I can't believe how early spring arrived this year. It is only April, right? I should be shivering in front of the grill once or twice a week; with the gorgeous weather, I've been grilling constantly for the last couple of months.
Normally, the spring release of grilling cookbooks gets me revved up for summer. This year, I feel like I've cooked all my favorite recipes, and I need some new ideas right away. Here are the books I'm looking to for inspiration:
Charred & Scruffed by Adam Perry Lang
Mr. Lang (or APL, as his friends call him) is a professional chef turned barbecue fanatic, and it shows in his books. His Serious Barbecue was full of techniques to layer flavor into food. Why brine, rub, smoke, or baste when you can do all of them in the same dish? APL is not for beginning grillers - but if you want to level up your grilling, this is the book you want.
Texas Eats: The New Lone Star Heritage Cookbook by Robb Walsh
This isn't exclusively a grilling cookbook, so I hesitated before adding it to this list. But so much of Texas cuisine comes from over the fire that I had to include it. Especially when I heard it has a recipe for Franklin Barbecue's beef brisket. That is some of the best barbecue I've ever had, and that recipe alone earns it a place on this list.
Weber's Smoke: A Guide to Smoke Cooking for Everyone and Any Grill
Speaking of barbecue, Jamie Purviance took Weber's annual cookbook and smoked it up.
Hmmm...that sounded better in my head.
I learned my smoke cooking from the Virtual Weber Bullet on a Weber Smokey Mountain, so I love seeing Weber put their weight behind an entire book devoted to smoking. Especially since I use my Weber kettle for my smoking now. I can't wait to see if they have any tricks that live up to the Minion Method.
What do you think? Questions? Any recently published grilling cookbooks that I missed? Tell me about them in the comments section below.
Enjoyed this post? Want to help out DadCooksDinner? Subscribe using your RSS reader or by Email, recommend DadCooksDinner to your friends, or buy something from Amazon.com through the links on this site. Thank you!
Dave Whittaker says
Interesting to hear that you went from a Smokey Mountain to a Kettle. I just bought the bigger Smokey Mountain after smoking on a 22.5" Kettle for the past 3-4 years. Why did you make the switch? I loved the Kettle but I wanted more space. I'm planning to have two pork butts and 6-8 racks of ribs in it this weekend.
Mike V @ DadCooksDinner says
The switch to the kettle was more from neglect than anything else.
I started out with an 18.5 inch Smokey Mountain, and used heavily in the late 90's to early 2000's. I cooked a lot of low and slow barbecue back then. Around 2002 my cooking habits changed; I started to eat healthier, so my cooking was a lot less centered on meat.
After that, I was only using the WSM once or twice a year. I started using my kettle for ribs, leaving the WSM for really long cooks, like brisket or pork shoulder. I didn't clean it after my last cook one year, and it sat through the winter with all the gunk in it. It got pretty nasty. When I opened it up the next summer, I decided it wasn't worth cleaning for the one time I was going to use it. (That, and I think the fuzz that was growing in there hissed at me when I opened the lid.)
I gave the WSM away (I still feel guilty about that, like I abandoned an old friend), and switched to using my Weber kettle as a full-time replacement. I keep meaning to post about it. But like I said, I really only use it once or twice a year for low and slow barbecue, and I keep forgetting to take pictures...