Customer Reviews

500 Barbecue Dishes: The Only Barbecue Compendium You'll Ever Need (500 Series Cookbooks)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Geat pictures, but little content. I really wanted to like this book, just so I'd have an excuse to buy it for the pictures. But there isn't much to like except for the beautiful photos. No new recipes to make this a must have.

Echoing the comments of the first two reviews, this cookbook is very small making it difficult to hold pages open and the recipes aren't particularly interesting. However the biggest problem for me, and why I gave it two stars instead of three, is that the title is deceptive as the recipes are almost exclusively for grilling. I'm a fan of Paul Kirk and his barbecue sauce cookbook is outstanding which is why I purchased "500". If you're looking for true "low and slow" barbecue recipes 500 is not the book for you.

The 500 Barbeque Dishes provides 125 recipes with four variations on each that give a different flavor profile when done. The book has everything from main courses in fish, poultry and beef to side dishes and even grilled desserts. The dishes have been flavorful and are easy enough to make that you can add your own variations on the base recipe provided. Much more of a summer cook book but has provided some very tasty dishes and is a great addition to the series that lacks many main course entrees. I will echo the other reviewers comments and point out this is a grilling book and not a BBQ book.

I think more effort was made on how the book would look, than on the actual content of the book. The recipes themselves, while covering a lot of concepts, are more overviews than actual detailed recipes. They can often lead to more questions being raised, without answers. Plus, the cute square book is an awkward shape if you want it to lay open on your counter while you are trying to prepare a dish. Basically, I think this book was intended to be a cute mini-coffee-table book. I guess it succeeds at that, but is that really what you want?

I have Paul Kirk's other more detailed bbq books and they have a wealth of information, but I've learned to appreciate the brevity of this volume. The desert recipes are delicious and like the other recipes they have a simplicity to them that is probably due to Paul's knack for bringing complex flavors to the amateur masses like myself.