Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country

First off, if you are buying this book expecting a cookbook, don't. Buy it because it is a hell of an entertaining read instead. The book itself is one man's story of traveling the backroads of the US searching for and eating a lot of good barbecue. It is also his opinion of what makes good barbecue - some folks take exception to what his opinions are. This is almost always the way with barbecue. As with religion and politics, an almost certain way to start an argument at a party is do discuss what makes "good barbecue" with others who have their own opinions. If you cannot handle reading another man's opinions, don't bother with this book. For me it proved to be interesting if not educational, and I certainly don't agree with all or even many of his opinions. Also, as others have said, he often mimics the speech of locals when quoting them. "Under it" becomes "Un'er it" etc. I don't personally see this as making fun of them or ridiculing them at all. To the contrary, I feel it is done to give the audience a little insight into what it was like to interact with these folks. Many of the quotes in question would have seemed downright bizarre if written in proper English rather than dialect. Again, if you can't stand to read quotes that include semi-gibberish because you find it offensive, this book may not be for you. I found it entertaining. This book was OOP for several years. Personally I'm glad to see that it's available again. In my opinion it's one of the best of its breed.

I had a wonderful experience of things and places I never knew while reading this book. When a book can provide that, I don't know what more you could ask for. My first experience of eating ribs was as a boy at my father's union picnic. When they told me I could eat some ribs, I did not want to eat them. Once I tasted them, I could not get enough. For a while, I looked for every opportunity to find more of this magical delicacy. Then I ran into some tough, dried out, vein laden stuff that put me off it for quite awhile. Even so, I am not sure that what I ate was barbecue even though that is what it was called in the world of my youth. I suspect that for many people if you cook something over an open flame or charcoal and put sauce on it, that is barbecue, barbeque, BBQ or whatever else you want to call it. It wasn't until I read Calvin Trillin's wonderful writing on his favorite food in Kansas City, Missouri that I realized there was a difference between my cooking out back over charcoal in a Weber Smoker and the slowly cooked, low temperature, super tender barbecue. It was not until very recently that I have tasted whole hog barbecue cooked in a pit over wood and it makes all the difference in my appreciation of this great food. I bought this book at a special barbecue evening at Zingerman's Roadhouse here in Ann Arbor and one of the authors, Lolis Eric Elie, was there to talk with us about what he had found, what we were eating, his book, and his DVD. It was such an impressive evening that I wanted to read what he had to say. The authors took me on a wonderful adventure. I got to follow them from Memphis and meandering through Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, both Carolinas, Chicago, and others. They found a lot of bad cooking along the way, but they found some good to wonderful barbecue as well. The interesting thing to me is that there is no real predictor of when they were going to find something great. Some of the tiny places out back were good, most were bad. Some of the larger establishments were good, most were not. What you had to have was a pit master who cared, who knew what he was doing, and who was willing to do the time consuming work to make it happen. The authors also show us a wide range of preparations of meats. Mostly it is pork, except in Texas where it is beef. In some places it is just ribs and brisket, others it is the whole hog. A few still cook it in a pit in the ground, most have above ground pits of brick and sand and some with steel. One pitmaster argued that steel wrecks the meat, but most cook that way. There are those that use indirect heat and smoke. There are others who want the flame and the burning of the grease drippings. The most successful use good wood or charcoal. Although they did find one place that barbecued with electric heat and a strip of wood for smokey flavoring. The worst whole hog was a place that used gas and nothing to put any flavor in. There are places that spec

Great book, not for recipies but for a trip through real barbque country. The book is part travel literature, part regional cooking essay and part American social essay by two guys who show a love for the history and lore of barbque. If you consider yourself a lover of Barbque, not grilling mind you, you will love reading this book.

This is one great book. I love it so much, I bought another copy "just in case". The writing is superb, the photography is amazing, and from a Q-fanatic with literally hundreds of barbeque books, this one is my very favorite.

While the book serves as a chronicle of a cross country trip in search of the perfect barbeque, it does much more than that. We are introduced to a variety, and I do mean variety, of people from across the southeast and the heart of America. This book celoebrates these people and their lives. The barbeque almost serves as a metaphor for society and culture as they change and evolve. The book examines how traditions, generations, and diversity impact our barbeque and our lives. A well written narative that took me places I have never seen and introduced me to people I had never met. All of them interesting.