Grilling enthusiasts, get your inner geek on
New cookbooks will ignite your passion for barbecuing
With grilling season solidly upon us, and Father’s Day around the corner, let’s all take a moment to reflect on the various ways we send our food to the fire.
There is, of course, Monday through Friday grilling. This is when the intense heat of the grill helps us along that painful path to what we call “weeknight dinner.” This is where we crank the grill — gas only, thank you very much — slap some chicken or salmon or veggies on the grates and call it good about 15 minutes later.
Then there is weekend grilling. Real grilling. This is when we have the luxury of getting our geek on. This is when we break out the charcoal and the wood chips and the water pans. This is when we marinate, baste, rub, soak and slather, then use a heat that is low and slow to nuance thick slabs of pork and beef.
And every year, book publishers unleash a deluge of grilling and barbecue books to help you navigate all of this. Selfless man that I am, I waded through them all so you don’t have to. The short take — this is going to be a great year to be a grill geek. There are some fine new books ready to walk you down that fiery road:
— Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto by Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay (Ten Speed Press, 2015)
This is more text book than cookbook, and that is a delicious compliment. Aaron Franklin — co-owner with his wife, Stacy, of Texas’ cultishly popular Franklin Barbecue — spends 122 pages walking the reader through every step of classic smoke- based barbecue.
— Feeding the Fire by Joe Carroll (Artisan, 2015)
Where Franklin is steeped in Texas barbecue culture, Joe Carroll is more have-it-yourway. This New Yorker — the man behind a string of big- deal barbecue shops, including Fette Sau — found his own way in the barbecue world, borrowing ideas and approaches from various Southern traditions.
— Smoke it Like a Pro by Eric C. Mitchell (Page Street Publishing, 2015)
When it comes to gear, true barbecue geeks generally go one of two ways. They either build their own rig or they buy a Big Green Egg. And if you don’t know what the latter is, you aren’t a grill geek. For those who are, Eric Mitchell has written the definitive guide.