GRILLING REINVENTED

A grilling guide from a man who has your interests—food that is delicious, nutritious and safe—at heart.

Rose dodges the brawny barbecue bozo—with the blast-furnace heat and the dance of the repeated meat-flip—on his way to a less dramatic, more luscious and decidedly less poisonous grilling experience. The book is best approached in two steps: a good read-through and then as an occasional reference on grill day. Rose takes great pains throughout the book to show the griller how to avoid contamination of food—from freezing to washing to high racks for rendering fat during the cooking process to (it can’t be repeated enough) washing your hands—and an equal amount of time is spent describing how to get the best flavor out of your meat, as well as the greatest nutritional value (hint: go slow). Ribs, steaks, pork chops, chicken and burgers are each handled in separate chapters, which all come fully complemented with color photographs that convey a visual sense of how things ought to look on the grill. The big picture is drawn step by step. Rose is a good coach, leaving nothing unspoken this first time through, but once he feels he has covered the bases, he also gets into greater nuance, explaining hot spots, which cuts to put where on the grill, the single-flip technique, when to sauce and what to do when you encounter raw spots when cutting the meats. From there, he moves on to sauces and wood types. By the end of the book, readers may feel like they’ve been brought into the inner circle of grilling wisdom. Throughout, Rose has a homey voice, but it is plainly evident that he’s done his homework: “Over time this low-pH sauce will build and begin eating your grill from the bottom up. Much, much worse will be the risk of producing cancer-causing agents in the bottom of your grill.” And you thought you were just eating a pork chop.

Good eats from a grilling expert.