Summer is grilling season, no question about it. Grill It! is a cookbook dedicated to this art of cooking over live fire. If that sounds a bit primitive, it’s because it is basically the oldest cooking method out there. Fortunately,techniques and recipes have been refined thoroughly over the past few thousand years to being us where we are today.
The first thing that Grill It! covers is how to fire up the grill and it’s good that they cover this because the focus of the book is on charcoal grilling and not on gas (where the instructions tend to be far less complicated and along the lines of “turn on the grill to preheat”). It covers fuel selection, gives a thorough rundown of the various tools you’ll want to have on hand when you grill, and goes into great detail on how to manage your fire. All this said, every recipe here can be done either on a charcoal or a gas grill with no problems whatsoever, so not to worry if you use gas and don’t happen to need the instructions on maintaining charcoal fires at the moment.
From there, the books is broken down into sectons by type of dish. Many are fairly proteins (“Steak, Chops and Ribs” and “Things with Wings”), but one of the really nice things about this book is that it doesn’t just stop there. It includes chapters on grilled salads, sides and even desserts! The dessert section in particular is neat because not every book will tell you how to bake on the grill. The recipes are well written and broken down so that they are easy to follow. The instructions for each component of a dish, like the sauce or salsa that accompanies a main protein, are written out separately so there is no worry about mixing up ingredients in one list. All of the recipes have excellent full-color photos that accompany them, and there are plenty of both instructional photos and gratuitous food glamor shots, as well.
What do you think?