CISC

The Culinary Institute of Smoke Cooking

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We are very pleased -- and just a wee bit surprised -- that you found us. As the only Internet Web Site dedicated solely to the advanced education of the world’s Barbecue Cooks through home-study, we aren’t exactly a household name – yet. We are grateful that you decided to stop by and learn more about our two unique products:

•  The CISC Master BBQ Cooking School ($299), the only advanced, home-study cooking course designed to improve the grilling and smoke-cooking skills of the novice backyard BBQuer, the professional chef and the advanced competition cook.
• "Barbecuing & Sausage-Making SECRETS ($14.95 + S&H)," the best-selling reference cookbook & training manual now in its eighth printing with nearly 26,000 copies sold worldwide. The book’s 250 triple-tested recipes have been a huge hit with cooks everywhere.

We hope you will take a few minutes and get to know Ruthie and the late Charlie Knote, co-founders of CISC and co-authors of the CISC Master BBQ Cooking School and the "SECRETS" cookbook and textbook. You will find their expertise -- based on 110-plus years of scientific research and hands-on, in-the-pit cooking -- and their down-home approach are a rare and entertaining way to create world-class BBQ.

You should know that the CISC Master BBQ Cooking School is approved by The American Culinary Federation (ACF), Inc. for 48 hours of continuing education credits for ACF chefs.  CISC is the only BBQ School in America that has this approval.

ACF, is the professional, not-for-profit organization for chefs and cooks founded in 1929 in New York City. More than 10,000 certifications have been awarded by ACF in the last 25 years at five different levels, from certified culinarian to the prestigious Certified Master Chef. More than 18,000 apprentices have been enrolled in the last two decades by ACF-approved supervising chefs in ACF-sponsoring houses. 

Some folks question whether the Master BBQ Cooking School really teaches true BBQ and whether our mentor-judge element is an appropriate safeguard for quality control.   CISC has been thoroughly reviewed every year since 2002 and we wouldn't have ACF approval if we didn't measure up to that group's rigorous standards.All mentor-judges are instructed in how to use the guidelines developed and used by Kansas City BBQ Society certified judges and are further asked to rate the food they are evaluating in an honest and critical manner. If you can't trust your wife, husband, neighbors or friends to be honest with you, who can you trust?