Chef Michael Symon, 55, Wants You to Reimagine What Your Grill Can Do

The Food Network star’s new cookbook shows you how to fire up full-on meals that go far beyond burgers and brats

Adrian Miller,

AARP

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Published April 16, 2025

chef michael symon posing for a portrait in front of a reddish-brown patterened background

Chef Michael Symon's new cookbook, "Symon's Dinners Cooking Out: 100 Recipes That Redefine Outdoor Cooking," shows you how to prepare pastas, desserts and more on the grill.

Ed Anderson/Courtesy Penguin Random House

Anything that you can cook indoors, you can cook outside on a grill, says celebrated American chef, restaurateur, television personality and author Michael Symon, and he’s debuted a new cookbook to show you just how: Symon’s Dinners Cooking Out: 100 Recipes That Redefine Outdoor Cooking. “If you take the cover off a grill, it’s just like cooking on a stovetop. If you leave the cover on, your grill acts like an oven,” Symon tells AARP over the phone on his way to Long Island from Manhattan before kicking off his book tour.

OK, we’ll bite — what about pasta? Or desserts? “I will admit that it might be easier to do some things indoors, like boiling water for pasta or baking a finicky cake, but where is the fun and adventure in that?!” he writes in the book’s introduction.

Symon, 55, who splits his time between Long Island and L.A., grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and his paternal grandfather, Preston “Pap” Symon, often cooked for him after school. “I remember the smell of kielbasa sausage wafting through the air on Friday afternoons from Pap grilling sausages that he purchased earlier that day,” Symon says. Pap lived to be 102 years old, proof “that kielbasa and whiskey can lead to a long life,” he notes, laughing.

the cover of michael symon's new cookbook "symon's dinners cooking out: 100 recipes that redefine outdoor cooking"

“Symon's Dinners Cooking Out: 100 Recipes That Redefine Outdoor Cooking” features fan-favorite recipes from his popular Food Network show, “Symon’s Dinners Cooking Out,” and brand new recipes.

Ed Anderson/Courtesy Penguin Random House

Grill With Michael

Symon shared three recipes from Cooking Out for AARP members to try:

Sloppy Joe Tacos

I love Sloppy Joes and I love tacos, so why not marry them together in (un)holy matrimony?

Spicy Black Cod With Grilled Lime

The longer the fish marinates, the better it will taste, so consider making the marinade a few nights ahead.

French-Style Roasted Chicken

When you first put the chicken in the pan, don’t be tempted to mess with it. Let it sear until it takes on great color and releases from the pan.

Pap certainly inspired Symon’s love of grilling, but his book Cooking Out was born out of necessity. In mid-March 2020, Symon was scheduled to film a new television show for the Food Network in New York City. While en route, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown went into effect, and life immediately changed for everyone. Later, when he was stuck at home in Long Island, he sought a way to lift people's spirits. Symon, his wife, Liz, and his social manager Olivia used an iPhone to do a live, unscripted cooking show out of Symon’s backyard that was simulcasted on Facebook and other social media platforms.

“It was hard to get stuff from grocery stores at the time, so we focused on things that people already had in their home or would be easy to get,” Symon recalls. The first meal they made was a version of Pap’s split pea soup. Those videos eventually led to a Food Network television show, Symon’s Dinners Cooking Out, for which the cookbook is named. Since then, Symon’s enthusiasm for grilling has blossomed beyond being a summertime indulgence. Now, one might find Symon any time of the year in his Cleveland backyard, cooking over charcoal in his Weber kettle grill or Gateway drum grill. Of the former, he says, “I love a Weber kettle grill. It’s insanely dependable, the heat flows good in it, it’s super accessible and affordable. It’s a great starter grill.”

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Symon’s professional career began in 1990 when he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. His career took off eight years later when Food & Wine Magazine named him a “Best New Chef.”

Symon notes how much cooking has changed over the course of his 35-year career. “People are now more willing to step outside their comfort zone ... men are cooking more, and women are grilling more.” He believes that the cable television network that made him a household name had much to do with that change.

“Growing up, you get stuck with the foods you grew up with. I think the Food Network opened people’s eyes to the variety of food,” he says. In the 1990s, though, the network was “only on in prisons and nursing homes,” Symon says, laughing. Today, the Food Network’s reach and cultural influence is much broader, and Symon believes that cooking has changed for the better because of it.

Cooking Out’s dishes and ingredients reflect both Symon’s professional journey as a chef and the remarkable changes in the American palate over the last three decades.

“When I went to a grocery store in Cleveland in the late ’90s, my only choice for mushrooms were button [mushrooms],” Symon remembers. “We now have so many more choices, and it’s wonderful. Ninety-five percent of grocery stores are going to have the stuff that you need to make meals from this cookbook.”

His ultimate goal is “to make young chefs great chefs, and make home cooks great cooks.”

Another way that Symon helps readers is by indexing his recipes to avoid common allergens like dairy, flour and meat. In his 20s, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and discoid lupus, a form of lupus that primarily affects the skin and joints. The health issues pushed him to look at common triggers in food. And in 2021, he published Fix It with Food: Every Meal Easy: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Anyone with Autoimmune Issues and Inflammation, and he continues to publish dietary information in his books, including in Cooking Out.

“I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to control inflammation through diet,” he says. “The Fix it with Food system is a way for cooks to figure out how to avoid triggering inflammation.”

Symon’s personal favorites from Cooking Out are the fire-pit steak and potatoes cooked directly on coals; grilled flank steak with pepper relish; grilled greens with lime vinaigrette; chocolate Bundt cake; and fresh strawberry pie. Cooking Out also includes several bold, flavorful cocktails devised by his wife. Symon likes one in particular: “If you’ve never tried a BBC — short for Baileys Banana Colada — prepare to discover your new favorite refresher!”

Showcasing trusted grilling techniques to revive old recipes and create new ones, Cooking Out has something for everyone. Most importantly for Symon, it conjures memories of a period in his life when, under terrible circumstances, he created a beautiful thing that endures. “The show came out during a really tough time, and I really hope [this cookbook] encourages people to cook.”

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