Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto [A Cookbook]

Franklin Barbecue by Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. If you want a barbecue cookbook that has lots of unique, creative recipes, this is not your book. This book is for people who enjoy smoking and eating meat and who enjoy reading about the experiences of someone who learned how to smoke meat and soon opened an extremely popular restaurant. There are four barbecue recipes, and they don’t start until page 147. The recipes are for brisket, pork spare ribs, beef (plate) short ribs, and turkey breast. At page 174, he’s on to other topics. There are also recipes for four sauces and three sides. He winds up with recommendations for beer to drink with your barbecue. Chapter One is Aaron’s life story – how he learned how to build and adapt things, including barbecue smokers, how he bought used equipment and started his restaurant on a shoestring budget. And he reviews some of the great BBQ restaurants in Central Texas. Chapter Two gives a brief description of several types of smokers – the original pits, the offset smokers, and the upright drum smoker. He does not mention the Weber Smokey Mountain or any similar vertical types that have a fire chamber in the bottom, a water pan above that, and food grates above that. I suppose I could consider these to be variations of the upright drum smoker. All of Aaron’s smokers are offset. He started on a very cheap, flimsy New Braunfels Hondo. After that all of his smokers were offsets homemade from 500 gallon or 1000 gallon propane tanks. He briefly mentions the Big Green Egg and similar kamado style cookers. Not surprisingly, his cookers have names – Number One, Number Two, Muchacho, Rusty Shackleford, MC5, Nikki Six, and Bethesda. Then he tells quite a bit about how to build your own offset smoker – how to procure a used 1000 gallon propane tank, add doors, grates, legs, chimney, and fire chamber, including the necessary welding and cutting equipment. Not many readers of this book are going to take this on, I’ll bet. The most useful information here is his recommendation for a thermometer – the Tel-Tru Barbecue Thermometer BQ300. (p 62) Chapter Three is Wood. All of Aaron’s smokers are made to burn wood, not charcoal. He likes all kinds of hardwoods but mostly uses post oak, because he likes it and it is plentiful around Austin. He started out shopping for wood in Craig’s List, and found that a lot of sellers were dishonest. They would stack wood in such a way to make to look like a cord when it was much less. Then he found a seller who was honest and dependable and stayed with him. There is a glut of oak available in central Texas because the drought is causing trees to die. It is best to cut down a live tree, cut and slit it into smaller pieces, and let it dry for 6-12 months, until it is about 20% water. But sometimes you go with trees that died from drought. Mesquite is pretty strong. Hickory is strong, but not as strong as mesquite. Fruit tree wood is milder. Wood should be dried for a few months, or it will be too green, it will have too much water in it, and won’t burn well. Green wood is heavier and you can feel that it is heavier. Chapter Four is Fire + Smoke – how to start the fire and keep it going with good smoke. Aaron lights a few charcoal briquettes in a chimney starter, puts them in the fire chamber, and puts some wood on top of them, and they light. He only uses wood for cooking. You don’t get smoke from charcoal, gas, or electricity. You need wood for smoke. Most other books say to use charcoal plus a few chunks of wood to get the smoke. I do that with my Weber Smokey Mountain and I think it works fine. Smoke contains solids, liquids, and gases. The gases are invisible, but they do the most to penetrate into the meat and give it flavor. Chapter Five is Meat. Aaron always gets Angus, grade prime, which is ethically raised, with no growth hormones or antibiotics, not frozen and never been frozen. Freezing breaks down fibers and makes the meat floppy and mushy. The lesser grades, in order, are choice and select, and they have less marbling fat. Aaron keeps his briskets 14 to 21 days after the packing date before he cooks them. Dry aging means hanging it or putting it on a rack to dry. Wet aging is done in a vacuum-sealed package. You don’t want dry aged for barbecue. Aaron doesn’t want a lot of rock-hard fat on the outside of the brisket – it is a sign of growth hormones and antibiotics. Yellowish, not white, fat indicates grass-fed beef. There are three cuts of beef ribs: chuck, rib, and plate. Ribs 1-5 are chuck, 6-12 are rib. He says “We go for the plate ribs 6, 7, 8 – right in the middle of the rib cage, which have the longest, widest, meatiest bones, like brontosaurus ribs.” Aaron really doesn’t like pork ribs that have been “enhanced” – injected with water and salt. He likes pork from a hybrid heritage breed – a mix of Chester White and Duroc. Six is the cook. This pretty much puts it together and gives specific instructions for pork ribs, beef ribs, brisket, and turkey breast. He likes to cook at 275 degrees, hotter than some pitmasters that use 225 degrees. He uses a lot of rub – mostly just pepper (16 mesh) and Morton kosher salt at a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio. He doesn’t like fresh ground pepper. He wants it ground a few days or a few weeks before using, because he doesn’t want the flavor to be strong, but he wants to use a lot of pepper because it helps the smoke to stick to the meat. Before applying rub, you can optionally apply slather – mustard, water, oil, or vinegar. He uses an offset smoker, but always uses a water pan to add humidity. He explains the smoke ring on brisket. He gets slightly technical here, but don’t worry, he is always clear. Chapter 7 is Serving + Eating, and mostly from the restaurant point of view, but helpful when you are serving friends and family. I have read several books on barbecue and smoking, mostly borrowed from the library, and this is far and away my favorite. I liked it so much I bought it after reading a library e-book. It seems odd that I like it so much, since Aaron exclusively uses offset smokers fired with wood, and I use a Weber fired with charcoal, but so much of the information here is going to be useful with any equipment. Another thing that adds to the enjoyment of the book is that you can google Aaron Franklin and find lots of barbecue information on the web, and you can find his TV show on Public Broadcasting – so after a while you feel like you know him personally.

This was a great book. Just a word to the wise, if you're buying this book thinking there are a lot of great recipes inside, look elsewhere, this is a book on how to smoke meat the TEXAS way, which means super simple. You will not find anything about brown sugar, sweet bbq sauce, mopping, or anything else like that. Franklin shows you how to make the meat be the star of the show. This book is great for beginners and people brand new to smoking meat, as for myself I have been smoking meat for a couple of years now and I found the information in this book to be very helpful, even though some of it I had already picked up. My favorite chapters were on the meat, or how to pick meat, the different cuts, what is good meat what to avoid that was very helpful, the cook and smoke chapter were also very helpful, Franklin delves into the science of smoke and what good smoke and bad smoke is. He also addressees some very common problems that might arise during the cook and how to fix or avoid it, he also stresses that it takes a lot of trial and error. On the flipside the chapters I did not care for much were the ones on the types of smoker and the wood chapter, very good chapters for the uninitiated, but we those of us who know a thing or two are initiated aren't we? All in all very good book if you are thinking about how to go about smoking a brisket or some spareribs when you have never touched a smoker in your life, this is the go to book, or if you aren't a stranger to smoking meats and want a few tips from the man himself, I would also suggest this book. If, however you are looking for some type of golden ticket top secret recipes or way to smoke meat, look somewhere else, Franklin prides himself on being super simple (salt and pepper mostly), and letting the meat speak for itself, this is also not a book geared toward competition bbqing, Franklin does not really endorse the use of fruit woods or fancy shmancy stuff like that. If you wanna make TEXAS BBQ at home that tastes fantastic and is super simple to make pick this gem up.

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The Bible for all BBQ enthusiasts, I'm looking forward to the day I get to Austin TX and get in line early in the morning. Then I can compare whether the recipes in the book reflect reality. Great book with instructions and recipes. !!! Clear purchase recommendation!!! Five stars *****

Let's start off with what this book is NOT. It's NOT a book on grilling. It's NOT a book on general BBQ. It's NOT a book full of recipes. So what is it? It is an exceptionally detailed look, almost story, of how Aaron Franklin cooks his BBQ. He must be doing something right as people regularly wait in line for hours, every day, just to get a taste of his BBQ. What is his BBQ? It's central-Texas-style BBQ that involves very minimal rubs (mostly salt and pepper) and smoke from a real wood fire. This book is about how to recreate that BBQ. It starts off with a brief history of his experience in BBQ before launching into the details of smoking. It starts with the different kind of BBQs, with a strong focus on offset smokers. He details how and why his smokers work and what the home enthusiast can do to maximize the performance of theirs. He then talks about different kinds of wood. Then fire and smoke. Then meat. Then cooking in general. Then recipes for briskey, spareribs, and turkey breast. And finally a brief bit about recipes for BBQ side dishes. Each of those sections gets its own chapter. So yes, there's an entire chapter on how the fire should burn. There's an entire chapter on selecting the right kind of wood or meat. And all of the recipes are central-texas style recipes, although he does very briefly mention how a cook could modify them to other styles. So if you are looking for any of the things this book is not (as listed above), then this book is a bust. There are much better general guides to cooking BBQ (I like Ray Lampe's book, but also have Raichlin's, Kirk's, and others). But if you are looking for a really detailed guide on how to recreate some really unique BBQ, or how to just plain cook better with wood smokers, then this book is hard to beat. The writing is interesting and personal, but also informative. I usually cook with lump charcoal in my offset smoker, but this book has me seriously considering switching to just wood. BBQ is Aaron's passion, and by the end of this book, it's hard not to be affected by that passion. Any book that can pass that along to its readers is a very good book, so I'm giving this book 5 stars, even if it's focus is quite narrow.

Ik heb mijn artikel nooit ontvangen. Er staat al een tijdje op bezorgd. Maar is niet bezorgd.

I like Mr. Franklin's approach to BBQ: simple, local, fire, meat, smoke. Now if you are looking for recipes and "the secret", you will not like this book at all. There are maybe 6 recipes in the book and the rubs, and mops are real simple. What you will find in this book however, is a scientific approach to the Art of Smoke. He specializes in Briskets (takes time and lots of Oak) so people in Japan might have difficulty trying to make Brisket that way however, you have to look at the processes in place. That's the beauty of this book. I've said too much already. All in all I appreciate the simplicity of Mr. Franklin's approach and endeavor to use more wood in my future cooks. Peace and Smoke, A.D.