Barbecue Books Item ID: #130Sublime Smoke: Bold New Flavors Inspired by the Old Art of BarbecueProduct Information:
Item DescriptionBuilding on the traditional basics laid out in their best-selling Smoke & Spice, the Jamisons delve into a lighter approach to smoking, with an emphasis on leaner meats along with chicken, fish, and vegetables. The result is a delicious food that incorporates an imaginative variety of ingredients. Related posts:
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This is a great reference book. It was shipped very fast. I was extremely pleased with my purchase and the transaction.
I love my smoker, and a few years after buying it we’re still using it regularly. Soon after buying the hardware, I picked up a copy of the Jamison’s Smoke & Spice, and it quickly became my primary resource. Absolutely awesome. So I hurried out to buy Sublime Smoke, too, and… not so much.
This cookbook is good, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not awesome.
If you have a smoker, the original Smoke & Spice is a must because it has all the Expected Things: how to smoke a brisket, trout with lemon, pork or beef ribs (I have a batch of pork ribs doing their overnight dry rub right now), with lots of variations. Those are the recipes you’ll want to get comfortable with, and I never had the Jamisons steer me wrong. (On any of their cookbooks, in fact; their breakfast cookbook was among my first Amazon reviews, and I still adore that cookbook.)
Sublime Smoke is more about cooking with smoked foods than it is about smoking, per se. Each of these 200+ recipes expects that you’ll smoke something, but it might or might not be the star of the show. And it might not be recognizable as “barbecue.” That’s fine — but it probably isn’t the way that a new smoker owner wants to explore what she can do with it.
That’s not to say I don’t like the recipes, because I do. Their Thai sirloin salad was just perfect for a hot summer day when I wanted something both healthy and hearty. And I’ll probably get around to making their trout hash one of these days. (The salmon hash from their breakfast book is so wonderful that I’d make any hash they suggest.) The cookbook is best when it does variations on the old standbys, like a three-pepper steak in zinfandel sauce or a Puerto Rican bitter orange pork butt.
But I find that I flip through this cookbook, say, “Yum, that sounds good”–and then I cook something else entirely. I think it’s because smoking something as an ingredient is more complexity than I want to take on, or it just takes too long. “Walnut pear salad with smoked garlic vinaigrette” sounds good, doesn’t it? But I’m not going to fire up the smoker just for a head of garlic. (Maybe I’ll remember to fling in a head when I smoke those pork ribs… but that’s more planning than I can handle.) A tarragon tomato soup smokes the tomatoes, which sounds delicious… but am I really going to make this? Not today.
I like this cookbook. In the three-or-so years I’ve had it, though, I’ve read it far more than I have cooked from it. If you’re new to smoking, by all means pick this up–but don’t let it be your initial introduction.
The authors of this book really know what they are talking about. The recipes are delicious, and the cooking times and temperatures are right on target.
Nothing to write home about. The author really tries to err on the side of “fresh” and “light” and “healthy”. The result is sort of like reading an extended edition of an issue of Bon Appetit.
Don’t waste your money. Their first book. Smoke & Spice, was one of the best I own. The success must have gone to their heads. It’s a shame that they will surely make a lot of money for this poor effort only because of the first books quality.