Review: Will Take Beginners Up A Notch
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 7, 2014
To start, at this price, there is nothing to lose so I can recommend getting this book on that alone.To the book itself. If your idea of using your gas or charcoal grill is to slap a piece of unprepared meat down on a hot or almost hot grill, maybe slather on some XYZ BBQ Sauce fresh from the bottle and then hope for the best, this book will improve your grill experience significantly. The recipes are complex enough to give you a much improved product over plain meat or even plain meat coated with sugary red sauce.The recipes use simple to source ingredients which won't cause a culinary disaster if used in the wrong proportions. The suggestions also only demand techniques which are easy to master. You won't need much more than baste and marinate.However, the book won't take you to being a full intermediate from beginner because of a few omissions one of which is important.The important lack is no mention of cooking by temperature rather than time or other technique. Nothing other than temperate will give you top notch repeatable results. Timing or feeling the food can, at best, give you an approximation meaning your 'cook for 5 minutes a side' which results in a good medium rare steak one day will result in raw or medium well the next. However, cook to 120 degrees F and then remove to rest will work every time on every size steak.Second, there is no mention of direct vs indirect cooking which is the line separating the beginner from the intermediate BBQ chef. Finally, BBQ'ing itself is given short shrift as the book is about grilling only. Cooking real BBQ is a matter of slow cooking for hours where grilling takes minutes.Still, if you don't get great results from the recipes here, I'd be surprised. I'd only recommend removing the 'BBQ &' from the title.