Get Your Grill On

I love cookbooks. Especially grilling, barbecue and outdoor cookbooks. Of all the cookbooks I have in my collection, one remains a favorite, more so because of my daughter than any other reason. Over this past summer my daughter was in the hospital for nearly a month. Needless to say, my wife and I spent a lot of time at her bedside, only leaving for the occasional bathroom break and cafeteria meal run. On one of these occasions, a book vendor had set up a display of books and one of them caught my eye. The title? “Williams-Sonoma Complete Grilling Cookbook- The Best of Grilling and Outdoor Cooking”. This book is beautiful! What makes it stand out from another book I own is that it has magnificent pictures on almost every page, and with over 240 recipes to choose from, I seriously doubt any backyard chef would run out of ideas; for this reason alone, I had to have the book!

I purchased the book at over 75% off the cover price (normal price $50.85) and have since found it on Amazon.com in the new/used for about $15.00. I’ve tried several of the recipes in the cookbook, with many more to come, but to give you an example of one of my favorites, I’m choosing to share the “Smoked Hickory Rib Mop Sauce” (page 158).

I’ve been cooking ribs for years and still find little secrets here and there that just continue to make the ribs better and better. What makes this recipe special in my mind is the mop sauce recipe. I did deviate a little by using pork spareribs instead of baby back ribs. The reason for this is simple: spare ribs have more meat on them and the flavor just can’t be beat.Hickory Rib Mop Sauce

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 yellow onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (15oz) tomato sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Kosher salt/black pepper to taste

In a sauce pan, warm the oil over medium heat adding the garlic and onion and sauté until tender. Next, stir in the ketchup, vinegar, orange juice, brown sugar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper bringing them to a boil, reduce the heat to low and cook until thick, about 15 minutes. Mop the sauce onto the ribs during the last 20-30 minutes of the cooking process, leaving the remaining sauce to be served with the finished ribs.

This sauce is one of my favorite finishing sauces for ribs, and one I plan on using this year during the KCBS competitive BBQ contest season. Another option that works well is using this sauce on chicken and beef.

If you have an opportunity to see this book first hand and thumb though its pages, I predict you will have a new cookbook to add to your collection. It makes a great end table or coffee table book that will be looked at over and over again with many conversations and meals to come.

The pictures alone tell a culinary story and help you visualize what each recipe should look like, leaving you only wishing that cookbooks like this one could come with scratch-and-sniff pages! I highly recommend this book for any enthusiast that loves outdoor cooking and desires further ideas and inspiration.