Review: Weber’s Charcoal Grilling: The Art of Cooking with Live Fire


Weber's Charcoal Grilling: The Art of Cooking with Live FireWeber’s Charcoal Grilling: The Art of Cooking with Live Fire by Jamie Purviance
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a good book with a lot of useful info if you’re into charcoal grilling and BBQing. It also has a lot of recipes. I’ve tried a few and I found them tasty. Added a bunch to my list of recipes to try. If this were my first BBQ cookbook, I probably would have rated it a 4 or 5. It has beautiful photos of the end result and a dozen recipes by award-winning grillers and pitmasters. But I’ve been spoiled by Meathead’s cookbook. Meathead’s cookbook is incredibly comprehensive and he used to work in the newspaper industry so he’s a wiz at explaining things to the reader. Compared to that book, this one is OK. It’s also a lot less scientific – relying more on hand tests than thermometers.

But if you want to be charcoal-focused it’s not a bad start. It assumes a bit more in the directions so it you’re a complete noob you’ll probably fail a little more with this one than you would with Meathead’s book. If you know what you’re doing, you should be able to read between the lines to get good results. (I may amend this review after cooking some recipes if they end up disasters. So far, no recipe I’ve done from Meathead has been anything less than good and most have been great to amazing)

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