Diva Q Crafts Perfect Barbecue With WhistlePig Whiskey - Exclusive Interview

This is something that keeper of the flame Danielle "Diva Q" Bennett knows in her bones: Barbecue is a way of life, and meat science is its life's blood. Meet the ultimate BBQ whisperer. Since 2006, when Bennett judged her first contest, her insatiable need to learn more about barbecue has earned her over 400 barbecue awards (including 20 Grand Championships and 29 perfect "180" scores), over 20,000 students, a cookbook, a TV show ("BBQ Crawl"), and more than anyone's fair share of once-in-a-lifetime culinary travel experiences. For example, Bennett was the first female in history to teach barbecue in Tel Aviv. With a CV like hers, not to toot one's own horn would be sinful. "I do not say I'm lucky," Diva Q tells Mashed. "I work too hard to be lucky."

Most recently, Diva Q's adventures brought her to Vermont. There, the pitmaster — who works with Traeger Grills — got to barbecue and invent recipes with the product of WhistlePig Whiskey and Traeger Grills' collab, SmokeStock Wood Fired Whiskey. That, says Diva Q, is just one of her latest pinch-me moments. She'll walk you through it, and others, in this exclusive interview with Mashed, sharing family memories and dishing out healthy doses of unmissable wisdom along the way.

In your cookbook, you name barbecue competition ground rules for visitors. People who are passionate about barbecue form their own tight-knit community. What are its uniting factors?

One of the biggest things about the barbecue community, in general, is the fact that one of our greatest achievements is to bring together people with food. We bring communities together with food. We take care of each other. I'll give you an example — one of the things that I've been really fortunate to do with my partnerships with Traeger, with my clients — all of them — they've always been supportive of my charitable works. 

That's really important to me to give back to my community. I'm in a position where I have all this food and I'm not going to eat it all by myself, so what do we do with it? We try to distribute it. We've given back to our communities, whether it's [the] police, fire [stations], women and children's shelter, youth ministries, whatever that is. For barbecuers in general, you'll notice a big trend — and I very rarely do competitions now — but in the barbecue community itself, you'll definitely see a higher than standard level of people that want to bring others together through food. That comes in line with a lot of charitable works. 

You mentioned doing a ton of traveling. You've crisscrossed the United States in a solo trailer at least five to six times! Give us your top two pinch-me moments when traveling for work.

If you've ever seen the size of Texas or if you've been to Texas, you know Texas is a big damn state. That state is huge. I was traveling. I was doing Season 2 of "BBQ Crawl." I had enough of the crew. I had enough people. I didn't want people anymore that day. My crew was amazing, by the way. Nothing against them, but when you have to talk all day and you're on camera all day and you've got ... Joel Cameron, that was my camera guy's name, was literally here all day in my truck. Every once in a while I'd say, "Okay, everybody get. Go in the other vehicle. I need some space. I need some time." I needed to decompress. I said, "Hey, I'll meet you at the next hotel," which we were [going to] in Texas.

I ended up getting in the truck and trailer by myself, and I was driving across Texas ... It was all the ranch areas, and one of the coolest things ever is I pulled my truck and trailer over on the side of the road where the [speed limit] is posted at 80 miles an hour. There's nothing around, and I sat there at the front of my truck, and I watched the sunset. I thought to myself, "Holy s***, look at where barbecue has brought me." Here I am in the middle of Texas, getting paid to barbecue on TV with the Travel Channel, going from place to place [for a show] called "BBQ Crawl," drinking whiskey, having a good time, working my ass off.

This was a big pinch-me moment. I've had so many others since then. That was the first one that really hit me. [Another was] when I won a World Pork Championship, because a Canadian female had never done that before, the Jack Daniels [one], which is pretty cool. There's other moments there that are truly near and dear to my heart. I was the first female ever to teach barbecue in Tel Aviv, Israel.

You are famous for barbecuing in all conditions, year-round, no matter the weather. What is the most extreme condition you've barbecued in?

Tromso, Norway, minus 35. We were there [around March 2019]. There is a video out there. We drank a lot of whiskey that day because we were just trying to keep warm. We were doing the Northern Lights. Tromso, Norway is three hours from the Russian border. We had to go in this small little prop plane, which was pretty amazing. I was up there and I was teaching some recipes. 

We've got the Northern Lights, they're all happening around us. It's cool as s***. I am serving one of my favorite recipes to serve with whiskey, which is reverse-seared steak and compound butter. That's one of my favorites. We have great recipes for a lot of things, but I was doing my reverse-seared steak and one of the guys came out and he goes, "Can you cook a steak for me?"

I'm like, "Yeah, sure. Let me show you how to do it because we do reverse-sear and it's a longer process." Here we are in minus 35, and the Traegers were banging out an amazing product. He handed me a steak that was really lean. We talked about it afterward and I'm like, "What kind of steak was that?" I had to guess and I guessed right. It was caribou, AKA reindeer. It was amazing. That was probably one of the most extreme [condition]. We were sitting there, once again sipping whiskey ... [and] enjoying that balance of goodness and smoke and all that stuff.

You're actually a dessert person –

No, I'm a food person. I love meat more than anything.

But your dessert, "Death by Diva" has [about] 26, scores of 180! We know you're a barbecue person, but what is the relation between a really good dessert and a really nice piece of meat or barbecue?

It's all about the balanced meal. I'm a multiple world champion [in] pork and sausage and bacon and a whole bunch of meat categories, [as well as] vegetables. It's all about balance. If you've got this really lush over-the-top, unctuous, beautiful piece of barbecue meat, you serve it with a lovely spicy rye to cut it and then your dessert or your greens option gives you that lovely freshness or rounds it all out. 

That's what I try to do with every single meal that I serve. It's all about those balanced bites and what pairs well with something. It's amazing when you have a less than stellar whiskey and you're like, "Oh, that's boring. It doesn't work." It's the same if you make a half-partition piece of meat or a dessert that's like, "Eh, it's okay." I always think of it [like] "Is it worth the bite? Is it worth the sip?" I only go after things that are worth the bite or worth the sip.

Can you give our readers your top three pieces of advice for barbecuing with whiskey?

First and foremost, if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it. I love to create sauces. I did a whole bunch of recipes for some sauces and if I wouldn't put it in my lips as is, or in a cocktail and enjoy it thoroughly, then I would never use it with a recipe. I make lovely, delicious sauces using really high-quality whiskeys. I love to use the 10 and the 6 from WhistlePig. Before SmokeStock came out, I was using Roadstock and Homestock a lot. They're a quality, delicious whiskey that is not bottom-shelf. I don't want to make something with that. That would be the number one advice right there — if you would not drink it, do not cook with it.

Secondly, it really is all about a balance. If you have something that's lovely and lush, make something that either you're going to be liking the creamy notes of it or the caramel notes of it. I would [also] always recommend [that] people should experiment. There's a whiskey and a bourbon for everybody out there. We're always talking about matching and pairing wines with food, and we're just now coming around in the last few years to finally elevating our whiskey and our bourbon selections. When you go to high-end restaurants, there's always a wine sommelier there. They could advise you on all these things.

You can tell that you are an excellent teacher! What are your students' most common stumbling blocks, the ones you see over and over again across the world?

[I've] taught over 20,000 students in 16 years, barbecue and grilling items. One of the biggest things about teaching barbecue and grilling is it's sometimes a psychological thing versus an actual technique. Most people, especially in North America, are taught barbecue by a relative. So they were taught by their grandfather, their grandmother, their aunt, their uncle, their cousin. There's a familial content to that. During the teaching, their grandmother or their grandfather said, "Wash it with vinegar before you put it on the grill," or "only let the coals go on for five minutes," because that's the way that they were taught. 

During the last 50-60 years, we've learned a heck of a lot more about cell structure, meat structure, protein structure, how wood combusts, and what a really good result is. Sometimes, when you're teaching, you have to overcome those familial aspects and break down a couple of barriers so that they know that you're not trying to attack their families. What you're really trying to do is educate them to bring their barbecue up. 

My biggest job in the world is to make everybody a backyard rock star. I'm what's called a keeper of the flame. That was a title given to me by a world championship because I preach elevating your food every day through barbecue and grilling. [I don't want] to attack ... or dismiss our previous history, but let's elevate it with some meat science, some food science, so that we can bring up the structures of all of our meats and things to a better level.

You started talking about learning from family. The person who taught you most about cooking was your grandmother. She instilled in you the art of the leftover. Can you talk a little bit about her legacy and the work you're doing today and what recipes you make still that she lives on in those recipes?

Both my mother and my grandmother are kickass strong women. I come from a very long line of very strong women, and my mother was a scotch and water drinker and my grandmother was a whiskey drinker. I inherited both of those things, naturally. 

My parents and my grandparents had [were] extraordinarily poor. When they moved, my grandparents moved into Western Canada. They lived in a sod house. A sod house, for anybody who doesn't know, is a white-washed sod house. It's made of grass, basically, because they didn't have lumber. They didn't have anything. The art of the leftover, things like that, my grandma taught me how to make ... I didn't realize it until I was much older, how many things she had instilled in me because it was what she always did.

If you cooked the chicken, you took apart the bones the next day. My grandmother and my mother, I remember them fighting over turkey necks because they would love to cook them the next day or pick at them, or eat them. Grandma P's ... funny enough, her coleslaw recipe, to this day, is still my favorite. My grandmother, unfortunately, cooked a lot of things too gray because, at that time, they didn't know about the fact you don't need to cook a pork chop till it's dry as cardboard. 

Between my mother and my grandmother, especially my mom, I learned how to make gravy. My mom's anniversary of her passing is coming up on the 14th and it's the day I celebrate her and my grandmother. I couldn't make gravy until they passed on. I had to learn how to do it on my own, because they'd always done [it]. [They] taught me these amazing gravy techniques.

We have to ask you, what is so special about your grandmother's coleslaw?

It's in my cookbook. Grandma P's coleslaw is a sweet and tangy, non-mayonnaise-based coleslaw. When grandma used to make it... She used to make a lot of pickles, too, and I learned all my pickling techniques from her. She used to call it a six-week salad because it was a vinegar and oil-based coleslaw, it could go in the fridge for quite a few weeks. You didn't have to worry about it when you took it on picnics because [it was] non-mayonnaise [based], it wouldn't spoil. You could throw it on ice. You didn't have to freak out if it sat out for two hours. Nobody was going to die. It was almost like a lightly pickled coleslaw versus a more traditional creamy one.

It stayed lovely and crunchy and ... Every time I eat it, it bring[s] back memories. When I go to the market and I see fresh shelled peas, pea pods and things like that — I'm immediately taken back to my grandmother in her garden, yelling at me to "get out of the garden, stop eating the peas and we have to save some of those for the coleslaw," or whatever. 

It's not just a recipe. Recipes that bring back such fond, familial feelings — and my grandmother, she was a tough ass woman. She was tough. I remember her, so [vividly], being in the garden, having a cigarette out over her mouth going, "Don't eat all the peas!" and threatening me with a spoon, or the cabbage or whatever, and saying, "Get your ass in gear. We got to pick these veggies because it's getting hot outside." It's ridiculousness, but that's how I was raised.

WhistlePig SmokeStock Whiskey is aged in American Oak No. 3 char barrels and then smoked slow and low with Traeger's all-natural Apple BBQ wood. The limited edition whiskey is further smoked during the proofing process to impart campfire smoke and subtle savory notes alongside WhistlePig's signature bold and spice-forward style. When you pick up a bottle of SmokeStock, you'll find more recipes and discover how SmokeStock is crafted via a QR code on the back of each bottle. SmokeStock is now available online and in stores for $72.99 MSRP per 750ml bottle. Stay tuned for a line of must-have consumables from Traeger x WhistlePig coming later this Fall!

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.