Smoking Meat Made Easy: Recipes and Techniques to Master Barbecue
Easy recipes for smoking meat that anyone can make at home—no experience required
Whether you’re new to the practice or just want to brush up on the basics, Smoking Meat Made Easy is your ultimate guide to backyard smoking. Master the most flavorful techniques, with dozens of options that are easy to follow, and work with any type of smoker. From beef and pork to poultry and fish, these recipes are sure to please any palate, and clear instructions will ensure success as you read up on the art and science of smoking.
Smoking Meat Made Easy includes:
- Smoking meat 101—Learn everything from choosing the right wood to preparing your smoker, controlling the temperature, and even smoking on a regular BBQ grill.
- Simply smoked—These recipes are designed to require nothing but your favorite meat, a simple smoker setup, and several hours of smoke time.
- Build your skills—The recipes in each chapter get progressively more challenging, so you can decide which level of smoking you’re ready to take on.
It’s simpler than ever to get perfectly smoked meat at home, with Smoking Meat Made Easy.
Reviews (57)
SMOKING SALMON SHRIMP SCALLOPS
OMG....Amazing book with great detail, pictures of the finished item and tips on each of the recipes. I got my Pit Boss pellet grill and already started the Orange Citrus Salmon- Looking forward to tomorrow's dinner. I bought one of these books for my sister who has a Camp Chef pellet grill and will buy another copy now for my boyfriend who has a Traeger pellet grill. All of us like to mix it up and this book provides lots of variety for each category. You won't be disappointed with this book!!!
Great
I've always enjoyed smoked meats, but I'm new to the world of making it myself! I got this book hoping it would help me understand the ins and outs, and it's certainly has checked that box! Great information for a beginner and the recipes look amazing! Easy to follow instructions and great photography throughout! Trying to decide where to start... I love a good tri-tip, so I'm probably going to start with the Santa Maria-style recipe! Can't wait!
Where do I start?
I recently bought an electric smoker as I always liked smoked foods prepared by friends. I have used this recipe book on a prime rib roast and a chicken. Both were fabulous! I can now be pretty confident that future ventures will not disappoint. Good detailed instructions and quantities of ingredients. I will continue to use this on many different types of meat and fish.
EXCELLENT advice & recipes
The author has really good recipes that are easy to prepare and which yield great results. Strongly recommend. Note: several 'experts' attack the author for recommending soaking the wood. I've found that using wood chunks in an electric smoker (Cookshack) that soaking for several hours helps eliminate the bitterness of over-smoking. The smoke does not initiially billow as with dry chunks. We now always pre-soak our wood.
Not complicated not 50 ingredients
Patches for a gift for my husband he is still a new smoker yeah save Pitmaster electric and so far he has just done the same couple things over and over that now he is experimenting and it has been awesome
Everything you need to know about smoking meat.
Used this book the first day I recieved it. Pork loin recipe came out amazing. Looking forward to tackling ribs this weekend!!! I recommend this book to both new and seasoned smokers.
Deliciously Fabulous!
My order arrived yesterday and I can’t wait to try out these delicious recipes! The book is packed with flavor, easy-to-follow and has incredibly useful information. It is excellent quality with FAQs, guidance and wonderful taste combinations. A fabulous purchase!
Easy, delicious recipes!
The first recipe we tried was the Santa Maria-Style Tri-Tip and it did not disappoint! It was easy and full of flavor! Love the FAQs and the fact that no special equipment is required. Excited to try many more recipes from this book!
The Most Honest & Detailed Review You'll Read on this Book
If you're new to smoking meat, this book can serve as a good primer. Though at times, the author's lack of knowledge on basics reveal that the book isn't as thorough as it could be. I've owned a variety of grills and smokers throughout my life. Ever since I was a boy, watching my father grill and smoke our food, I've always been fascinated with outdoor cooking. But since you can never really know too much about BBQ, I always look to learn more from new books such as this one. Let me explain what I found to be the good, and the not-so-good about this book. THE GOOD: If you're fairly new to meat smoking, Amanda can take you through the basics well. She offers the reader a breakdown of grill types, wood choices, average smoke times, and more. I think what would be especially helpful to newcomers is the overview on what types of wood is best suited for what type of food (poultry vs beef, etc). I also like that she included a chart that not only lists average cook times, but also mentions the suggested rest time. Rest times can prove just as important as how you actually cook the meat (especially beef brisket). The variety of recipes provided is also a big plus to this book. To be honest, at first I smirked at some of the recipes included. Parmesan couscous-stuffed smoked quail? Mediterranean lamb burgers? Smoked cherry tomatoes with basil and goat cheese? I've never been to a cookout with any of that stuff. But then, two things dawned on me. 1. This is a book about smoking meat, not traditional backyard BBQs. 2. Most books on grilling and smoking basically recycle the same recipes, and only offer slight twists on how to cook those things. So it's not a bad thing for old-school grill guys like myself to venture out of their normal territory, and try new things. The layout of the book itself is good. I'm sure no one else will mention this, but I like that the pages that separate the categories of recipes (pork, beef & lamb, poultry, etc) are on pages with a loud orange background. Which means you can flip through the pages and instantly stop at a particular recipe category without eyeballing the page numbers. Ingredients are listed to the side, the steps are condensed in a nice column size on the page, so it's very easy to skim and scan through a recipe at a glance. I found the layout useful for when preparing a couple of meals using her recipes. Last big plus to getting this book: the photos are terrific. I would have liked to see more food pictures, not just general grilling/smoking themed pics. But all of the photos are great. There's a reason for that: Darren Muir. Darren's not just a pro photographer that happens to shoot food pics. Dude's a chef. He spent years in culinary school, and then nearly two decades cooking professionally. Just like color commentators for sports that actually played the sport professionally, I think Darren's experience in the kitchen really lends to his food photography work. THE NOT SO GOOD: Amanda is clearly passionate about cooking. That said, I don't think she's very knowledgeable nor experienced about smoking and grilling. And there are points in the book where this is noticeable. That doesn't change the fact that the book is still a nice primer on smoking. Though it does make me wonder why she picked smoked meats to make her introduction as a cookbook author. The First Red Flag Shows Up on Page 11..... In Chapter 1, Amanda talks about soaking wood chips in water. There are other references in the book to soaking both wood chips, and wood chunks, in water. The problem is that anyone with grilling and smoking experience should already know that you NEVER soak wood. Granted, some people did it decades ago, and still do it today. But then, some people used to shake a freshly-taken Polaroid with their hand, thinking that it somehow made it "develop" faster. Soaking wood chips and chunks is both ineffective, and actually bad for grilling and smoking. You can soak wood chips for a day straight, the water will barely penetrate them. This isn't opinion, it's been tested. Both by weighing chips/chunks before and after soaking. And even using food coloring in water, to determine just how far into wood the dye spreads. To quote Meathead Goldwyn: "Why do you think they build boats out of wood?" Wet wood messes with your temp control. It also creates steam, not smoke, until the water evaporates. All you're doing is adding steam to your grill or smoker, and delaying the thin blue smoke that you want. Let's play devil's advocate. Some people still soak wood for smoking because they grew up watching someone else do it. The finished product still tastes good, right? But if you're actually writing a book in 2020 on smoking meat, you should know that the soaking myth was openly debunked about a decade ago. I tried to give Amanda the benefit of the doubt on this one, until I realized something. She knows who Meathead is, or at least perused his website. And yet wasn't aware that he was one of the main advocates for never soaking wood. Which brings me to one other drawback of the book.... The Book is Mostly a Collection of Smoking Tips Found Online. Towards the end of the book, I stumbled upon a "references" section. Which struck me as odd. I can't recall any other cookbook I own having a reference section. That's because most cooks are writing based on their personal experiences. They use methods that they learned from other people. They figured things out from trial and error. Granted, some cookbook authors grab a popular recipe from someone else, tweak an ingredient or two, make tiny changes to measurements. Just their cookbook has an "original" recipe, and obviously they don't credit the source (if it's indeed from another cookbook). But I think it matters that the author is still familiar with a particular cuisine, or style of cooking, if they're to write about it. Kudos to Amanda for actually crediting where she got info from the book. But the references section is a three-page list of blogs, Youtube videos, even a Wikipedia article. It's one thing to already know what the Maillard reaction is, but look up an article or book that breaks down the exact science involved. So you can include that in a book. But the two dozen plus web links referenced makes it seem as though Amanda just Googled a bunch of stuff related to smoking meats, and then made notes based on what she saw or read. One of the very first references is a blog post titled "Do You Need to Smoke Wood Chips?" If you go to that post (by a grill manufacturer), it leads off in all caps "YOU DO NOT NEED TO SOAK WOOD CHIPS." I'm just confused as to why should would recommend soaking wood in chapter one, when an exact web page online she lists as a reference says it's not necessary. Long story short, knowing the author simply plucked info from Youtube and blogs is a bit of a let down. I think she picked a cuisine to write about that she genuinely enjoys, she just isn't especially knowledgeable about it in general. But even if that's the case, the recipes are still good (save for the "Cajun" chicken rub which has an insignificant amount of cayenne). Knowing how much of the book's material was sourced, it's sort of like this is a cooking eBook, just with a better presentation than most. Some aspects of my review may seem a little harsh. But then, most people reviewing this book (so far) received a free copy of it. Lots of brand-new accounts with no review history. Could be that most of them aren't that familiar with smoking meats, they just wanted a free cookbook. And maybe some of them won't ever get around to actually reading it from cover to cover, or preparing any of the meals. Which is too bad, because there are some good recipes in it. This being Amanda's first book, I think it deserved a legit review (be it good or bad). Not just three sentences about how the recipes looked interesting. Because I really wanted this book, read it cover to cover several times, and will continue to use the recipes. SHOULD YOU BUY THIS BOOK? I'd say it's worth buying, if you're interested in smoking meats. Yes, I did question the author's knowledge and experience. And a bit of what's in the book does seem cobbled from different sources online. But those things don't change the fact that it's actually a decent primer on meat smoking. The basics to smoking meat are covered. The recipes are good, and organized well. The book is visually a real treat. I think it would make a practical addition to anyone's cookbook collection. And for only $14, it's super giftable to anyone who enjoys smoking and grilling. Someone with extensive smoking experience may not pick up much from the first chapter, but could definitely get inspired from the recipes themselves. I'd say add it to your shopping cart, order it for yourself, or as a gift for someone for the holidays.
A wonderful book!
I absolutely love this book. It's good for beginners, just starting to try smoking meat, and for old-timers like me, who have been smoking meat for over 30 years. There is much to like here. Chapter One is a wonderful introduction to BBQ woods, building a successful fire, controlling the temperature in the meat chamber, and a thorough explanation of available smokers. Mesquite wood is my personal favorite, after multiple tests of every sort of wood used for smoking meat, but I have plenty of friends who swear by their cherry wood or pecan fires. Of the 13 smokers I own, my two favorites are a Weber vertical smoker, and a larger one with an offset firebox. Instructions here will help readers figure out how to run all sorts of smokers. There are helpful charts of different cuts of meats, smoking times, temperatures, recommended woods, resting times. I'm hoping readers will keep journals as they try different techniques and recipes presented in this book. I'm working my way through many of the wonderful recipes. So far, I'm having great success with the Tarragon Dijon Sauce on Page 152. It's a perfect sauce to serve with a hot-smoked side of salmon. Congratulations to Amanda Mason for a comprehensive guide to smoking meat and fish. She's not kidding when she writes, "No experience required". Indeed. I'm pleased to rate this book 5 stars! I'm attaching a photo of me, a die-hard smoker, running my Weber on brisket in 5-degree weather!
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