Customer Reviews

The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!

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!

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!!! : )....

The only reason I did not rate this book at 5 stars is that I purchased a very similar book (which I did rate 5 stars) along with this one. The other book, "The Cook's Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbeque: A Practical Guide for the Outdoor Cook," was copyrighted in 2005, whereas this book was copyrighted in 2001. I expected the two books to be somewhat different, but the 2005 book appears to me to be an updated and revised version of this book. Both books are excellent, but I have found nothing in this book that the 2005 book doesn't contain. And, as you would expect, the 2005 book has more pages, more recipes, and more instructions and information than this 2001 edition.

I have rated the 2005 "Illustrated Guide..." so I'll not repeat that here. I see no reason to purchase this 2001 book, so long as the 2005 "Illustrated Guide" is available.

An excellent book with page after page of useful grilling and barbecue instructions. Their rib cooking instructions yielded the easiest most flavorful ribs (spare or baby back) that I've tasted. This more than pays for the book in recovered value.

Try it. You'll enjoy its easy to follow instructions and great recipes. I have.

Guests and friends will love it when you use this book.

And not just because it validated my purchase of a Weber Genesis gas grill, though that was a plus.

It's the usual Cook's Illustrated gig: the scientific method applied to cooking. Do the math, take credit for the art. It has lots of smart little tricks I'd never thought of, and plenty of "what's the best cut of meat" info I'd never bothered to learn. The recipes I've tried have turned out great -- even when I've broken the Cardinal Rule of Entertaining and used an untested recipe on unsuspecting guests. I look forward to trying the rest.

This book has definitely upped the value of our grill.

I have never written a review on Amazon though I am a long time user. After getting this book I was compelled to write. From expert looking for more ideas to beginner just getting your feet wet with barbecue this book is for you. From reading through the recipes of this book I get the sense that the writers cooked each recipe in dozens of ways until they found just the right combination for a perfect cook. That saves me time and money on possible mis-cooking. They take the reader through a step-by-step approach that makes no room for error. I can confidently make something for the first time for dinner guests and know by following their directions the meat will barbecue perfectly.

This past Thanksgiving I grill roasted my first turkey to perfection. For the super bowl I cooked shrimp that my guests could not get enough of. Recently I cooked a pork loin that was seared beautifully on the outside and cooked just right on the inside. I look forward to future succeses with this book and heartily recommend to those who love barbecue done right.

This is by far the best cookbook for the grill that I have found. Every recipe that I have tried was received with rave reviews. The instructions are easy to follow and the meals are consistently good.

I know of no other cookbook that goes through such rigorous experimentation in order to come up with the best possible recipes. The editors don't just cover ingredients, but they also cover tools and techniques in wonderful detail. For the really inquisitive, they also offer scientific explanations behind various cooking techniques like brining. The chapter on beef burgers alone is worth the price of the book, offering insightful hints on how to choose the meat, how to shape the patties, and how to cook them. Then, to ensure that no other book on grilling even comes close, they offer separate cooking instructions for charcoal vs. gas grills FOR EVERY RECIPE.

Truly amazing.

I have been cooking on an outdoor grill or smoker for over 30 years. Most of what I know I learned from others or made up as I went along, and I've been very satisified with my results. But I felt I was in a bit of a rut, so I bought this book.

I'm amazed about how much I did NOT know about grilling. I have made it a goal to try out a recipe or technique from this book each time I use the grill to expand what I know - and the results are incredible. The best whole-roasted chicken I ever made was the first time I used the recipe here: incredibly juicy and tasty due to slow cooking ("grill roasting") with indirect heat and some smoke chips. But the second one did not come out as well. Interestingly, the writers of this book had the same experience.

The thing that makes this book great is the research that went into it. They systematically try out all the variations they can come up with, tell you about which ones did not work and why, then nail down the best techniques, and present them here. The recipes appear to repeat a bit, simply because they have one for charcoal and one for gas. The two are similar, but though it takes more pages, it makes it much easier to follow through the steps to have separate recipes.

Aside from recipes for cooking meats, there are a number of dry rubs, marinades, sauces, and salsas to get you started. Don't buy this book for quantity of recipes - there are bbq books with more - but instead for the quality and details of the techniques, which are so important for outdoor cooking.

Even if you think you are an expert, it is very likely that you will learn new techniques, and improve your existing ones, in a way that will make you glad you bought the book.