Backyard BBQ: The Art of Smokology

Book in pristine condition with just a few creases here and there but overall, pleased with the purchase an would buy again from the seller.The recipes are great and the knowledge here is plenty helpful for anyone new to the hobby.

If you are new to BBQ smoking in my opinion there is no one book you can buy. Everyone that writes one has a point of view. What I have found is you really need a core of three books I have found helpful and then possibly two more. Also there is a lot on the web, but there is one site I have found particularly helpful.I have tried smoking before with bullet grills with some success, but it takes a lot of minding. I finally broke down and bought the Texas Traeger pellet grill just for smoking. I love it. Now the problem is most cookbooks on smoking do not address this type of smoker head on so if you want to lean how to really use one I have found you need to look at a variety of sources. Here is my take:Once you understand temperature in relation to smoke and timing you can translate any indirect recipe to a pellet grill or any other type of smoker. There are some tricks/tips that will enhance the cooking, but in the end it all comes down to temperature and time.Here are the books that I have found most helpful in descending order. I would invest in all five if you are serious about this. I look at two things; technical information and recipes.Slow Fire by Ray "DR. BBQ" Lampe - Excellent from a technical standpoint. A great foundation in terms of understanding smoking (slow cooking) and good basic recipes. It is the first book I would buy.Backyard BBQ The Art of Smokology by Richard W. McPeake - Great in terms of technical. If you study this book along with Lemke's you will really get a handle on the technical aspects of smoking. The recipes are pretty basic, but that is OK if you are new at this.Smoke & Spice by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison - OK technical, but once you have that down good recipes and good guidance on time and temperature,Championship Barbecue by Paul Kirk - Good technical compliment to the first two above. This however is more a smoke and grilling cookbook as more than half the recipes are grilled ones. He also has a habit of trying to replicate indoor recipes to the grill. I have no idea why you would do that. A lot of the recipes seem like let me throw this against the wall and see what sticks. That said he has some good smoked ones and his mustard slaughters really work, Thought everything using them would taste like a hot dog, but they enhance the flavor with no mustard taste. Obviously I am a little conflicted by this book.BBQ USA by Steven Raichlen _ more of a grilling cookbook, but he has some good smoker recipes. I am a fan of his for grilling; I have five of his cookbooks. Again from a smoking perspective this is the last of the five, but it and his others are great if you grill as well.Last do poke around the website amazingribs.com. It is not just about ribs and has a wealth of information.Do not assume that any of these recipes will be spot on in terms of your particular grill. As all the authors say you have to learn your grill so do not try any recipe for the first time for company. As many of the authors say smoked BBQ will be ready when it is done.Again it is all about learning about time and temperature for your particular grill.

I really, really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately I just can't give it any more than two stars. Why? Because this book DESPERATELY needs an editor. Have any of you looked at the cover picture here on Amazon and noticed that it looks grainy and unprofessional? Well, it is... this has to be an independent, self published book, and its flaws and lack of polish really impede its overall usefulness.Here are some examples.A) The author often says one thing and then immediately contradicts himself. For example, he says clearly in his terminology section that the phrase "mop" is not the same thing as "sop", but then he goes on to use them interchangeably in some of his recipes. He will also often say things like "use the standard rub" in a recipe and then immediately say in the next sentence "basic rub". So wait, which rub am I supposed to use here? You said "standard", then "basic", and then "standard" again, all in the same paragraph!B) The author's recipes can be extremely confusing, and sometimes it seems like he double counts the time periods he is talking about. A recipe should just be a series of steps... 1, 2, 3, etc, not a rambling circular paragraph. His recipe for twice smoked pulled pork is a perfect example. He says it has won him a lot of awards, so I really wanted to try it, but the circular "recipe" doesn't make it clear how to really make this pulled pork. Even worse, he recommends adding "finishing" flavors to this recipe at the end. The problem is, he has a list of about six or more different "finishing flavors" in his ingredients list. They don't look to me like they go together, so I would think I should just pick one of them to add, but he doesn't specify. There is no way to tell if they should all be added or if you should just pick one finishing flavor.C) Recipe times. They are WAAAAAY off. I tried cooking his recipe for backyard barbecue ribs in my smoker. He said 3-4 hours would be needed for this recipe at a temp of 225 degrees. There is absolutely no possible way that your ribs will be done that fast at this low of a temperature. NO way. I cooked mine for about six hours and they still weren't done. So I did some polling... and I found other recipe books saying at least 250 to 300 degrees are needed to cook ribs, and they often gave a longer time period. I asked other cooks, such as my mom, and she said she probably wouldn't go lower than 325 to get ribs done in that amount of time. And I believe her, because after six hours of smoking ribs at 225 they definitely weren't even close... we had to throw them out. Oh, and he also recommends that you mop these ribs every 15 minutes... so every 15 minutes you take the lid off the smoker and let all the heat escape while spraying them down. My guess is that this is another issue of not having an editor or tester. He probably meant a different total cooking time, or a different temp, or a different time for mopping, but accidentally made a typo. I may still try this recipe again at some point, but I'm definitely not cooking it at 225.So to summarize, this product gets two stars. I suspect most of the positive reveiws on here are from people who have attended his cooking classes (he is a professional chef in Kansas City), learned there how he cooks, and then have bought the book. Perhaps at that point you can fill in the gaps when you hit a circular recipe or a time that doesn't look right. But due to the lack of an editor, this book is terrible for beginners. The only reason it gets two stars is that there is some seemingly good background information on smoking (though still full of typos, grammar mistakes and other inconsistencies) at the beginning of the book.

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great