Monk: While I know the name, I am not terribly familiar with a lot of Steven Raichlen’s work – either on his previous tv shows or his many number of books. I have occasionally used his website BarbecueBible.com for recipes and product reviews. That will likely change once his latest TV show debuts later this month on PBS.

Description: Ever since he wrote the international blockbuster, The Barbecue Bible, Steven Raichlen has been fascinated (make that obsessed) by global grilling. So now, after four seasons of the popular Project Fire on PBS, Steven and his Emmy Award-winning producer Matt Cohen of Resolution Pictures launch their most ambitious TV series yet: Steven Raichlen’s Planet Barbecue®. It’s the show of a lifetime by a team that’s spent decades traveling the world’s barbecue trail to bring you the ultimate in barbecuing and grilling.

Like Project Fire and Project Smoke, Planet Barbecue ® continues the popular format that delivers 96 percent carriage on the Public Television network (more than 400 stations): The cutting-edge recipes, practical how-tos, ingenious techniques, and eye-popping beauty shots of the food. (Yes, Steven is the man who introduced the world to beer can chicken, planked salmon, caveman T-bones, and rotisserie pineapple blasted with a roofer’s torch.) ?

But the new show takes an international approach, focusing on grilling across the planet, not just in the U.S. Guest grill masters will demonstrate the A, B, Cs of world barbecue, with shows on Argentinean, Brazilian, and Caribbean grilling. Other episodes will delve into the live fire cooking of Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru. The series will explore how grill cultures meet and influence each other in shows like East Meets West, Grilling from Across the Pond, The Global Melting Pot, and a mostly meatless show called Planet Barbecue.

Planet Barbecue’s home base this year is the historic Spanish Governor’s Palace in San Antonio, Texas. So look forward to plenty of great Lone Star and Tex-Mex barbecue—prepared by some of Texas’ top pitmasters and showcased in episodes like Texas Trinity and The San Antonio Grill. Our mission: to explore how a region’s barbecue reflects its culture and how that culture determines what people grill.

We live in an age of unprecedented cultural diversity and global interconnection. Steven Raichlen’s Planet Barbecue® will celebrate the universality of live-fire cooking and the cultural differences that make it so thrilling.

Steven Raichlen’s Planet Barbecue®. Bringing the world of live-fire cooking to your backyard.