Cookbooks: Weber’s Way to Grill by Jamie Purviance

When it comes to cookbook excellence, Jamie Purviance’s Weber’s Way to Grill has two strikes against it coming right out of the gate: with a big name barbecue manufacturer right in the title and a big ol’ lifestyle magazine publisher right on the spine, there are a lot of people who would give Weber’s Way to Grill (Sunset/Oxmoor House) a miss before they even cracked the first page. Truth be told, that would be a shame because readers who are serious about grill cooking are in a position to learn a great deal from Weber’s Way to Grill.

Now understand the distinction I made there: this is not a book about barbecue, as in the style of regional cooking brought to high art in the Southern part of the United States. Weber’s Way to Grill focuses on contemporary grill cooking, of the type that can cook just about anything on a well-designed grill surface. “Culinary details matter,” author Purviance tells us in the introduction. On subsequent pages, he takes us through it bit by bit: working with charcoal, arranging the coals, judging the heat levels, working with a gas grill, must-have grilling tools and then many, many easy to follow and illustrated recipes for grilling probably anything you’d ever want to grill.

Weber’s Way to Grill is comprehensive, well executed and complete. If you are interested in cooking on an outdoor grill you could go a long way before finding a better book on this topic.