Customer Reviews

Barbecue! Bible Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades, Bastes, Butters, and Glazes

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great book for someone who likes to BBQ, and even someone who never has. It shares the good points of rubs,sauces, and marinades. The book is filled with all kinds of different recipes. The recipes also give you ideas on how to come up with your own recipes so you can wow your summer time guests!!! It goes through the many aspects of a good sauce or rub. It shows how to build your own and what kind of meat to use it on. Overall a great learning book that will pay for itself by the many compliments you will recieve from your guests and family!!! Enjoy

If you are have a metal charcoal or gas grill, and are looking to expand your horizons beyond basic grilling, this is a good book. If you own an offset firebox or ceramic kamado type smoker, but are still buying your rub and sauces, 'Smoke & Spice' is a better investment. If you already own 'Smoke & Spice' you have better versions of all of the traditional recipes already.

The author includes Liquid Smoke in many of his sauce recipes, something that would make most experienced pitmasters cringe. Why put artificial tasting smoke flavor in a sauce when the food is being smoked already? There are indeed some interesting recipes from other cultures, and there is a useful though somewhat out of date listing for shopping sources for some of the more exotic ingredients. The chart of the effects of various common ingredients is very good, and would be very useful to any newcomer I should think. It is also a nice reference to have even for experienced pitmasters when thinking over new recipes.

In general however, I found that the recipes make use of too many ingredients, and yet when prepared tasted no better than traditional recipes I've been using for years and that are considerably less complicated. The reason is simple. Good barbecue gets it's flavor from being slow cooked at low temperatures with just the right amount of smoke, not because the cook used a dozen ingredients in the rub and another two dozen in the sauce. Everything from the cover layout to the number of ingredients called for and the sheer number of recipes makes me feel the author went for quantity rather than balance or quality.

I have used some of the sauces verbatum and have tinkered with others. The results have been uniformly excellent. It's a good starting point to develelop your own grilling recipies and techniques. The strength of the book is that it gets you thinking about how to create sauces and creating your own sauces is part of what grilling/barbeque is all about. I expect to go back to this book again and again.

You're wrong if you think Barbecue! Bible : Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades, Bastes, Butters, and Glazes is just a comilation of recipes garnered from Raichlen's BBQ Bible. The recipes are not in his other books for the most part and are great additions to the fantasic dishes in the Bible!
Because of Raichlen's recipes for Tandoori Chicken and other Indian dishes, I am now cooking these on my grill. The meat is great! But wait until you add some authentic chutneys, sambals and raita to accompany your main dish. This book is filled with Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades, Bastes, Butters, and Glazes ( duh) that MAKE everything I've cooked even more authentic and delicious.
As far as I'm concerned no one writes a better cook book on BBQ, grilling, etc Raichlen is the god of fire!
People rave over my Indian food and traditional bbq - chicken, beef,etc. The secrets are in THIS book and the rest of the BBQ Bible / BBQ USA / How to Grill series.
If you bbq, you need Raichlen's cook books.
This book is full of delicious accompaniments. And has made everything I grill so much tastier to eat.
I'm happy with this purchase!
John Row

I previously purchased the BBQ Bible. This is a great companion book to that. I never made my own BBQ sauce before but now I make it as much as I can. Everyone goes crazy over the sauces in this book. It was a pretty funny scene when I was trying to make two of the sauces at the same time. One was the Jack Daniel's one that hot and the other was the smokey one. Well don't try making two at once because I getting shot from two sides with bubbling sauce and you have to stir it for the whole 20 minutes. I have made some of the butters and some of the rubs. The best rub I have used was the one for the BBQ ribs that is part of a feature page in the book. I can't say enough about this book. You will enjoy it.

This is one of the best books you should buy if you are into grilling and/or smoking foods. It is the one I use the most (I own about 6-8 books). If you want to upgrade the flavor of anything you cook, this is the book for you. I commonly keep some of the rubs in the pantry and usually have at least one of the barbeque sauces in the fridge. My pepper grinder has the six-pepper blend in it all the time. I have even tried a mustard and ketchup from the book with great success! You don't have to be a good chef to use this book (how hard is it to mix spices?).

A previous reviewer listed that many of the recipes contain a "hard to find" ingredient. I don't think that is an entirely fair assesment. The book author provides links in the back of the book to numerous mail order houses where you can buy all the ingredients you need. It is well worth it. I found that for a relatively modest investment in 4-6 spices (~[$$]) I have been able to make everything I have been interested in.

I really really really like this book.

This book is for everyone interested in great barbecue. The recipes included will work fantastic as they are, or can be the start of developing your own. I have tried several recipes, all have been a big hit. I can also recommend Steven Raichlen's book "How to Grill".

This is a wonderful book. Every recipe I've tried has come out with fantastic results. Some of them have more exotic ingredients, but others have pretty common ones (ex. lemon, garlic, butter). All of them have been absolutely delicious. With this book, I've cooked some steaks that people have said were better than those they'd eaten at the Seattle Ruth Chris Steakhouse or Daniels. (Of course the aged tendeloin steaks from Larry's and a nice gas BBQ help). I really like the recipe's for "The only mariade you'll ever need", the P.D.T. (Pretty Damn Tasty) Sourpuss Lemon Chicken Marinade), Sweet Sesame-Soy Marinade, and the ADOBO (Cuban Garlic Marinade).

My brother-in-law liked this ADOBO steak so much, he wanted the name of this book to go and buy it, so I'm going to give it to them as a housewarming present now that they can have a BBQ again.

I love this book. Raichlen presents his material in an easy to read, easy to understand format. I recommend this book to amateurs and veterans alike because of it's depth of knowledge and wide spectrum of recipes.

It is true that a lot of the sauce and rub recipes include ingredients that are not to common to everyone's pantry. However, these spices are readily available online or at a specialty market. I've learned a tremendous amount about flavors from working with these spices - That's what makes it fun.

Raichlen also discuses technique which is very important. If you read and follow his simple instruction, you really can produce some great BBQ.

I highly recommend this book.

This is a good cookbook with a wide range of grilling recipes from around the world.