Foodist: Cookbook Reviews

Smoke & Spice

By Cheryl Alters Jamison & Bill Jamison

Barbecue is not about grilling food fast over high heat. That's something else, delicious in its own right, but something else entirely. Barbecue is about marginal cuts of meat (for the most part), about smoke, about fires burning so low and slow you hardly ever see the flicker of a flame. Barbecue is about succulent pork ribs as dark as sin just falling off the bone and dripping with glorious sweet pork godliness. Or pork shoulder pulled and chopped and served with coleslaw. Or enjoying the effects that 12 to 18 hours of smoking has on beef brisket.

The trick is, how do you do it? How do you master a cooking technique all but ignored in favor of fast and hot? The answer lies in Smoke & Spice. Authors Jamison and Jamison provide all the information you're going to need to get up and running with real barbecue. All you may own is a kettle-style grill. No matter. The answers are all here.

And so, too, are countless recipes that stretch the barbecue imagination all over the world. And seeing that one can not live on barbecue alone (though that's a challenge well worth considering) there are just as many recipes included for all the good food that accompanies barbecue, from Scalloped Green Chile Potatoes to South-of-the-Border Garlic Soup to all manner of sauces to Buttermilk Onion Rings to Bourbon Peaches and a Derby Day Mint Julep.

If smoke gets in your eyes and makes your mouth water, this is the primer for you.

Schuyler Ingle ...