The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue [Hardcover]

Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine (Author)

Book Description

Series: Best Recipe | Publication Date: January 1, 2001

Can you make really good pulled pork at home? Which cut of meat makes the best beef kebabs? How do you keep lean pork tenderloin from tasting like sawdust? What is the secret to great-tasting burgers? Is it possible to make barbecued chicken that isn't dry?

In an exhaustive effort to answer these questions, the staff of Cook's Illustrated magazine lit more than 5,000 charcoal fires to test different grilling and barbecue techniques for The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue.

The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue also contains 300 illustrations that show you how to cut up a chicken, slice a T-bone steak, and remove the pinbones from a salmon fillet. No-nonsense equipment ratings and taste tests of supermarket foods are also included. Find out which commercial barbecue sauce received our highest rating, whether or not a fish basket really works, and what's the best tool for lighting a charcoal fire. You'll also learn which cuts of meat work best in different recipes, how to quickly brine foods to keep them moist over intense grill heat, and how to make the most of a gas grill. (All recipes include both charcoal and gas grill variations.)

More than 400 recipes cover just about everything that has ever been grilled, from steaks and chops to ribs and pulled pork. You'll find recipes for seafood—salmon, tuna, shrimp, and more—as well as instructions and recipes for grilling almost every vegetable imaginable, from asparagus to zucchini.

With The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue at your side, we guarantee that you will never ruin another expensive piece of meat or fish because of some easily avoided mistake. Light the grill with confidence. With this cookbook as your guide, grilling and barbecuing will be easy and foolproof.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...how to grill everything from lobsters to pizzas and apples to zucchini..." -- Detroit Free Press

"The most practical guide of all." -- Williams-Sonoma, TASTE

Product Details

• Hardcover: 318 pages
• Publisher: Boston Common Press; 1st edition (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0936184515
• ISBN-13: 978-0936184517
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #277,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Masterpiece from Cook's Illustrated, February 12, 2001

By 

Daniel F. Moore (Yarmouth, Maine USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue (Hardcover)

Grilling and barbecuing have become a distinctly American passion as more and more grills and smokers appear in our backyards. Too often however, that juicy ribeye or succulent tenderloin roast becomes something more fit to use as footgear than to appear on the dinner table. Once again, the authors at Cook's Illustrated have scored a huge success with their latest book on the subject of grilling and barbecuing. You will learn what to look for in equipment, the basic principles of both grilling and barbecuing and a thorough examination of preparing burgers, steaks, poultry, kebabs, fish and shellfish, veggies, pork and of course, ribs. Rubs, sauces and salsa recipes are also provided. But the main reason to purchase this book is for the techniques and recipes. Each and every technique and recipe is the culmination of exhaustive testing by the authors. You will be hailed as a grilling guru or pitmaster every time your family or guests experience the pleasure of tasting your fare. You will use this book often and one word of caution: Don't let anyone borrow it or it will be the last time you see it!

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loads of info here, April 29, 2003

By 

Jadecat (Lake Orion, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue (Hardcover)

Several months ago my Dad passed on to me about 10 of his old Cooks Illustrated magazines to read. They didn't seem very impressive on the outside, no glossy photos or pictures to look at. But I leafed through the magazines and just loved the no nonsense feel of the magazine. So when we bought a grill and I saw that Cooks Illustrated did a Grilling Recipe book, I knew I would get it...and all the positive remarks the book had also encouraged me. It arrived, and gee, it still didn't have pretty color photos either, but I got over it quickly and reminded myself that I didn't need to see how a chicken leg looked for the 100th time anyway. There are plenty of illustrations though, which are helpful when they describe a technique for you to do, such as making hamburger patties so they don't turn into tennis balls on the grill. The book provides a separate recipe for each food, depending on whether you are using a charcoal or gas grill. How many times have you bought a cookbook and made a recipe and afterwards thought, "that really wasn't very good, why did they put that recipe in there, just for filler?"? Well, with Cooks Illustrated you can be confident the recipes were thoroughly tested and tasted, and if it didn't taste good, it wasn't included. To me, understanding why a recipe works (and this book explains why they do), makes it easier for me to cook, and it expands my knowledge of cooking, so I can use what I learned on other meal preparations. I had never heard of brining myself until this book, and I tried the brined pork chops on my grill...YUMMMY, nice and juicy and simple to do. I bought another grilling cookbook at the same time, How to BBQ by Raichlen, and I have compared the instructions/recipes for different foods and often they are similar but do have variations of methods. If I could only keep 1 of the 2 books, I would keep this one due to the information it gives. For example, one page has 4 paragraphs on salt. There is kosher, sea salt and regular table salt. If a recipe told me to use kosher salt in the past, I would just pick up my old salt shaker and use that instead. This book tells you what the difference is and so I finally bought some kosher salt for the spice rubs. It might not make a huge difference in the long run, but the kosher salt is inexpensive and I want to continue and try to improve taste. I'm not knocking the other book I bought, and I prefer to have options available to me, but to me this book provides you with a foundation on which to build on, so when other books tell you to do something a certain way, you can use what you learned from Cooks Illustrated to make somebody elses recipe a little better. Go for it, don't just follow a recipe, learn how and why it works the way it does!

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolution for an Accidental Arsonist, February 3, 2002

By 

Terrahawk "terrahawk" (Baltimore, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue (Hardcover)

This book is great. I have a hereditary defective gene which makes me burn everything (or undercook stuff like chicken, which I then burn trying to finish it) I put on the grill.
This book is terrific. It discusses equipment without being dated. It gives recommended tempuratures, techniques, lore, and basic procedures which has transformed me from a grill-incompetent pyromaniac to a confident griller. It covers procedures for both gas and different types of charcoal fires for each type of meat as well.
I eat a lot of grilled chicken breasts and the simple information in here has helped me to "break the cycle, stop the arson." With the easy procedures in this book I can now cook chicken breasts plain, without brining, basting or marinading, and they don't come out dry, but tender and juicy. That's a feat!!! : )....