John Willoughby

Because they cook so quickly, pork skewers are an excellent way to achieve the crusty outside/tender inside dichotomy that's the hallmark of great grilled food. As for how much you should cook these skewers, our preference is to leave just a bit of pink in the center; it's no longer unsafe to do so, and if you cook them further than that, they are going to be dry. But, as always, the choice is yours. Just remember that the cubes are going to continue cooking a bit after you take them off the grill, so pull them when they are a big less done than you want them to be when you eat them.

We're big fans of chicken thighs because they're very tasty and easy to prepare, and they have just enough fat to stay moist on the grill. This is a deliciously sweet, sticky, old-school treatment most often used with wings, but we like it even better with thighs. These are not only great hot off the grill, but when they're cold, too, making them perfect for picnics.

The "3 and down" spareribs used in this recipe are my (Chris's) absolute favorite type of ribs. These beauties are small enough to be manageable, but they have plenty of fat and incredible pork flavor. It just doesn't get any better than this in the rib department.

In northern Thailand and Laos, sticky rice is served at every meal, much like bread in Europe. Diners form a couple of tablespoons of rice at a time into a small ball, then use it to pick up a chunk of meat or vegetable, or to soak up sauces.

Eggplant gets kind of mushed up as it cooks in the hobo pack, which actually turns out to be a good quality, particularly if it’s getting mushed up with tomatoes and garlic.

This Latin-inspired hobo pack features one of our favorite Caribbean tubers, the yuca (pronounced yook-ah). Also knows as manioc or cassava, yuca is shaped like a long, narrow sweet potato. Its rough outer skin looks like scaly bark, often thickly coated with wax applied to keep it fresh during shipping. When cooked, the stark-white flesh has a slightly sweet, rather buttery flavor and a somewhat glutinous, chewy texture that works particularly well in situations like a hobo pack. Yuca takes a bit of preparation before you can combine it with the other ingredients, since it has both an underskin and a fibrous central core, both of which need to be removed.