About Elizbeth

Elizabeth Karmel grew up in North Carolina where she was raised on BBQ. Her cultural passion for barbecue served Karmel well as she played with fire everyday handling marketing public relations efforts and culinary initiatives for client Weber-Stephen Products Co. for a decade before creating Girls at the Grill™ in 2001.

Karmel is a grilling and barbecue information resource for the country’s media and food writers, chefs and cookbook authors. She is frequently quoted and generally regarded as America’s female grilling expert. As the years passed, Karmel realized that her true calling was to spread the good word of grilling and barbecue. Karmel recognized that most women she met – even the women who were very good cooks – never stepped one foot in front of the grill. So she decided it was time for the girls to take back the backyard and she was going to lead the charge!

Karmel created Girls at the Grill in 2001 to share her passion for outdoor cooking with girls (and the occasional guy) everywhere. Girls at the Grill is committed to providing backyard cooks (and women who are tired of burnt chicken and shoe-leather steak) with simple easy-to-understand instructions, lifestyle information and recipes for everything from classic cookouts to gourmet grill meals. Karmel shares her knowledge and enthusiasm every week through the free GrillNEWS newsletter she sends to members of the website’s LadyBug Club. The club boasts thousands of members, both male and female. Karmel has been the featured guest on Sara Moulton’s Food Network show, Sara’s Secrets several times. Within six hours of the first airing in the summer of 2003, she had a half-million hits to her website and thousands of e-mails. She has also appeared on the Today show and the MSNBC in-flight programming.

Karmel wrote a 384-page grilling and barbecue cookbook, Taming the Flame: Hot and Quick Grilling and Low and Slow BBQ by Wiley & Sons in Spring of 2005. In addition, she is the resident grilling consultant and an author for Fine Cooking magazine and has written food features for Cooking Light, American Homestyle, Redbook and Rosie. She has been featured in many more magazines including, Food & Wine, New York, Midwest Living and Wine Spectator. Karmel kicked off www.GirlsattheGrill.com as the guest chef at a James Beard Foundation dinner in June 2002.

Karmel is frequently interviewed by the press on all things grill and barbecue related and has represented All-Clad, The Soy Foods Information Council, National Pork Council.

Karmel teaches grilling in cooking schools across the country and is a frequent guest instructor at ICE (formerly Peter Kump’s Cooking School) in Manhattan. She also demonstrates grilling at the Bloomingdale’s Home Centers and Whole Foods. To keep her culinary skills sharp, she volunteers in the restaurant kitchen of West Town Tavern. She features her trademarked grilling and barbecue techniques in all of her communications with the goal of de-mystifying outdoor cooking and getting outdoor cooks everywhere to live her mantra: “If you can eat it, you can grill it!™”

In addition to grilling, writing and teaching, Karmel introduced her new Grill Friends™ line of hand-painted ceramic serving pieces and grilling tools designed for outdoor cooking and entertaining at the 2004 Housewares Show.

She keeps her hams in the BBQ circuit as a Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) certified judge and a member of the barbecue team, Swine and Dine. She was previously the head cook of the team, Bubba meets Bacchus. She plans to continue judging and cooking on the barbecue circuit where she’s picked up some of her favorite recipes, tips and techniques.
Karmel is a member of IACP, the James Beard Foundation, Southern Foodways Alliance, KCBS, NBBQ and Slow Food. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, and is a judge of the 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 IACP Cookbook Awards and the 2004 James Beard Awards.