The gift giving time of the year is here and some of you are looking for a gift for someone, special or not. Maybe someone who enjoys grilling and/or smoking? A cookbook maybe? But not those cute little books with white wine reduction sauces, not the ones that extoll the use of one grill over another. You’re looking for that special cookbook that differs from the others, one that you keep for years due to it’s solid content. The receiver of your gift is someone who enjoys cooking outdoors and wants to learn more. Or someone who would like to find out what it’s like to compete in the national BBQ circuit. Yeah well, Dr. BBQ (Ray Lampe) a long time professional pitmaster, has stepped up and written a book.
Finally, this overbearing, highly opinionated Master of BBQ has put his knowledge down so those of you who are interested can enlarge your skill set. Read on good friend …
Unlike many BBQ cookbooks, this one is useful. This book deals mainly with traditional American BBQ and competition cooking. Which is fine with me because fancy fusion cooking with unobtainable ingredients, I believe, is getting a little long in the tooth. It’s nice to get back to the roots of a cuisine and get a solid foundation as to how things work and where they came from. Everyone has their favorite BBQ joint and has probably wondered at one time or another how they make that awesome dry rub. Or how long does it really take to smoke a brisket right? Dr. BBQ knows and he tells all. The book was thought out very well and is absolutely loaded with recipes and literally tons of procedures for getting the best possible product from whatever smoker or grill you’re using. He tackles dry rubs, wet rubs and BBQ sauces of all kinds. The mopping sauce is discussed and even gives a few nice recipes for injection marinades. Personally, I’m not a big fan of injecting butter in to my meat, but he’s got a recipe for a pork butt marinade that looks worth trying. Why didn’t I try them out, yet? Ain’t got the time at the moment. And if I was to wait until I did to write this review, you’d be waiting far too long. The holidays are here people and you need something today, a gift that is worth your hard earned money.
The book is interleaved with special pages for you to make notes to yourself, a very kind addition I thought. There’s even a section towards the end that deals with recipes to invoke when you have your smoked/grilled treats left over. That’s very cool just so you know. Why? Because you may not exactly use up an entire 12 lb pork shoulder every time, there’s usually quite a bit left over. And it’d be nice to try something a bit different the next day, or week.
As with anyone who cooks/grills/smokes/bakes, you have your own opinions and ideas. Dr. BBQ and I don’t see eye to eye on a few things. He enjoys the garlic powder and that crap makes me crazy mad. It’s the Devil and should be exorcised from the planet. I love oregano and he feels the same way about it as I feel about the garlic powder. So, you see it goes back and forth. I was given this copy of his book for review from the publishers and I’m not giving it up. It’s all worn from me carrying to and from work all this time. I’ve been pouring through it, page by page, chapter by chapter, it looks worn and will probably only get worse. Even so it has it’s own place on my cookbook shelf along with all my other tombs of vast knowledge. If you don’t believe me, just go to your local book store and open it up. Sit down for a few minutes and pour through the dry rub recipes, read the ingredients, you know they’re good.
Here, let me read to you a few of the recipes and techniques available.
*Backyard Championship Ribs
*Friday Night Spareribs
*Kansas City-Style Pork Butt
*Dirty Dick’s Cajun Ribeye Roast
*Dr. BBQ’s Big-Time Competition Brisket
*Maxim Hog in the Ground
*Mixed Satays with Sambal Marinade
*Grilled Brie Quesadillas
Interested? Yes, you should be. However, what can make or break the usability of a good cookbook are the indices. I checked 5 index entries and they match up to the page they’re supposed to. There’s a little glossary and the best treat of all? A comprehensive list of Cookoffs you can attend with contact information!
If I had to say something nasty about the book it would be the use of the images. For whatever reason, someone chose to take black & white photographs and turn them red. So, they’re red & white photographs, ick. It’s just wrong and sticks out like a sore thumb, pow! You get over that pretty quickly as you read through, but I thought I’d mention it.
Dr. BBQ’s Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook is Meathenge approved, this means you can buy with confidence.
And this concludes the review of Dr. BBQ’s Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook.
Good Day,
Biggles
Wow, what you might call a second opinion from Dr. Biggles on that other Meat Doctor.
Very nice recommendation.
Now Cookiecrumb will spoil your appetite by telling you about the doctor she discovered in Escondido during Thanksgiving. You gotta go check out this business.
http://www.business-directory-ca-escondido.com/company-home-california-escondido/lung-doctor-3172917.html
Hey Cookie,
What were you doing in Escondido looking for a lung doctor?
Oh, now, that’s how rumors get started! Knock it off!
I was eating old-folks-home turkey with my parents. We passed by this smoke shop on the road back to our motel. Shoulda stopped in and bought you a T-shirt.
YEAH !!!
I’m an XL, write that down. Neat.
I have that book. I like it. Dr. BBQ was in NorCal last year in March for an all-night long, you cook while he supervises and offers pointers type BBQ class. I had to miss it cuz it fell on my wedding anniversary, and as much as I like BBQ, I like my wife better. But I heard it was a fantastic class. If he comes ’round again this year, I’ll holler.
Where exactly do you get a meat doctorate? and do they do a correspondence course?
Hey Monkey,
Yeah I dunno man. I think it’s an honarary one and it don’t seem like he put much thought in to it. It’s a good book in any case. Time for a nap.
As an experiment, I smorked up some bronto-sized
beef short ribs this weekend. Trouble with most beef ribs you see in the store is that they are usually beef-free. But I found these short ribs all together in a rack, and unlike regualr grocedry stoer beef ribs they actualy had some meat on them. So I smorked them up.
They were smorky good, but awkward and unwieldy. Less like a rib and more like a massive chunk of brisket on a stick. Tasty, but awkward. You needed a knife and fork. Which isn’t a bad thing, I suppose. Just not what I expected.
Hey HJ,
I’m not sure I’m following you. You mention beef ribs and beef short ribs, they different beasts. While I have no idea how to cook beef ribs, I know the short ribs need LONG, SLOW cooking. I suppose beef ribs would be similar, you take a picture?
MG: First, you would have to meatriculate.
Sorry, We ate them all up, so no photos. I’ll get a photo next time and send it to you.
Yeah, they are different than standard beef ribs. These were not the long beef ribs we had at Minnies. This is short ribs, which normally come cut separate, about 3 or 4 inches long, that you do long slow braising with. Yep, those kind. Short ribs. But they weren’t cut up into individual bones yet. They were all still connected by a web of thick meat…like any other rack of ribs. They ranged in length from about 3 inches on the short end to 6 inches on the long end.
Anyway, yeah. I smoked them for a LONG time. between 6 and 7 hours at about 240. So they got real tender. They also bunched up real high in the middle as they cooked and the meat pulled away from the ends of the bones. So it was real hard to eat like a rib. You needed a knife and fork.
Next time I do them I’ll snap a photo….
HJ,
Yeah, knife and fork, er fangers.
Oh man that sounds gooood. I haven’t had short ribs in a long darned time.
Did you make any sauce? Er just the rub?
I did resort to a sauce glaze after tasting them nude. (Er…the ribs, not me.) Turns out I didn’t put quite enough rub on them. I jsut gave them a light dusting, as if they were pork spares, which was an error. I should have given them a bit of kosker salt followed by a heavy dusting of rub like I do briskets. The meat was so thick after cooking it required more seasoning than less. Anyhoo, I had made my sweet honey type rib glaze for the pork spares I also cooked, but for the beef I thought it was too sweet. So I cut that with some Gates spicy BBQ sauce and gave the beef ribs a nice brushing. Not too sweet, but it had some heat to it. So yeah, I “made” a sauce for it. Or rather, I assembled one!
I do love short ribs braised, too…Sear ’em up good in bacon grease, brown up some onions and carrots and celerey and garlic in the grease, add some red vino, crumbled bacon and mushrooms and put in a low oven all afternoon until they fall apart. Wow. I gotta do that soon, too.