2 tbs Hungarian paprika
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp celery seeds
2 tsp cayenne pepper

This will keep for a couple of months without degrading in flavor. Keep it in a Mason Jar with holes punched in the top for easy shaking. To store, simply put some plastic wrap over the top of the jar, screw on the top, and put your rub in your pantry.

Special thanks go out to Leigh, who helped me film the last portion of this ep.

I’m sorry that I had to break this episode into two parts and then upload it on two different websites. Since YouTube insists on capping videos at ten minutes, I’ll probably be uploarding exclusively to Metacafe from now on.

Keep an eye out for Ellie, my little Key Grip, at the end of clip two. She just waltzed right through my shot. So unprofessional.

So it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. There are two reasons for this: 1) I had to update Wordpress, my blogging software, and the installation went horribly awry. After the “super-easy” Wordpress automatic updater seriously borked my blog, I had to manually go into my database and change certain things, which wouldn’t have been so bad if this were 1998 and I was still studying computer programming. 2) I was being lazy.

Also, I felt my whole “blog-persona” shtick was getting a little stale. It also got a little disconcerting after I met people who had formerly only known me via my blog, and they said that I wasn’t quite as angry in real life as they had imagined me.

But before I get to the upcoming high-concept addition to the blog, I’d like to explain the “hyper” in the name of the blog and my internet username. When I started this blog I was in grad school, and I wanted a place to share information with my fellow students. I added the “hyper” to “literature” because I was using the prefix in its original usage of “above and beyond” or “excessive.” I could have just as easily said “Beyond-literature,” but that just didn’t have the same ring.

I eventually started using the prefix with everything I did online, and now it’s become somewhat ubiquitous to my net-presence. But, and this is what I want to clear up, the “Hyper” in “Hypermark” doesn’t suggest that I am anxious or overexcited. It simply means that the “Hypermark” of the interenets is something above and beyond the flesh and blood me.

Hope that clears things up. Now, onto the announcement.

I’ve decided to add a recurring video segment to the blog. When I was brainstorming on what to add to the blog, I tried to come up with a way to combine my blogging duties, my love of cooking, and my overinflated sense of worth. I eventually decided to create a video segment that I non-ironically titled “Hypercooking with Mark.”

Calm down. It’s not as idiotic as it sounds.

Well, maybe it is, but the video was fun to shoot and cut. The first episode is how to buy and store fish. Let me know what you think: