The Barbecue! Bible

This book covers a lot of basic topics in detail. If you have never seen a BBQ or are trying to fill some big holes in your knowledge. This book is for you.

Otherwise I wouldn't waste your money.

That being said I love Raichlen and did read it cover to cover. But I have never even touched it again compared to many of his other books that I refer to on a weekly basis.

Very useful... can't wait until Spring to fully try it out!

Only drawback to transaction was VERY slow delivery from Amazon. Received another product from a private party that was part of the same order 6 days faster.

Phil Swain, Cheney, KS

I got this book 2 yrs ago My friends still talk about some of the food they have had

For me, cookbooks have two functions. The first is to act as a spur to the imagination. A properly provocative cookbook would be one you could browse through with the same pleasure that you might take in reading an adventure novel. You get to have the excitement without the danger (or the calories). As an added benefit, you increase the store of ideas from which you put together your own cooking. Seen in this light, a book that offers
you recipes that you might never make or suggests ingredients that you could never find is doing you a favor: it is developing your imagination. Maybe I don't have Chinese five-spice powder or galangal, but I wonder how that recipe would work with dried ginger or a cinnamon, salt and fennel mixture.

The other function, of course, is to provide the cook with recipes and information on the craft of cooking. There are certain constraints on the cook's imagination and some experiments not worth pursuing. A good cookbook tells you what works and what doesn't.

As a bonus, sometimes a cookbook is just plain fun-to-read.

As a writer of wine books, I try to spur the imagination, suggest the limits and come up with a good read. Let's see how Raichlen's The Barbecue! Bible measures up.

First, there's the matter of the title. No, I don't mean the annoying exclamation point. I mean the suggestion that this might be a book about the slow-cooked barbecue of meltingly tender pork ribs and chicken thighs. It ain't. But in America these days, we understand barbecue to mean the food and techniques of cooking outdoors on a grill. Quibble dismissed.

Next, the range of recipes is impressive. No matter how much or how often you grill, there are bound to be dozens of items and ideas in this book that you never thought of. How about rum barbecue sauce, grilled pineapple, shallot relish, or grilled Yorkshire pudding?

In terms of technique, you can't do better. There are a few simple things to be learned: direct and indirect methods, the uses of smoke-wood and otherwise-the matter of marinade and rubs and the questions of timing. Raichlen covers them all in a breezy, journalist's way that tells you what you absolutely need to know.

Naturally, I was disappointed that in the drinks section he fails to mention the best accompaniment ever devised for grilled foods: rich red wine with a nice smack of tannin. That aside, an excellent book and the only one on grilling that most of us will ever need.

Lynn Hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine and the novel bang-BANG forthcoming from Kunati Press.

This book provides an in depth process for barbecuing in the great outdoors. Steve Raichlen gives you the how to's and a history of barbecuing throughout the world. He uses a classic presentation to discuss the many fine receipes. He also goes into a brief summary of the history of each of the fine dishes. I would highly recommend this book