Smoke & Spice, Revised: Cooking with Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue, on Your Charcoal Grill, Water Smoker, or Wood-Burning Pit
Product Description
Smoke & Spice, the best-selling and James Beard Award-winning cookbook that revolutionized backyard home cooking, has been completely revised and updated to include 400 recipes. Culinary experts Cheryl and Bill Jamison use their barbecue savvy to show that smoke-cooked barbecue—what many believe to be “real” barbecue and the province of pitmasters and Southern barbecue joints—can be mastered by anyone. The first cookbook solely devoted to the subject, Smoke & Sp…
admin in Barbecue on April 18 2010 » 5 comments
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Doesn’t mention how naturally smoking meats can be harmful. Use liquid smoke, it’s safe.
Rating: 2 / 5
Most of the recipes are too elaborate– too many ingredients– too much preparation time. This was a disappointment.
Rating: 3 / 5
Perhaps I was wanting much more from a mere bbq book…Being from Texas I am almost ashamed to even believe that these guys consider themselves authorities on Texas cooking!! I am a big fan of rustic type cooking…..downhome cooking if you will…..Out of the hundreds of recipes listed, I may only use three or four……if that……I was also wanting pictures from the prepared recipes, but no dice!! There was good, limited information on choosing the types of wood and bbq pits….Overall, I would rate this book just average……A much better book that has numerous illustrations is “How TO GRIll” by Steven Raichlen…….I would recommend this book to anyone interested in bbq smoking or grilling……as for Smoke & Spice, lets leave it for the designing women…….
Rating: 2 / 5
Honestly, this book came across my desk because of the reference to my family’s restaurant, Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn in the 1994 edition. I found the treatment of cooking with smoke well written and sure to enhance your grilling experience. WE DONT COOK GOAT at MOONLITE…however, the recipe for curried goat was my favorite. I can finally say I have eaten Goat.
Disclaimer – Moonlite is mentioned in this book. Moonlite is an authority on Southern Food and Barbecue.
Patrick Bosley of the Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn
Author/Editor – Family Favorites From Moonlite
Recipes That Founded A Kentucky Tradition
ISBN: 0-9766896-0-x
Review Stars at a Glance:
5 stars = A Must have for your Book Shelf – perfect for cooking or a guide for traveling! Worth Full Price
4 stars = A great read – may fit special interests – I recommend you to buy it if the subject appeals to you. Worth Full Price
3 stars = Interesting material – read it if you have time; buy it if the subject appeals to you. Look for it used at a discount. Also, it is worth looking for it at your local library (if not available, try interlibrary loan).
2 stars = It is worth a look at your library if the subject interests you
1 star = Look at it if you come across it, or try another title on the same subject
Rating: 4 / 5
There is not much more that needs to be said about the book. An excellent source of recipes for BBQ and related dishes (but it can’t be stated enough that while there are plenty of tips, this is not a how-to book… this is a recipe book). What I’m writing on today are a couple of statements by a novice Queist and someone on a pit team. I use a Brinkmann Smoke ‘n Pit (their large horizontal grill with a side firebox) and have no problems at all following the recipes including keeping in heat and not having to go long in the cooking process (though I mop less often becasue of the steep temp drops that a light grill like that causes). Yes, most Brinkmann models do not have a thermometer, but they all have a little silver button that’s built to pop out and is cut exactly right for a standard 3/4 inch grill thermometer. A good one can be had for under twenty bucks.
Now then, the only drawback is that since it’s a side firebox, it seems to pump the heat directly to the top of the cook chamber… On mine, rather than the temp at the grill being hotter than the air at the top, I get much hotter readings on the thermometer than at the grill (and also since the size of even alarger Brinkmann is too small to not be bothered by atmospheric conditions, the air up there fluctuates more than grill temp). THe solution is to use one of those newfangled oven thermometers with a little box with a digital display forthe temp and a wired probe that can stand up to 4 or 500 degrees… no problem when smoking. SO that gizmo cost me about $30. I use one just sitting on the grill and one for large cuts of meat for long smoking projects.
Oh, there are a couple of drawbacks to using a Brinkmann style smoker. The fire grate is too small for long smoking sessions and gets fould easily with ashes. Solved that by using the included cooking grate for the firebox… dropped it below the retaining nuts so that it site about 5 inches above the fire grate and presto, raised firegrate with enough clearance for those long sessions with roasts or Pork Butt. Also, the fire box is just too light and small to try to use real wood, but even if you use briquettes (and you CAN get real wood briquetts with nothing but wood and a cellulose binder easily at any Tru Value hardware store… they are catalog items so if they don’t stock them in your local store, ask and they will) or lump, it’s easy enough. WHen cooking meats not as forgiving of that foul coal ignition smell as pork, I start my coals in a webber kettle bought for the purpose (well, and car camping) and shovel them into the firebox from there.
So there you go. Pro qualtiy is possible with a cheap (relatively) hardware store side firebox rig with just a little work (suprisingly little)… and for my taste, that’s the way to go. The advice to get one of those bullet water smokers is alright as well, but I’d rather keep the flexability to add moisture as I need with a mop rather than have it on or off depending on wheather the water tray is filled or not (not to mention the flexability to grill a nice steak once in a while)… and as a personal ergonomic observation, I like the waist high working level of the horizontal smokers as well.
Clay-
Rating: 5 / 5
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