BBQ Smoker Site » BBQ Cookbook Reviews

Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers

BBQ Smoker — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 05:25:12 +0000

If your only familiarity of what the inside of a cow or pig looks like is what you see on a Styrofoam tray at your local supermarket, then you need to do yourself a favor and read Marissa Guggiana’s informative and, for some – eye opening book Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers.

Readers will be familiar with cuts like ribs and chops and will then be transported into the familiar territory of innards that folks like OffalGood.com‘s Chris Cosentino find very familiar: kidneys, hearts, and more!

Butchery was nearly a dead art, until a recent renaissance turned progressive meat cutters into culinary cult idols. Inspired by a locally driven, nose-to-tail approach to butchery, this new wave of meat mavens is redefining the way we buy and cook our beef, pork, fowl, and game. The momentum of this revived butcher-love has created a carnivorous frenzy, pulling a new generation of home cooks straight into the kitchen—Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers is their modern meat bible.

Marissa Guggiana, food activist, writer, and fourth generation meat purveyor, traveled the country to discover 50 of our most gifted butchers and share their favorite dishes, personal stories, and cooking techniques. From the Michelin star chef to the small farmer who raises free-range animals—butchers are the guide for this unique visual cookbook, packed with tons of their most prized recipes and good old-fashioned know-how. Readers will learn how to cook conventional and unconventional meat cuts, how to talk to their local butcher, and even how to source and buy their own whole animals for their home freezer. Much more than just a cookbook, Primal Cuts is a revealing look into the lives, philosophy, and work of true food artisans, all bound by a common respect for the food they produce and an absolute love for what they do.

• 50 Profiles and Portraits of America’s Best Butchers
• 100 Meat Recipes for the Home Cook
• Practical Advice on Techniques and Tools
• Hundreds of Diagrams, Illustrations, and Photos
• Home Butchering How-To
• Tons of Trade Secrets

Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat

BBQ Smoker — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 03:50:23 +0000

So, I’m on a Slow Food kick of late. Well, at least writing about Slow Food. Here’s a book that some of you may find tempting and even useful if sustainable meat production is an area of interest.

In Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat, author Deborah Krasner – a James Beard cook book award winner – provides some very useful insight for customers interested in finding, ordering, and preparing “Slow Food” or sustainably raised meat.

Typically, animals that are pastured, are allowed to forage, or that eat a primarily grass-based diet are much leaner than their corn or grain fed cousins. As such, it’s important to note that the cooking times for say, a beef brisket that is grass fed will be different than that of a corn fed one.

Not short on recipes, Krasner provides more than 200 taste bud busting recipes - at least the pictures scream “Damn I’m good!” What’s nice is that she adjusts the cooking times and preparation methods to mesh with the leaner meats, so you don’t have to do any wonky math or make for some on the fly calculations.

Krasner also provides some great diagrams for those of us who are less than confident in our ability to name off the laundry list of meat cuts and assorted usable parts from our favorite proteins. These diagrams, and the awesome photos associated with the recipes help to make this book one for the shelf.

Not a meat eater – (zzzzzzz) – that’s OK. Krasner does a good job of including what appear to be some very tasty side dishes.

Good Meat is a comprehensive guide to sourcing and enjoying sustainable meat. With the rising popularity of the locavore and organic food movements—and the terms “grass fed” and “free range” commonly seen on menus and in grocery stores—people across the country are turning their attention to where their meat comes from. Whether for environmental reasons, health benefits, or the astounding difference in taste, consumers want to know that their meat was raised well.

With more than 200 recipes for pork, beef, lamb, poultry, and game, stunning photos of delicious dishes, and tips on raising sustainable meat and buying from local farmers, Good Meat is sure to become the classic cooking resource of the sustainable meat movement.

Praise for Good Meat:

"Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat belongs on the shelf of every carnivore out there. If you eat meat and if you raise animals for meat or if you have ever considered eating meat or eggs, you need a copy of Deborah Krasner's work of art. The thoughtful essays, equipment and seasonings chapters alone are worth the price of admission, but the anatomy lessons, cutting instructions and more than 200 recipes make the book a rare bargain indeed."
-Grit.com

“Deborah Krasner is part of a revolution in food, in agriculture, in nutrition, that is taking place in our nation. Her book is a fine contribution to that revolution, teaching us how to eat more healthfully, how to buy from local farmers, how to cook what they raise.” —Senator Bernie Sanders, from the foreword

“The healing local food movement's success hinges on artisanal farming and domestic culinary arts. Good Meat takes the mystery out of both in a masterful way, bringing all of us another giant step closer to healing the planet one bite at a time. Beautiful pictures and delightful explanations . . . Everyone interested in local, earth-friendly food will love this book." —Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farm

"Good Meat is a template for all future cookbooks: one that educates on the culinary differences between factory-farmed meats and animals raised on family farms, and the utilization of the entire animal in a sustainable manner." —Patrick Martins, founder of Slow Food USA, Heritage Foods USA

"Good Meat is the cookbook for all who have made the choice to eschew factory-farmed meat for grass-fed and pasture-raised meat. This book provides the knowledge to make sustainably raised meat a reality at your table." —Bruce Aidells, author of The Complete Meat Cookbook

"If you want to cook delicious meals from humanely raised meat, Good Meat is for you. It offers superb recipes designed for grass-fed meat, and provides cooks with the first useful guide to ordering direct from the farm. This book makes you feel good about the meat you eat." —Paula Wolfert, author of Clay Pot Cooking

Beer Can Chicken on the Grill… How to Get it Right

BBQ Smoker — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:45:54 +0000

Chicken on a beer can? You bet! When Steven Raichlen, America's barbecue guru, says it's the best grilled chicken he's ever tasted, cooks stop and listen.

An essential addition to every grill jockey's library, Beer-Can Chicken presents 75 must-try beer-can variations and other offbeat recipes for the grill. Recipes such as Saigon Chicken with Lacquered Skin and Spicy Peanut Sauce, Root Beer Game Hens, Beer-Can Turkey (uses the 32-ounce Foster's), Stoned Chicken (it's grilled under a brick), Dirty Steak, Fish on a Board (Salmon with Brown Sugar Glaze), Mussels Eclade-grilled under pine needles, Grilled Eggs, Wacky Rumaki, Rotisseried Garlic Rolls-even Grilled Yellow Pepper Soup will have your mouth-watering. Whether on a can, on a stick, under a brick, in a leaf, on a plank, or in the embers, each grilling technique is explained in easy-to-follow steps, with recipes that guarantee no matter how crazy the technique, the results are always outstanding. So pop a cold one and have fun.

Barbecue Recipes and Secrets from Big Bob Gibson

Barbecue Recipes and Secrets from Big Bob Gibson

BBQ Smoker — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:40:37 +0000

Winners of the World Championship BBQ Cook-Off for six years in a row and with hundreds of other contest ribbons as well, nobody does barbecue better than Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Alabama. Chris Lilly, executive chef of Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q and great-grandson-in-law of Big Bob himself, now passes on the family secrets in this quintessential guide to barbecue.

From dry rubs to glazes and from sauces to slathers, Lilly gives the lowdown on Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q's award-winning seasonings and combinations. You’ll learn the unique flavors of different woods and you’ll get insider tips on creating the right heat—be it in a charcoal grill, home oven, or backyard ground pit. Then, get the scoop on pulled pork, smoked beef brisket, pit-fired poultry, and, of course, ribs.

Complete the feast with sides like red-skin potato salad and black-eyed peas. And surely you’ll want to save room for Lilly’s dessert recipes such as Big Mama’s Pound Cake. Loaded with succulent photographs, easy-to-follow instructions, and colorful stories, Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ Book honors the legacy of Big Bob Gibson—and of great barbeque.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

What Every Back Yard Barbecue Smoker Novice Needs to Know