The Ultimate Book of Barbecue | Parragon Books Review

Disclaimer: I received a free product for my post! These views are my own and were not 
at all influenced by the party who gave me this opportunity..

In our house, we love books. One type of book I grew up loving was cookbooks. I am extremely excited for my newest cookbook from Parragon Books–The Ultimate Book of Barbecue!

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This book retails at $14.99 and is hard cover with a cover protector on it. You can also purchase this as an eBook. Take a peek inside below!

What I Love

Honestly, my mouth was watering as soon as I saw the cover. The colors are bold, vibrant, and delicious and the food photography is amazing. All throughout the pages you find more and more tasty recipes with equally tasty pictures to feast your eyes upon. This is definitely a top quality to have in a cookbook.

As I started paging through, I noticed that there were a lot of tips. I mean, a LOT of tips. As someone who loves to grill-out, but is still rather clueless about the whole process, I found this extremely helpful. You can learn the difference between charcoal, wood, and gas grills, how to best utilize each, what some different attachments are (like smokers), different cooking techniques, proper meat temperatures, hosting tips, and much more. They even give little tips on many of the recipes.

Looking through the book more, I found that there are a lot more recipes than simply meat, which is usually the first thing that pops into your head when you think of grilling. They have some delicious rub recipes, marinades and glazes, sides and sauces, poultry, beef, pork and lamb, seafood…they even have dessert and drink recipes (some of which you grill!)

We have already tried a few recipes from The Ultimate Book of Barbecue: Smoked Beef Short Ribs, Lamb Kabobs, and Fruit Skewers.

The Smoked Beef Short Ribs we had a technical issue with the grill so they turned out more like beef jerky shortly into grilling, but we still tasted the burnt remains and, oh man, they were so tasty even like that. We will be trying this recipe again very soon. It had a smoky, salty flavor.

For my husband’s birthday dessert we tried the Fruit Skewers which you actually prepare on the grill. These were a favorite with everyone, even the kids. We were looking to fill the daily fruit serving slot, but these satisfied our sweet tooth as well. All you saw and heard was eye rolling and and the hum of “mmm” as everyone was eating them. They were so simple to make too!

Yesterday we decided to try the Lamb Kabobs. The picture made this look so yummy that, even though I can rarely eat lamb, I really wanted to try it. This was our first time cooking lamb and I think it went pretty well. We did have to use the wooden skewers as opposed to the metal skewers recommended in the recipe since we do not have metal ones. The finished dish was tasty and my boys enjoyed it. I could only eat a few bites (it’s not as easy to get over the thought of eating lamb as I thought) but what I did eat was really good. I love the combinations of sweet, savory, sour, and spicy.

Most recipes are portioned for 4 servings, which is nice because grilled foods do not always make the best leftovers. We did find that we could not each eat the full serving, but I love that you can make smaller amounts and adjust if you want to cook more.

What I’m Not Huge On

While the recipes, for the most part, were very easy to follow, I would really love to see how to cook with different grill types. Many only gave gas grill cooking instructions and we have a gas-started charcoal grill at home. While cooking times are pretty similar, they can vary depending on what you are cooking and how it is to be cooked, so I would have loved to see little tips for how to cook each recipe on various versions.

Another thing I would have loved to see is for it to show how to cut/prepare the various types of meat. I have only worked with basic meats that are essentially pre-prepared for me, so trying to cut up a lamb shoulder was very confusing and I am unsure if I did it correctly. There was a lot more bone and fat than I expected, so the final dish may have tasted better and the meat been tenderer than it was if it was supposed to be trimmed and prepared another way. Of course, I could have easily looked this up online, but I would have liked to see it in the book as well.

Overall, this book is simply amazing. I am very excited to work through all the recipes this spring and summer and maybe even invite a few friends over. The recipes are pretty easy to follow and the ones we have tasted have been incredible.

You can purchase this book on Amazon.com (affiliate link.)

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-What type of grill do you use the most? What type of food is your favorite to grill?