1 comments about Grill It! Good Housekeeping Favorite Recipes (Favorite Good Housekeeping Recipes).

1. Great book. I sent it as a gift to several of our friends.

4 comments about Complete Grilling Cookbook (Williams Sonoma Kitchen Library).

1. This is a very good cookbook. The directions are awesome and it has high quality pictures of everything so you know what it should look like when you are done cooking. Lots of good recipies. A+



2. This cook book offered a wide variety of grilled items and practical sauces, rubs and accompanying dishes. It will definitely be used all summer long at our house.



3. THis book has many delightful recipes to help you enjoy summer grilling season. Additionally, it has helpful hints such as how long to cook various thicknesses of meat, and the most amazing side dishes! Also has plenty of vegetarian recipes for both on and off the grill. My favorites are the stuffed mushrooms and squash (on the grill) and the pasta salad (side dish).



4. Good seller, everything was as described. Shipping took longer than I expected however was within the estimated transit time provided by the seller.

No comments about Omaha Steaks the Great American Grilling Book: From the Best Burgers to Terrific T-Bones.

1 comments about Barbecue Road Trip: Recipes, Restaurants, & Pitmasters from America's Great Barbecue Regions.

1. "Barbecue Road Trip: Recipes, Restaurants & Pitmasters from America's Great Barbecue Regions" by Michael Karl Witzel ($30, Voyageur Press, 192 pp.). Witzel took on the Herculean task of trying to encompass the four major barbecue regions - Kansas City, Memphis, North Carolina and Texas. Further, he crammed it full of pictures - 250 in 192 pages. So with a lot of information and a lot of pictures, something had to give, right? Well, it was the recipes. There are only about two dozen included here, although they are set off in a graphically pleasing format that brings to mind a lined index card. So is it a problem to be light on the recipes? Not necessarily, especially when you deliver on content and illustrations to the degree that Witzel did here. Just know going in that there is a difference in this book and many others that fill up page-after-page with recipes and go light in other ways. If you're a fan of barbecue (and if you're not, what are you doing here), then you'll love this book.

3 comments about Seafood Grilling: Twice a Week.

1. The whole reason I got this book was because I want to incorporate more fish into my diet. The only thing that has stopped me from doing so in the past was that I didn't know how to prepare fish and I am new to cooking. I got this book and it is great. It has great recipes and give at least 2-4 substitute fish that you can use with each one. Another benefit is that each recipe includes a calorie, fat, saturated fat cholesterol and sodium count. And to top it all of they are fast and easy to prepare. Highly recommended and worth every penny.



2. We love this book! It's been part of the collection for 2 years (?) We've not had a bad recipe out of it. just did the walnut-crusted mahi-mahi substituting fresh sea bass. It was heavenly. My only problem is that I'm spilling the darned ingredients on the book and it's getting nice and broken in



3. I came close to not ordering this...we are saving for a new grill, just got a new deck, and so I knew I was being an emotional buyer in shopping for a cookbook that is specifically seafood just because I'm in that mindset of summer grilling. There weren't many reviews so I thought about it...hemmed and hawed, then treated myself.
   
   Glad I did.
   
   Not only are there pictures of how to do things like dress a lobster, fileting a fish, dressing a clam, etc
   
   extensive and excellent details on how to grill various seafood...
   
   but, most importantly, these truly are family worthy, really good recipes. No odd ingredients, no strange tastes you can't imagine, but still the kind of things you'd want to be served at your favorite seafood restaurant or serve at a dinner party. And some are quite simple to make as well.
   
   Think:
   grilled albacore tuna with salsa
   walnut crusted mahi mahi
   peppercorn swordfish kabobs
   salmon on a cedar plank
   snow crab with basting sauce
   spicy skewered scallops in peanut sauce
   Italian grilled shrimp and pasta
   striped bass with lemon rosemary sauce
   tuna with sauteed bell peppers
   teriyaki salmon burgers
   swordfish club sandwich
   
   and more
   
   the back has marinades and sauces as well
   
   but, very important to me...also has the calorie count, fat etc. this is always a bonus for me in a cookbook.
   
   I believe these are the kind of recipes a king of the grill will love to cook, but so will a novice grill prince or princess.
   
   I try to list pros and cons of an item in any review since I do believe no product is perfect...but this is a true 5 star one for me. So, if I have to reach for something I'd say I wish it had photographs...
   
   but all the items are easy, quick, healthy, relatively inexpensive and the book is informative.
   
   conclusion: this is a keeper and I'd be quick to purchase a follow up of similar new recipes.

4 comments about Searching for the Dixie Barbecue: Journeys in the Southern Psyche.

1. The culinary and cultural attributes of Searching For The Dixie Barbecue make for an important and unusual blend of information on Southern cooking, culture, and redneck barbecue origins - but don't expect a recipe book alone. Searching For The Dixie Barbecue: Journeys Into The Southern Psyche pairs black and white photos of Southern barbecue establishments with plenty of travel and cultural background to provide a road journey through the contentious world of Dixie barbecue. The lively, folksy manner makes for a winner for any who love barbecue!



2. What a marvelous storyteller Mr. Caldwell is! I have not finished reading his book, but am savoring each character he meets, each BBQ joint he describes and the food fixed the way it has always been. Caldwell takes a subject and follows every path it leads and you are drawn down the path happily.



3. Interesting reading but, unfortunately no receipes. Rated it 3 Stars because it didn't have them...just ideas and basic facts.



4. It's not too bad. Very repetitive but somewhat informative. There are certainly better 'cue books out there that cover the great debate of southern bbq. I'd check out Smokestak Lightening before this. Peace Love and Barbacue for recipes.

5 comments about Extreme Barbecue: Smokin' Rigs and 100 Real Good Recipes.

1. The subject here is barbecue and Huntley knows the material. This book is an entertaining and informative re-
   source for the backyard barbecue fan in your family. It is worth reading and you will find a few recipes to try at home.



2. This book is great for people that would like to cook outdoors for a crowd but they don't know how.



3. Recipes and passion... this is what this book is about. Not your ordinary cookers and smokers.
   
   Check out page 120 and 123. It's about as simple of a grill as a person can get. And propabably fun to cook on too.
   
   And page 171. A front-end loader grill.
   
   And page 59. It's a trash can folks.
   
   And check out page 255-256 for a whole hog cooker.



4. EXTREME BARBECUE: SMOKIN' RIGS AND REAL GOOD RECIPES is a fun blend of unusual barbecue recipes and a visual focus on unusual or 'extreme' barbecue rigs, from a rig composed of sawhorses and a tin roof to a homemade cob oven. Whether you choose the rig route or the plain ole Weber, any library catering to patrons who 'que will love EXTREME BARBECUE: the blend of vignettes and notes from such adventurers melds well with recipes such as Caribbean Meat Loaf or Oysters in Thick Cream, creating a memorable, fine and unique 'que cookbook.



5. I really liked this book, from a character story viewpoint, but not as a cookbook. I bought it for the pictures for ideas on building my own unique Bar-B-Q pit. The pictures that were there are excellent and really unique. The only problem is that there are just too few of them. This is still a really cool book. More pics would have made it a keeper. Great gift for the Bar-B-Q'r in your life.

4 comments about Get Grilling.

1. `get grilling' by the `food network kitchens' is the third written by the staff of the Food Network and while the first two were sound, this volume, with recipes which are just as good, succeeds where the others may tend to get lost.
   
   This book succeeds because it provides lots of very good staple recipes for grilling, just in time for the 2005 living outdoors season. Basically, this book is not a winner because it apes Bobby Flay in trying to come up with a lot of innovative grilling recipes. It wins because it covers all the familiar recipes that are somewhere between easy and moderately challenging for the weekend griller who doesn't even bother to crack a cookbook or turn on Emeril over the long winter months. Like the earlier books, this volume has a very nice mix of recipes from a lot of different cuisines, but all of them are more variations on familiar dishes rather than outlandish dishes with rare ingredients such as galangal and Kaffir Lime leaves. I will not do a compete count and just indicate to you that the Mediterranean, including Europe, Africa, and the Levant; China; Japan; Southeast Asia; and Neuvo Latino cuisines are all represented, along with middle America and its heavy German influence on things such as brats, wieners, sauerkraut, and cole slaw.
   
   As a non-griller, the thing I liked about this book is that it struck a very nice balance between giving the rudiments without taking up a third of the book with things some people already know and some people don't need to know. My only argument with this presentation is that they picture the `TOOLS OF THE TRADE' in four group photos and don't indicate in their discussion whether the items are cited from top to bottom, from left to right or from clockwise to counterclockwise. Tsk, Tsk.
   
   On the much more positive side of things, the authors succeed in describe grilling as a distinctively different type of cooking, similar to, but not the same as baking, broiling, or sauteeing. They also stay on a finely impartial line between the religious factions in favor of charcoal and gas grilling. In fact, they make a very useful contribution to the charcoal camp by recommending a mix of briquettes and natural hardwood charcoal. The authors also score big with their recommendation of grilling cages. I have no idea why these have not been more broadly recommended, as they seem like naturals for doing fish and vegetables. The only Food Network show on which I have ever seen them appear was on a Martha Stewart episode hosting the owner chef of a leading New York fish restaurant. I just wish the authors had included a source for ordering these little darlings.
   
   The authors cover the outdoor grilling / picnic scene with ten different types of dishes. These are:
   
   Nibbles & noshes with some traditional dishes, grilled appetizers, and veggie oddities such as jicama sticks.
   Little Dishes from the Grill with wings, crostini, pizzas, potato salad, kebabs, and veggie Napoleons. Note that the veggie Napoleons are done much more easily with the grilling baskets than without.
   Burgers, Dogs, & Sandwiches is the chapter which clinched my strong recommendation for this book. Everyone can grill burgers and dogs, but isn't it nice to have all in one place some recipes for four different burger recipes, toppings for those doggies, and some righteous North Carolina pulled pork barbecue. This chapter alone makes me want to buy my first grill.
   Chicken & other BBQ'd birds or more staples of the well-flavored grilling repertoire.
   Meat of the Matter, or steaks, chops, ribs, medallions, and brochettes on the outdoor grill.
   Fish and Shellfish, including smoking and planking recipes for days which are not Labor Day, 4th of July, or Memorial Day.
   Salads and sides with two for potato, two for macaroni, two cole slaws, lots of tomatoes, and lots of grilled veggies. Again, this is all about basics with good variety to keep you interested.
   Sauces and Rubs with a very well informed selection of regional specialities from North Carolina, Kansas City, New Orleans, Texas, and Memphis. Bobby Flay was here!
   Sweets with some grilled fruit, s'mores, easy pies, and easy cakes
   Drinks, including all the iced tea recipes you scramble for in you misplaced Martha Stewart books, plus some coolers, sangria, margaritas, and a warning to have enough ice on hand.
   
   The cooking tips in the first Food Network book were, I thought, a waste of space. In this book, since the focus is very narrowly on grilling skills, the tips are just right, focusing on just enough to keep the average summer outdoor chef from cutting off your thumb or infecting his guests with ptomaine.
   
   Like the previous two books, there is no mention of the Food Network's culinary stars. The most we get is a sly reference to the fact that these backstage cooks have rubbed elbows with the likes of show host Bobby Flay and guests such as Chris Schlesinger and Steve Raichlen, both minor gods in the world of modern grilling. The book also does less than it could to distinguish grilling from barbecuing. Yet, while the writers and editors are not in line with my linguistic prejudices, they succeed in generally limiting the word `barbecue' to long, low heat cooking involving smoke. So all is forgiven and this book heartily gets its full five stars!
   
   As long as I am applauding this book, I can off the suggestion to all those cookbook publisher out there that they garnish no interest from me by imitating e. e. cummings by lower casing all their titles. This is a total waste of modesty and as a purchaser of about 200 cookbooks a year, has absolutely no influence on my selections or opinions, except to believe the copy editors fell asleep during seventh grade English!
   
   If you grill outdoors, buy this book. If you only grill indoors, buy Bobby Flay's books.



2. Get Grilling: Recipes, Tips, And Techniques For Terrific Food And Big Fun In The Great Outdoors is the collaborative work of the Food Network Kitchens staff and showcases recipes for outdoor grilling drawn from the Food Network television programming. After informative introductions into the "art of the grill", this beautifully illustrated compendium of grilling recipes ranges from Bacon-wrapped Dates with Manchego; Chicken Paillards with Herb-Tomato Salad; Fiery Flank Steak and Papaya Salad; and Lamb Brochettes with Tapenade; to Veal Chops with Endive and Lemon; Jumbo Shrimp Stuffed with Cilantro and Chiles; Sea Scallops with Zucchini Ribbons and Mint-Chive Oil; and Lobster with Tarragon Butter and Fingerling Potatoes. Of special note are the chapters devoted to recipes for salads, side dishes, sauces, rubs, sweets, and drinks. If you are intending to grill outdoors for your mealtime pleasure, then Get Grilling is the cookbook for you!



3. Once again food editor Jennifer Darling (who did the fantastic BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS COOKBOOK that has become a standby) comes through for the people at Food Network with a winner. Though our days here in the Bay Area have been filled with rain, inside we've managed to do some indoor grilling and used sixof the recipes she provides (including side dish recipes, which eliminated the need to use the range entirely). With a gas grill, everything's easy especially in a moist climate, but as the book says, there will always be people who prefer charcoal and more power to them. Most of the recipes Darling includes can be adapted for both. Now that summer is almost upon us this book will get a real workout. It is sort of a heavy book, I'll tell you that, but one thing about people who use cookbooks, we know what it's like to have to lift! Not that 2 pounds is particularly notable any more.
   
   I have Rachael Ray's cookbook too and plan to try to set up an Iron Chef-like battle of the cookbooks, using her more personalized recipes against the slick, no-name fusion food of GET GRILLING. If you like to have theme parties this book could be the winner, for there are all sorts of creative dishes you could make and lump them under one heading, like A Trip Around The World or Fairy Tales or The Four Seasons. In our household one of us is a strict vegan and the other eats meat sparingly yet heartily, and both of us have marked off the pages we plan to conquer this summer out of GET GRILLING. See you in September!



4. I just purchased Get Grilling after seeing a demonstration by the Food Network Kitchens Staff at Chef Central, and I have to say it is THE best book on grilling I have seen. As someone who was recently crushed to discover an allergy to beef, I thought my grilling days were over. They had me from the first recipe though - shrimp spring rolls with dipping sauce. The creative takes on these recipes are exciting. This isn't a book with 20 million recipes for barbecue sauce. They really took the time and developed many varied dishes and captured the whole spirit of grilling. The varied foods include fun appetizers, as well as lamb, and swordfish. By not simply concentrating on ribs and burgers, they gave me ideas on new things and new ingredients to try. The tips are easy to spot but don't get in the way of the recipe. The shopping tips and explanations of new ingredients and where to get them are helpful also. Worth the price of several other grilling books combined. A wonderful recipe book.

4 comments about Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing).

1. Cornbread Nation 2 should have been printed using waterproof paper! Reading the varied writings contained between its covers will have anyone who appreciates barbecue drooling like Pavlov's dogs.
   Elie has done a masterful job of assembling some of the most vivid food writing-on barbecue-imaginable. The depth of subject matter is both stunning and satisfying in what it brings to the table.
   
   It is my opinion that including Smith's Rhetoric of Barbecue treatise is alone worth the investment in this book. Often quoted as snippets in other books,here it is in it's entirety for the very first time.
   
   Quite simply, this is a book to be treasured by anyone who loves barbecue, southern culture or U.S. history. I can safely bet that once you begin reading Cornbread Nation 2, you'll find yourself becoming ravenous for some good slow cooked barbecue!



2. This is a welcome addition to a promising series, although it is slightly misleading, due probably to the nature of the series. It is only about half to two-thirds about barbecue, although within that are some really terrific and far-ranging essays. The balance is about other Southern foodways, including boiled peanuts (as a previous reviewer noted)and boudin, although any book on any subject is enhanced by Calvin Trillin's contribution. He HAS written on barbecue (indeed, his piece on Arthur Bryant's is a landmark), but the Cornbread Nation does not promise to be inclusive. It sho' nuff makes one hungry though!



3. The Southern Foodways Alliance was founded to celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the food cultures of the American South. Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue is a collection of stories, poems, and essays about the foodways of the mountain South. It is one of a continuing series which includes Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing.
   
   Lolis Eric Elie writes in the introduction: "Other foods cover the geographic expanse of this nation, just as barbecue does. You can find fried chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza from coast to coast. But none of these foods enjoy the great regional variation that barbecue does. None of them exemplify the competing themes of American unity and diversity as barbecue does. You don't hear heated arguments about the fundamental differences between the hamburgers in Albuquerque and those in Altoona. Hamburgers just ain't that deep. As John Shelton Reed reminds us in "Barbecue Sociology: The Meat of the Matter," "Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes."
   
   While there are a few non-barbecue pieces in this second edition of the series devoted to southern foods, barbeque is the name of the game. It points out that getting together for barbecues was popular before the Revolutionary War. George Washington hosted barbecues including one at Accotinck in May 1773 and buying flour "for barbecue" [for biscuits?] in August.
   
   "Barbecue" is an amalgam from the Haitian "barbacoa" and "babracot," believed to be from Guianian Indians, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary." Fish or meat were cooked over a fire on a wooden grill of sticks set on posts. There is still intense debate over whether the best barbecue is pork, beef, chicken, fish or lamb. As Elie points out: "Though the various versions of barbecue differ from each other as much as cows differ from sheep, or as much as tomatoes differ from mustard seeds, the common themes of wood and smoke, meat and sauce, family and fellowship transcend regional rivalries and recipe differences."
   
   This edition is padded out with a few non- barbecue pieces which are well worth enjoying. Pat Conroy teaches us that food and funerals go together in "Love, Death, and Macaroni." John Martin Taylor is eloquent on boiled peanuts. Susan Allport's "Women Who Eat Dirt" describes a practice common in the south, and even now in Harlem grocery stores there are enormous offerings of starch, not for starching shirts but to meet the need for "clean" earth, awfully hard to come by in New York City.
   
   At one time, New York City was considered a barbecue wasteland, like Paris, London and L.A. But there is a new smoker technology that the Department of Health has approved, and a number of topflight barbecue restaurants have opened here. If you find your mouth watering after reading some of these pieces, you'll be able to satisfy your hunger for an authentic style. As this excellent book proves, making that choice is not trivial.
   
   Robert C. Ross 2008



4. Obligatory reading for anyone who's a food geek, especially if you are a barbecue wonk. If you've spent a whole day (or night) cooking a 10 pound pork shoulder or obsessed about which combination of 15 spices will taste best on a chicken thigh (and really, who hasn't?) then this book is for you.
   
   About three quarters of the book is dedicated to barbecue - the rest is dedicated to southern cooking and food, including a chapter on a geophagy, something I never heard of... the eating of dirt. Who knew that mudpies were a nutritional staple in some parts of the world!!??
   
   Overall, it is very good writing on a specific topic - you'd better like barbecue enough to read story after story about it - which makes it not for everyone, but great read for those looking for it.

2 comments about Indoor Grilling: 50 Recipes for Electric and Stovetop Grills and Smokers.

1. We bought this after purchasing a George Foreman electric grill. The recipe book with the Grill does not provide much in the way of basic methods and recipes, and we were looking for something more expansive and fundamental. It did not mention bacon for instance. The Ridgaway book however is very American and does not consider a more traditional English taste. We have found it therefore rather unhelpful and probably a waste of money. We are both pensioners. Is there anything for pensioners of Old England?



2. The recipes are OK, I purchased it from Amazon because Crate and Barrel had it at one time so I thought it would be a good book since I have enjoyed Crate's books in the past. However, this one was a lot smaller than expected and the recipes were just OK. I always say if you can get one or two good recipes then you should get the book because a good recipe is hard to come by, which you can with this book. So if you are looking for just that then this book will be a perfect buy.