Barbecue Nation: One Man's Journey to Great Grilling

First off, I love to cook. I also love to cook on the grill. Once when we were remodeling our kitchen, I cooked every meal on the grill for over a month. Second, I love cookbooks. I have more cookbooks than I could ever cook all the recipes from. That's why I've resorted to checking them out from the library before I buy. This book I renewed enough times I had it for most of the summer. We tried recipes for main courses, sides and desserts. I kept coming back to this cookbook all summer because the recipes are tasty! They've been tested and work! I have lots of fancy cookbooks, but most of those I need to make special trips to the store if I want to use them---they usually call for at least one unique ingredient not on hand. This book was great for a last minute meal plan. I would most often have all the ingredients in the house! I would highly recommend this book.

While the purists separate Barbecue from Grilling and never the twain shall meet (or is it meat?), Fred Thompson is more about helping you enjoy cooking outside over a fire of charcoal or propane or whatever else. Yes, this is a fun book. He opens telling you why he wanted to do this book and then provides some basics about what you need and what is nice to have. He doesn't assume you have any more than a simple 22 inch Weber kettle, but you could have a multi-thousand dollar pit smoker, too. He just assumes you want to cook on your grill and provides you with hundreds of fun and interesting, but not too complicated, recipes. Thompson tells you how to do almost anything you can think of on your grill, including a pizza (pictured on the back cover)! The range is bigger than my little burger, hot dog, steak, chops, and ribs brain had ever dreamed possible. Wow! I mean there are some things here that are so tantalizing that I have to try them and care a lot less how they come out than the fun of trying. However, the author provides things to us so clearly that I believe there is a very good chance of making things come out tasty as well as fun. When he opens the section of recipes, say, on beef or pork or poultry, he spends a page or so letting you know a few important things about the cuts and what you need to know about the meat. The recipe pages are very designed to be very helpful to us, the readers. The left margin has the ingredients in the upper left corner with the instructions below. The right 60% of each page a description of the dish, helpful tips (always helpful!). In the upper right corner is a little box showing the source of the recipe, how many servings, and a symbol showing whether you will be cooking over a direct or indirect fire. Once in awhile there is a nice photo, too. The hundreds of recipes takes us through some wonderful and strange things to do on a grill, then beef and veal, pork, lamb, goat, game, fowl, fish, shellfish, and then burgers - dogs - sausages. We then take a trip to vegetables and fruits (why is it when I hear about this my first reaction is always to feel it is odd, then when I taste it I think, `Wow! Of course!"? Thompson then does a nice section on rubs, sauces, and marinades that can lift our grilling to another level. He concludes with a section on sides and deserts - pies, cakes, tarts. The one ice cream recipe is offered as an excuse to go buy an ice cream maker. Hear, hear! If you want to have fun doing some new things on your grill, this is a wonderful book.

Grilling is not all that easy, I usually burn everything. This book gave me tips and ideas for perfecting my grilling that I would actually use! I love the way he tells you places to touch on your face to learn how to tell meat is done. These recipes are from people all over the country and all of them come out moist and flavorful. A world of flavors is represented! Who has time for cookbooks with a page of ingredients? I don't. All the recipes are like ones your friends would share, simple and fast to make!

I love BBQ, but usually not ribs or red meat. This book offers many great chicken and pork chop recipes, and many delightful side dish recipes. I've never been that comfortable with the grill, but I always crave BBQ when I pass a park or someplace where there's BBQ. With this book I've been eating a lot of BBQ lately. Yum!