Advanced Cooking Methods


 
R

Ryan Casey

New member
Jamie-I own all of your Weber books (seriously) and I highly recommend them to all of my friends. They are all quite good, but one thing I notice is the lack of explanation of some of the more advanced methods that some of us on this site use often. Your new book has a good explanation of how to get your smoker going using the standard method, but I'm wondering why you don't go into more depth on some of the other methods for lighting your smoker such as the Minion method? Also, there have been some pretty major advances on what to put (or not put) in the water pan for optimum results (clay saucer, etc.) and I'm wondering if these are things you aren't allowed to cover for liability reasons or if there are other reasons they aren't covered.

Thanks!
 
Hi Ryan,

Seriously? You own all my Weber books? Wow, you are an outdoor cooking fanatic. As you know, this world of barbecue is rich with special techniques and advanced methods that are passed down through generations and shared in barbecue competitions and discussed in forums like this one. I'm all for these kinds of discussions among fanatics. It’s fun to debate the pros and cons of various techniques and to separate the great tips from the ideas that wander much closer to wild speculation. I go to some lengths to share the great tips in the books. The Minion Method, for example, is covered in "Weber's Charcoal." But in the books I try not to overwhelm readers with too many tricks and techniques. They tend to intimidate people and perpetuate an assumption that cooking this way is like a form of sorcery that only wizards can handle. I want as many people as possible to get outside and enjoy cooking with smoke, so I try to make it easy for them to get started. Through the years I have learned that once you get started, the obsession kicks in and you find other cooks with similar interests, and then you are on your way to improvising and debating and whatnot.

Thanks for the great question.

Jamie
 
Ok, Jamie. So what you're saying is that you need to produce a cross-index of all these topics, right?
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Seriously -- have you ever heard of the Fine Woodworking Magazine archives? It's an annual DVD that comes out with not only all the years of full content (including ads) of all their magazines, but it is fully indexed so you can search for any topic and have the relavant magazines shown all linked in to the article in question. Now for you, it would be DVD for fanatics of all your books with comparable indexing. Easy.
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Rich
 
Rich, I am not familiar with the Fine Woodworking Magazine archives, but that is a clever idea that I will explore. Thanks for letting me know.

Jamie
 
Thanks for the response. I checked my copy of "Weber's Charcoal Grilling" and sure enough there's not only an explanation of the method, but there's a nice bio of Jim Minion himself. (pgs. 86-87)

Also, as an FYI, there's a website called EatYourBooks.com that indexes cookbooks so you can search through your collection. Basically, you tell the site which books you own and it will provide you with an index of all the recipes and which book/page to find it on.
 
I heard about that idea for EatYourBooks.com several months ago. It seems fantastic for cookbook nuts like me. I have hundreds of them but can hardly ever seem to remember where that great recipe for X is. Thanks.
 
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