Cookbooks to Take You From Rookie Chef to Grillmaster
Summertime means lazy days at the beach, corralling the kids for day trips to the park or the zoo, tending to a garden in the prime of life…and grilling season! Barbecues are a time-honored way to celebrate holidays, enjoy the warm weather, and bring families together. You can make this season one to remember by upgrading your grilling skills with these sensational cookbooks. By the time you are finally ready to break out the BBQ grills, you will be amply prepared for whatever this summer throws your way!
America’s barbecue guru shares his tastiest recipes for preparing dishes in an unconventional way—on a can, a stick, under a brick, in a leaf—and more!
An essential addition to every grill jockey’s library, Beer-Can Chicken presents must-try variations and other offbeat recipes for the grill. These recipes will have your mouth watering:
.Saigon Chicken with Lacquered Skin and Spicy Peanut Sauce
.Root Beer Game Hens
.Beer-Can Turkey
.Stoned Chicken
.Dirty Steak
.Fish on a Board
.Mussels Eclade-grilled under pine needles
.and much more!
Each grilling technique is explained in easy-to-follow steps, with recipes that guarantee no matter how crazy the technique, the results are always outstanding. So pop a cold one and have fun.
STELLAR COOKOUT SIDES
Move the meat from the center of the table and let these innovative side dishes steal the spotlight. Written by celebrated pitmaster Adam Perry Lang, Barbecue Sides includes a dozen-plus recipes for melting, creamy, and crispy dishes like Bubbling Bacon Butter Beans, Smoked-Corn Flan, and Scruffed Carbonara Potatoes that temper the strength of brawny barbecue mains without getting in the way of flavor. The menu is rounded out with a dozen additional recipes for fresh, sprightly, and green sides, like Mango Cilantro Salad and Green Apple, Cabbage, and Caraway Slaw, as well as pickled vegetables that add refreshing high notes and contrast to a plate. These first-rate side dishes will elevate your barbecue.
A root-to-leaf guide to vegetable butchery, with 150 recipes. Winner, IACP Cookbook Awards for Single Subject and People’s Choice.
Applying the skills of butchery to the unique anatomy of vegetables—leafy, lumpy, stalky, gnarly, thin-skinned, or softly yielding—Cara Mangini shows, slice by slice, how to break down more than 100 vegetables for their very best use in the kitchen. Here’s how to peel a tomato, butcher a butternut squash, cut cauliflower steaks, and chiffonade kale. How to find the tender, meaty heart of an artichoke and transform satellite-shaped kohlrabi into paper-thin rounds, to be served as a refreshing carpaccio.
And then, more than 150 recipes that will forever change the dutiful notion of “eat your veggies”—Grilled Asparagus, Taleggio, and Fried Egg Panini in the spring; summery Zucchini, Sweet Corn, and Basil Penne with Pine Nuts and Mozzarella; and Parsnip-Ginger Layer Cake with Browned Buttercream Frosting to sweeten a winter meal. Plus everything else you need to know to enjoy modern, sexy, and extraordinarily delicious vegetables—and make the the center of the meal.
Eileen Gonzalez is a freelance writer from Connecticut. She has a Master’s degree in communications and years of experience writing about pop culture. She contributes to Book Riot and Foreword Reviews, and she occasionally tweets at @eileen2thestars.