We're in Florida. We know our way around our grills. We do it all year. Is that bragging? Okay. • So if someone is going to put out a new grilling cookbook, it's going to have to be something special to get our attention. • In the days leading up to summer, cookbook after cookbook arrived in stores, all promising to turn us into better grillers. With thoughts of Independence Day cookouts looming, we cracked open a stack of them with a skeptical eye. Most of the books were packed with basics at best, obvious oversimplification at worst. We know how to grill a steak.
For a book to stand out, we were looking for something we hadn't seen before. Or at least something we had never attempted before. Judging by the covers of the haul, it was hard to ignore Fire It Up (Chronicle Books), which claims "More than 400 recipes for grilling everything." So, despite the fact that the cover shows a burger, chicken breasts, a steak and corn on the cob, we'll start there.
The soft-cover book by veteran cookbook writers Andrew Schloss and David Joachim is more than 400 pages and as fascinating as it is exhaustive. It begins with the basics without being condescending, and includes relevant information that will keep even veteran grillers interested. After a fairly basic primer on direct vs. indirect heat, for example, come tips about getting rid of your grates and getting food directly into the fire. I've never done that. Now I want to. The recipes read as if in an encyclopedia of grilling. Sure, there is a recipe for a T-bone, but it is flavored with gin and juniper and served with a green olive tapenade. And later in the beef chapter, we get a recipe for beef heart kabobs. Not sure, but I think this was the first beef heart kabob recipe I've seen.
To put the book through its paces, we picked a couple of recipes to try. Wanting to keep it accessible and to avoid having to mail order the main ingredient, we passed on the cocoa-crusted goat loin flecked with orange and rosemary, and went with the grilled beets with orange-hazelnut gremolata. Beets are tremendous when roasted, and while grilling them never occurred to me, it makes sense. The recipe calls for them to be sliced thin and then exposed to high heat, which intensifies the inherent sweetness. The gremolata — an herb mix sprinkled over at the end — includes flavors traditionally paired with the sweet beets, and adds almost a perfume.
Another dish, grilled stuffed tomatoes, exposed one of the problems that most of the books have: The recipe was grilling for the sake of grilling. The stuffing was a smart blend of the slight heat of poblano peppers and the earthy assertiveness of blue cheese in a fresh tomato. It is delicious. But the dish gains little from grilling. It just serves to soften the filling. That could be accomplished in the oven. Sure, if the grill is already lit, it makes sense. But it isn't worth turning on the grill for a recipe like that.
The other book that commanded attention was Smokin' (Ballantine) by the never-shy Myron Mixon, who is the winningest man on a competitive barbecue circuit, a fact that he reminds readers of every second or third page, starting with the book's cover.
His success in contests made him a star of reality television, and his homespun curmudgeonly nature infuses the book. It would appear from reading his stories that none of this is much fun for him. He's in it to win piles of cash and trophies. But he has developed a businesslike efficiency to barbecue that can translate for people who do want to have fun. They probably won't do it as well as Mixon, as he would attest in sentences sparkled with expletives and devoid of the final letter of words that would otherwise end in "-ing," but that's fine with him.
The recipe in the book that screams — or squeals — to be tested is the whole hog recipe, in which nearly 200 pounds of pig is cooked for more than 20 hours. But that seemed extreme. So we went for another dish that Mixon is happy to let people copy, since he's pretty sure they won't do it as well as he will: cupcake chicken. Mixon smokes chicken thighs in a cupcake pan to give them a uniform shape, because appearance counts in judging barbecue. His recipe turns out a great chicken thigh, but all the manicure work isn't really necessary for the home cook. Unless your friends are really critical.
Those were the most interesting books of this year's crop, but on Page 5E, there are brief takes on other new books this summer. One last note to future writers of grilling cookbooks: We aren't surprised that you can make dessert on the grill.