Rating: 
Summary: A remarkably ecumenical Bible
Review: See, there's barbecue, and then there's barbecue: A method of cooking, versus an entire *culture* -- the boys on TV tending their flatbed-mounted smokers at the 54th Annual World Championship BBQ Cook-Off in Chattanooga, or whatever. This book isn't about the latter. It's "only" about the former: the act of cooking meat (and other things) over fire.I say "only" because this book is extremely comprehensive. While I tend to be skeptical of anything calling itself a "bible" that isn't actually, you know, The Bible, it's hard to image there's much of anything left out of this. Not only does the author deal with the perennial questions -- charcoal versus gas, types of wood smoke, varieties of sauces, and so on -- he also addresses related topics like drinks, salads, and desserts. Where this book is most impressive, however, is in the amazing variety of recipes. Within pages, he takes us from Nigeria to South-East Asia, the Mideast to South America, to Japan (plus, of course, Kansas City, the Carolinas, and Texas), and from beef through pork and fowl to seafood and vegetarian options, and more. If you can slap it on a grill, Steven Raichlen can probably tell you how to cook it. The good ol' boys at the cook-off might be shocked and appalled to find things like grilled salad niçoise or Japanese dengaku ("tofu on stilts") calling themselves "barbecue," but if you can get over the cultural difficulties, you'll find enough here to keep you busy over the coals for many a long summer.
Rating: 
Summary: Barbecue around the world
Review: I received this book as a Christmas gift from my husband, and it is one of my favorite cookbooks! It has everything from appetizers, drinks, salads, main dishes and even desserts! My absolute favorite dish is the Grilled Pork with Fiery Salsa. It takes a bit of work, but the results are worth it! If you don't like your salsa so fiery-use a chile such as jalapeno instead of the habarenos as the recipe suggests-we have tried it both ways, and it turns out great everytime! (We are fire eaters though). The North Carolina Vinegar Sauce is just as good as I have had in the Carolinas. The variety of barbecue sauce recipes is an appealing part of this book as well. Many recipes are preceded by little vignettes about their origin-it is a combination travel book as well as a cookbook. With this book your taste buds can go from Jakarta to Greece and on to Morocco in one week if you wish. I highly recommend this to anyone who loves to cook, eat or just read about the different foods of the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Book has the wrong title
Review: This book is about open fire cooking, not traditional barbecue. If you have a charcoal or gas grill the author gives good advice on workarounds that allow you to do more than searing meat. This is like giving someone advice on how to pound nails with a blacksmiths hand sledge; it can be done, but why not just get the right tool for the job? He pointedly fails to point out that to do the job properly you need a proper smoker. He mostly misses on his traditional barbecue recipes and you can do better elsewhere. Most of the recipes are not only complex, they are of dubious value. The book is printed on cheap paper, but is well organized. It's clear the author knows his barbecue, but it's equally clear his desire to appeal to a broad audience was the driving factor. Buy this book if you want to learn to do a semblence of barbecuing on a metal grill. If, on the other hand, you are looking for information on traditional 'low & slow' barbecue, avoid this book and get 'Smoke & Spice' or this authors 'Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades' which has all the tradition BBQ recipes in it, along with some decent rubs and sauces.
Rating:
Summary: In response
Review: I can't believe some of the criticism this book has provoked. Too many ingredients per recipe? Has 'no direction'? Skips the basics? Bah! It's best to keep in mind what Raichlen is aiming for: an accurate description of different grilling techniques the world over. He draws his recipes from virtually every reach of the earth, including Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East -- obscure recipes that otherwise may not have been available without this wonderful, all-inclusive compendium. I find it hard to believe that 'all the recipes taste the same', when a Guadeloupean Crayfish in a Curry Beure Blanche is about as similar to an Iranian Saffron and Lemon Chicken as, well, fish is to fowl. (Both, by the way, are delicious...) As far as covering the basics, he goes into concise and complete detail on all manner of technique -- everything from how to cook your basic hamburger, to how to properly segment a chicken, to how to arrange the coals in your grill. At the beginning of every major chapter, he describes how different foods should be cooked. If you look at each individual recipe that includes chicken breast, it will not include a description on how to cook chicken breast: it was covered earlier! Read the book! In short, this book comprises an eclectic range of tasty grill recipes, all explained in detail. There is also a great deal of food history included, as well as some very helpful glossaries. This is an essential book for any griller, whether you want to learn how to get your steaks just right, or want to branch out into less familiar territory.
Rating:
Summary: Grilling repetoire
Review: If a cookbook can squeeze more than one recipe into my repetoire, it gets an automatic 5 stars. This book passes muster. I think this is probably the only Raichlen work worth studying. Although the How to Grill book I would get instead for those who don't know how to tie their shoes culinarily. He gets these recipes from people all over the world and many of them are outstanding. He must be very personable to coax them out of all those talents. I don't think he is a particularly great cook but he does know enough about grilling. I think this will please gourmands who want to be able to extend their abilities to the summer get-together concept, but it will be a bit over the head of your average beergutted grill jockey. Most of my nascent grilling repetoire so far consists of variations on what I found within.
Rating:
Summary: How can I put this?
Review: Okay, it's not like there's any giant downside to owning this book, other than perhaps the money spent, but my question is - does anyone really need like 800 gazillion pages to learn how to cook a hunk of meat over a fire? I know this book's getting good reviews on here, but I'd be willing to bet that most of the reviewers haven't tried more than three of the hundreds of elaborate, time-consuming recipes in here. Everytime I crack open this book, it's like, "Hmmm....that looks pretty good, too bad it has 25 different ingredients, sounds complicated...that one's too much trouble, too...that's interesting, too bad I don't have a giant steel drum to turn into the smoker I'd need for this one...Gee, I've never heard of these spices, and I'll never get around to mail-ordering them...if I ever come across an entire, dressed goat in the supermarket, I'll have to come back to this one...", etc. Having lived in Argentina for two years (serious barbecue country), and having put on tons of my own barbies since and attended loads of others, I guess I have a different perspective on the whole experience. In my mind, you don't really get points for how many hours you put in preparing your marinades, or how many different types of crushed spices you sprinkle on to your ribeye, or from how far away your recipe comes from, or how many recipes you've memorized or whatever. These are all ancillary considerations. Let's be honest: what matters most about doing a barbecue/grill is basically the admiration and glory a man receives by giving his guests a killer meal cooked over the more challenging heat source of open flame. The thrill of, and skill required for, cooking over that open fire is part of attaining this glory, but it's still about the performance's end result. It's like a rooster doing his mating dance, or a canary singing his song (I can think of a few other analogies, but I think they'd probably get edited). Anyway, barbecue is a performance by a male in which he shows off his superior talent. This is why no guy ever barbecues only for himself, and why no guy ever wants help from his wife while he's doing his barbecue (less glory). And this is why when you do a barbecue, you have to make sure the end result is better than any of the guys you invited could likely have done, and make sure all the girls are really impressed by your prowess with nature's primal elements. If you wind up giving your guests something average, or dud-like - well, that's some serious face-losing. You can laugh it off, but you'll still look weak. It's like stealing the ball, running down the court all by yourself, doing your lay up and missing. Anyway, if I am right about this, you don't want to get this geek-festival book with 8000 recipes in it. You need a good understanding of basic barbecue/grilling techniques, and maybe at the most three super killer recipes (and believe me, there are a lot of fantastic barbecuers out there that just have one). It's like pitching - if you have two incredible pitches, you're a god, you're Greg Maddux or Nolan Ryan or Mariano Rivera. If you have 12 okay ones, you're driving a milk truck somewhere. Unfortunately, trying to find three totally killer grill recipes in this book is like trying to find three pro-life delegates at the Democratic Party's National Convention - who knows if there even are any, and even if they are, who has the time to try to figure it which ones they are? (And even if you did find them, do you have the time necessary to prepare an elaborate recipe, when a faster one may be just as good or better?) I think Mr. Raichlen's book would be far more valuable if it was pared down to maybe 70-80 discriminating pages of top quality advice, recipes, etc., rather than a dumptruck load of every last aspect of barbecue lore collected after a tour of the entire planet (which is literally what this is). Quality control, rather than just overwhelming quantity, would have been far more helpful. My experience with barbecues is that often the finest are the simplest: Start with the best meat you can get (you can find out about the various cuts and their characteristics in any book about meat - for beef, I prefer rib steaks for all the marbling; the Certified Angus Beef brand you can get at Albertson's is usually good), salt them, don't burn them, and the bottom line is you're 80% of the way there. When you come up with a few of your own little twists, and a great sauce (the Argentine chimichurri is my fave - olive oil, oregano, garlic, some vinegar and a bit of parsley), you'll almost certainly have something as good or better than most of the over-compensating extravaganzas in this book. I wish I knew of a more practical book on grilling/barbecue, but the truth is I don't really know of one that would set the would-be barbecue superstar on his way (not that it's that hard to get going). But, if someone is really serious, any text that takes time to explain the building blocks of how various foods work together, and what effects various cooking techniques have (in other words, culinary theory), will only help you nail down your one, two, or three superb open flame recipes (the magazine "Cook's Illustrated" is a pretty good start for this kind of thing). Get this book if you want, but don't think you need it (or that you'll end up actually using its recipes). You'll do far better experimenting on your own, chatting with your butcher or barbecuing buddies, and getting an understanding of why great dishes work so you can then come up with your own. I hope this has been a help to someone. Good luck.
Rating:
Summary: A great guide to Grilling but no bible
Review: This is a great though misnammed cookbook. Its a matter of semantics as to what you consider "Barbeque". The author certianly explodes the concept and pushes the envelope. "Worldwide Grilling Receipies and Accompanyments" would be a more accurate title. That detail out of the way this is a great receipie book!. Hundreds of dishes from all over the world. I am rather fond of Asian food (southeast asian in particular) and there is no shortage of grills from that part of the world. Most of the other really juicey looking dishes come from South America or the Carribein. The dishes vary from simple to complex but none of them too terribally complicated. The list of ingredients can look impressive and intimidating but after you have done it a few times its really not that bad. If you feel intimidated then it means you are ready to learn. They do call for ingredients such as fish sauce and Tamarid paste that most Americans don't have stocked in their pantry. Unless you live in a big city with gormet or ethnic shops you may have some problems finding these things. But he does give sources for ingredients in the back. Also when he lists the receipies he does it in a form that is adapted to American tastes and ingredients your likely to find. He does mention the "authentic" ingredients as well just in case you feel daring. The book contains a basic discussion on gas vs charcol, grilling techniques, times and temperatures. He makes it clear that grilling is not an exact science so at times he doesn't get all that specific. From a Barbeque "bible" I would have expected a bit more explicit instruction and coverage of the actual equipment and mechanics of cooking but he covers it well enough for success. I guess thats what his other book (complete with color illustrations of technique) is for. This book is part travelog as well as receipe book. Personally I like this but some people consider it a waste of space. He goes into his personal experience with discovering some of the dishes as well as commentary about cooking style and flavor in different parts of the world (including the USA). The book is organized roughly by type of dish. Starters (think drinks and chicken wings), beef, pork, lamb, ground meat, chicken, fish and sauces. Within those catagories he tries to get something from every part of the world. As a result many of the receipies are not directly grilled, they simply relate to grilled food (kind of like cole slaw and BBQ). There worth having regardless. Conclusion- All and all I think this is a GREAT cookbook. If your a newbie to cooking AND grilling then your probably best starting off with something a little more conventional. But if your a moderatley experienced cook you should be able to hand this with no problem. Somewhat misleading title but if you take it for what it is you will not be disappointed. PS - If you like this style of book and the international flair of these dishes you might check out "Terrific Pacific" by Anya Von Bremzen. You'll find similar ingredients and flavors as well as commentary.
Rating:
Summary: wow
Review: amazing depth. if you want a barbecue guide, this is the one!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for what it is--but NOT your first grilling book
Review: This book was given the wrong title. The book is outstanding as a compendium of grilling techniques from around the world. Where else will you find Bulgarian burgers, Bosnian burgers, shrimp from Bali, etc.? You really do get the feeling that Raichlen is absolutely mad about grilling and that he has travelled the world collecting these recipes. (His devotion is apparent in the story he tells of driving 400 miles one evening to get grilled snails). And the book does give some of the basics, but it is NOT the book you would want if you just got a grill and want to know what to do with it. Even if you're an experienced cook, this is a whole new way of approaching cooking, so you'd want something basic. I say the book is misnamed becasue "The Barbecue Bible" makes it sound like it's going to have everything--and it doesn't have enough of the beginner's stuff to make you happy. AND if you just flipped through the table of contents you'd still have the wrong impression, because the titles just indicate that there's a chapter on beef, one on chicken, one on fish, etc. But again, if you already know how to do basic veggies, fish, ribs, burgers, etc., this is a great cookbook.
Rating:
Summary: Must Have Grilling Reference!!
Review: WoW! First of all I have been a grilling afficianado for 20 years.Probably put just about everything I could think of over fire.And figured I knew it all.WRONG!! The author has compiled a grilling book that is superb both to the novice and seasoned veteran.I have traveled to New Orleans and Southwest Louisana,Jamaica,and France in regards to food that is touched by fire LITERALLY! This is a gem for anyone who wants to taste international cuisine at its best.No photos,but who needs them!
It also is a history lesson pertaining to certain techniques.Especially Argentinian beef methods.My mouth watered as I read the 500 recipes and sauces,and I will try to make every dish mentioned.I rate this at a perfect 10+!! I reside in rural VA and have been to numerous PIG ROASTS and have had some of my own.My friends also want to purchase this excellent reference to touch up their methods.Plain enough,get this book!!
The author has outdone himself and he deserves the credit for his hardwork to compile all these interesting recipes! Also get the "HOW TO GRILL" Book,full of mouthwatering photos and techniques. A perfect 10+ AAAA+++
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