Customer Reviews

Peace, Love, & Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales and Outright Lies From The Legends of Barbecue

Mike Mills & Amy Mills Tunicliffe

A Book Report by Gerry Dawes (Appeared in Food Arts magazine.)

This is a book report, not a review. I wrote the June 2004 Food Arts Silver Spoon Award piece about Mike Mills, the Southern Illinois Barbecue Legend Mike Mills, who, with his Apple City Barbecue Team won the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest more times (three, four in ribs) than any team in history. Mills has long been a friend of mine and still is, despite the outright lies he told about me and a lot of other people to his daughter, Amy Mills Tunicliffe, who wrote her father's story's in the remarkable, but veracity-challenged Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales and Outright Lies From The Legends of Barbecue.

At least I am in good company. Bill Clinton, Calvin Trillin, Tom Viertel (producer of The Producers, Smokey Joe's Café, Driving Miss Daisy), the New York super-restaurateur Danny Meyer, Chef Michael Romano and star Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, along with most of the `cue superstars world are all in this book on down-home and championship circuit barbecue. In the foreword, Meyer, Mills's partner in New York's Blue Smoke Barbecue joint, wrote a pean to pig and to Mills. The exalted Vogue food writer, Jeffrey Steingarten, who wrote the saucy introduction calling Mills "one of the greatest barbecue cooks of all time," once wrote an article claiming that Mills's Memphis Championship Barbecue restaurants in Las Vegas are his favorites, only after Nobu.

While this indispensable guide to American barbecue could have been just that, a guide, it is much more. It is a loving (the "Love" in the title is no tall tale or outright lie) look at the Who's Who of American Barbecue as seen through the eyes of this country's greatest barbecue hero, who, like some starry-eyed youngster (Mills is in his 60s), often refers to these barbecue legends, his peers, as "awesome."

Mills takes us on visits to all the great barbecue legends of the south (and a few in the north as well), eating their barbecue,"visiting" with them, letting them tell their stories, and then trying to pry cooking and recipe "secrets" out of them, which is no easy task since they will sometimes tell him the ingredients (usually minus the "secret"), but they often won't give him the recipe quantities. (Mills plays this game himself; he told Steingarten that he would give him the recipe for Mills's celebrated 17th St. Bar & Grill `Magic Dust' Dry Rub, but then he said, "I would have to kill you.")

Besides picking pork, Mills picks the brains of such American Barbecue superstars as Don McLemore and Chris Lilly at Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q (Decatur, Alabama); Desiree Robinson at Cozy Corner (Memphis); Billy Bones Wall (Midland, Michigan); Vencil Mares, The Taylor Café (Taylor, Texas); Paul Kirk, The Baron of Barbecue (Kansas City, Missouri); Wayne Monk, Lexington Barbecue (Lexington, North Carolina); the legendary El Mitchell, Mitchell's Ribs, Chicken & BBQ (Wilson, North Carolina) and many others. The story about Rick Schmidt, the owner of Kreuz ("Krites," Lockhart, Texas), ceremoniously moving-along a road thronged with his loyal barbecue customers-the hot coals, which have never been allowed to got out, from the old family establishment to his new place after a family feud with his sister is alone worth the price of this paperback book.

There are "secret' barbecue recipes galore-Mama Faye's Home Style Potato Salad, 17th Street's Tangy Pit Beans, Big Bob Gibson's White Sauce, Wilber Shirley's Hush Puppies, Eades Family Banana Pudding and Strip and Go Naked Punch (don't ask!)-enough to open the world's greatest barbecue joint. However, if you did, several somebodies would have to kill you and, besides, you would be too disabled by the hernia you would get from lugging in the 100-pound sack of sugar it would take to make all these sauces, potato salad, salad dressings and iced tea, many of which call for a minimum of two cups of sugar, refined white sugar, by long-standing habit.

The last chapter is devoted to a good nuts-and-bolts barbecue tips and a terrific list of this country's greatest real barbecue joints, but he whole book is full of Mike Mills's indispensable barbecue (and life) wisdom, practical tips, recipes and, indeed, secrets like my Gerry's World's Finest Barbecue-Friendly Margaritas. It seems that one day down at Mike's 17th Street Bar & Grill in Murphysboro, Southern Illinois, he induced me to give him my Andalucian Sangria Recipes, then after we drank two pitchers of white and red sangria, he wormed the margarita recipe out of me. However, I didn't give him the "secret" twist that I put in them, otherwise I would have had to kill him.

But, on second thought, I couldn't kill him. He might have another great book like Peace, Love and Barbecue in him. And I certainly wouldn't want to deprive the world of that.
The book is awesome.

- The End -

I really enjoyed this book...I own a smoker and have used the Apple City Ribs recipe and the Chile recipe (non-healthy version) and both were tasty...my only question is whether the author listed the true ingredients for his "magic dust"...after all, his mother didn't want him to give away the family secret...hmmmm....

***UPDATE!! (6/11/06): Ok, on a discussion board someone said they actually got an answer to my question from the author...he DID give us the dust recipe his mother said to protect BUT his feeling is that it will be hard to duplicate his quality because of the unique QUALITIES of each dust ingredient he uses.

A great book for any barbecue (not grilling) fan!

Mike Mills, known to barbecue afficionados as The Legend, has fashioned a wonderful book about the world of barbecue. His often humorous tour of the barbecue world is also chock full of recipes that people would gladly have given their eye teeth for over the years. Some of the greatest names in traditional american cooking are represented; the book is a treasure trove of information and the stories Mills relates are the type one usually only gets to hear late at might after more than a few beers while the hog is slowly roasting away.

This book is an absolute delight; along with Smokestack Lightning one of the two best books ever written about barbecue.

I've spent several hours reviewing PEACE, LOVE and BARBECUE by Mike Mills and Amy Mills Tunnicliffe. Just the chapter on the "Secrets" would be worth the price of the book. Additionally, the "Magic Dust" recipe will leave you wanting to run to the store and make up a batch just to shake directly on your tongue! The book just isn't a "recipe" or "cook book", it's all about what people think and do for the love of food and not limited to barbecue either. This book will set you straight on many "urban legends" and point your smoker the right direction in how to smoke a lip smacking brisket. Loaded with nostalgic photos and neatly put together, I just can't say enough about the whole book. Probably one of the first books I've read and associated the titles three words!

This book is pretty good, the best of the two books I ordered. The main reason I ordered this book was to get the recipe for "magic dust" that Mills is famous for. So I put some together and put the rub on some ribs I then smoked the next day... Not great. Then I turn on food network and what do I see? Food Network is proclaiming Mills as having the best ribs in the country due to his magic dust that has 16 different spices in it. The "magic dust" in this book only has 8. It is orange due to the extremely large amount of paprika where the real magic dust was a yellowish color. The book is okay, but dont believe the hype that he gives away any secrete recipes, most of the recipes you could think of yourself (put pulled pork in a baked potato or a stuffed pepper)

This is my favorite BBQ book, though maybe for different reasons than other reviewers like it.

I've been BBQing and grilling for many years, since I was a teen ager, and my main reason for preferring this method of cooking is because I'm no gourmet, and if you take BBQing at its basic level, it's a very easy method of cooking. By this I mean you don't need culinary school/professional skills to pull of good BBQ--just a lot of care and patience, plus the experience you will pick up as you go along.

I'm not planning to enter BBQ championships or competition. I just like simple recipes that taste good, with easy-to-get ingredients. And though this book can be taken as a championship BBQ manual, it is also easy enough, its ingredients basic enough, that even the back yard duffer like me can make the most of them.

The recipes are just about fool-proof, if you take the care and time to follow them properly. F'rinstance, the famous Magic Dust rub recipe is about as easy as mixing Nestles Quik, and you don't have to go to exotic asian markets to find the ingredients. I hate shopping and I like a recipe where you can get everything you need at the local supermarket.

You also don't need thousands of dollars of fancy BBQ equipment to get the job done here. Sure, you can do it all in a big fancy smoker, but I only have a regular 26" Weber charcoal kettle grill, plus the pint-sized Weber Smoky Joe for side jobs, and every thing comes out dandy. A food processor would certainly come in handy, though I don't even have that. It would make the job easier, but its not necessary.

On the other hand, if you are very ambitious, there's enough meat here for the most competitive cook. I don't imagine there is anyone BBQing out there who can't learn something, and a great deal, from this book.

One of my favorites is the grilled stuff peppers, which even the most incompetent [...] can throw together without straining yet which, in the hands of a BBQ master, can probably come out like ambrosia for the grilling gods.

The guy who wrote the introduction to this said it's the last cookbook you'll ever need, and though you should certainly get some others (I like Steve Raichlen's BBQ USA and Paul Kirk's Championship BBQing), this is the one to start with, even if you're brand new to the BBQ. It used to be a custom to give a newlywed bride a cookbook as a wedding present. That custom seems to have passed away in these days when wives don't cook. However if it still existed, this is the book I'd give them.

And there's one other benefit to BBQing, which they don't mention here--you don't have to clean the kitchen when you're done. For an old bachelor like me, who is a first rate lazy slob, this last thing can't be overemphasized. Just keep the grill cleaned & oiled, make sure you scrub all surfaces when going from chicken to anything else, let the charcoal cool down before you throw it in the garbage pail, uses paper plates, and dump everything right in the trash and your day is done.

The only complaint I have about this book is that they didn't include my favorite place: North Main Barbecue in Eulis, Texas -- or if you are visiting one of the big barbecue festival circuit they compete under the name Sweet Meats. (No, I'm not related, never worked for them, etc.)

Other than that, this is a combined cookbook, travelogue, and a story written almost like a Bible. This book treats Barbecue almost like the religion that it is.

You're not going to find instructions like go out and buy a bottle of sauce here, you're going to get instructions on how to make your own sauce (his has fourteen ingredients). You're also going to get the secret formula for Mr. Mills Magic Dust dry rub.

This is the book for you if you take your Barbecue seriously, and how else would you take it.

I have enjoyed every aspect of this book. Usually I flip through my cookbooks looking for something that catches my eye, but this book is so much more than a regular cookbook. I sat down to read it like a new novel, and had a bit of trouble getting too far, as I kept stopping to think about what I would cook and when. I experimented with a few of the staple recipes from the first few chapters to start and found them simple to make and absolutely mouth watering! I was not disappointed. I ended up having a dinner party focused entirely on recipes from this book. Most recipes feed a crowd, and I had no problem convincing a crowd to appear to help me with my new love of barbeque. Whether you are looking for just a few great barbeque recipes to make for family or friends, or you have aspirations of being a full-scale barbeque master, this book will work for you. I've not seen another cookbook like it. Enjoy!

Books often reveal more about the author than the author intends. This book reveals the author to possess a gentle wit, a big heart, the respect of his peers and the love of his friends. Read this book for the great recipes and tips, tall tales, bbq secrets. But most of all read this for the pleasure meeting Mike Mills.

The first rule of BBQ Club? Don't talk about BBQ Club. I've been doing BBQ for about three years now, perfecting my own sauces, rubs and techniques. What I found in Peace Love and Barbecue is an atypical book that is more helpful than not. It is fun to read, very folksy and has lots of pictures. Its recipes are not uniformly good, neither are they all bad. This book, unlike other books I have read on the subject, winks at the reader a lot. It lets you know that no good BBQ master truly lets go all his secrets, even while purporting to be doing just that. It covers all types of BBQ, has a lot of good history in it and I would say it provides at the very least, a very solid starting point for anyone who is looking for a foundation to build on. It reads like it is more honest than other books on the subject, but when I compare my own personal experience with what is found in the book, I find some of the information to be very mainstream - and not quite correct, almost as if Mike is happy to leave you with conventional wisdom on the subject rather than really get down into the nitty gritty of what made him such a winner. Still, all-in-all, it's a marvelous book, my favorite BBQ book so far, and I highly recommend it.