Product Description

Steven Raichlen, a national barbecue treasure and author of The Barbecue! Bible, How to Grill, and other books in the Barbecue! Bible series, embarks on a quest to find the soul of American barbecue, from barbecue-belt classics-Lone Star Brisket, Lexington Pulled Pork, K.C. Pepper Rub, Tennessee Mop Sauce-to the grilling genius of backyards, tailgate parties, competitions, and local restaurants.

In 450 recipes covering every state as well as Canada and Puerto Rico, BBQ USA celebrates the best of regional live-fire cooking. Finger-lickin' or highfalutin; smoked, rubbed, mopped, or pulled; cooked in minutes or slaved over all through the night, American barbecue is where fire meets obsession. There's grill-crazy California, where everything gets fired up - dates, Caesar salad, lamb shanks, mussels. Latin-influenced Florida, with its Chimichurri Game Hens and Mojo-Marinated Pork on Sugar Cane. Maple syrup flavors the grilled fare of Vermont; Wisconsin throws its kielbasa over the coals; Georgia barbecues Vidalias; and Hawaii makes its pineapples sing. Accompanying the recipes are hundreds of tips, techniques, sidebars, and pit stops. It's a coast-to-coast extravaganza, from soup (grilled, chilled, and served in shooters) to nuts (yes, barbecued peanuts, from Kentucky).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24118 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.70" h x 8.00" w x 9.10" l, 3.05 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 774 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Raichlen's 24th tome falls firmly into the quirky camp of his Beer Can Chicken, with its mixed-grill of recipes, barbecue tips, food history and restaurant profiles. While the chapters are essentially broken down by main ingredient ("Going Whole Hog," "Sizzling Shellfish"), each entry is branded with the city from which it is borrowed: "The Pittsburgh airport was the last place I expected to find superlative roast beef" begins a typical entry. At times, the attention to geography (and photos of bbq joints) is used to fine effect, especially in the appetizer chapter, where chicken-wing variations from Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville and Buffalo are laid out for easy comparison. But at other times the locale is superfluous. New York City is no more the place for Tarragon Chicken Paillards than landlocked Dayton is for Fennel-Grilled Shrimp. Classic BBQ joints, such as Wilber's in Goldsboro, N.C., are profiled along the way, and succinct, interesting history lessons on various styles of barbecue (Memphis, Kansas City, etc.) are served up. Cooking tips are provided in the margins of nearly every other page, with more space given to larger projects, such as how to barbecue a whole hog. The 650 photos are of various chefs, eateries, markets and fresh produce, rather than what is coming off the grill.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Steven Raichlen's BBQ USA is his best book yet. It is the quintessential guide to the easy and unexpected ulture of barbecue."
—Bobby Flay, author of Bobby Flay Cooks American and Boy Meets Grill

From the Inside Flap
A soul-satisfying journey through one of the last bastions of North American regional culture, BBQ USA captures the ever inventive, ever growing, ever mouth watering world of barbecue.

Here's the Grilling Guru on a pilgrimage to the high temples of the barbecue belt—Sonny Bryan's in Dallas, Jocko's in Nepimo, California—and returning with recipes tailored for backyard barbecue buffs. Here he is tracking down the original burger in New Haven, Connecticut, where the singular technique calls for mixing two types of chopped beef and pressing a slice of raw onion into the patty before cooking it.

He uncovers the secrets to grilled pizza at Al Forno in Providence, Rhode Island. Reveals how to make the legendary Cornell Chicken from upstate New York. Steps two centuries back to the traditional babecued mutton of Owensboro, Kentucky, and then right up to the present—showing us, for example, how to grill bool kogi, the sweet soy and sesame marinated shell steaks patrons cook over in-table braziers in Los Angeles's Koreatown.

In grill-crazy California everything gets fired up—artichokes, Caesar Salad, mussels, lamb shanks. Florida revels in Latin influences with its Chimichurri Game Hens and Mojo-Marinated Pork on Sugar Cane. Chile peppers electrify the grilling of the Southwest, Wisconsin throws its brats over the coals; Georgia barbecues Vidalia onions; and Hawaii finds a surprising number of uses for its native pineapples.

Accompanying the recipes are hundreds of tips, techniques, sidebars, and pit-stops. It's a coast-to-coast grilling extravaganza, from soup (grilled, chilled, and served in shooters) to nuts (yes, peanuts and how to barbecue them, from Kentucky).