Top 10 Books on Barbecue

If you were to make a list of the most important, influential, and best barbecue joints in America, somewhere towards the top of that list would be Big Bob Gibson's in Decatur, AL. For 85 years this restaurant has served up some of the best barbecue in the country. Famous for barbecue chicken served in a white barbecue sauce, aficionados continue to flock here to take their bite of history. These days Big Bob's Gibson's is in the hands of Chris Lilly who married into the family and worked his way from the bottom to the top of the barbecue world. This book, part cookbook, part history is the legacy of the Gibson dream.

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Mike Mills is a legend in barbecue. He is the only man to win Grand Master and the Memphis in May barbecue competition. This book is as much a biography of this, as told by himself and hit daughter, as it is a cookbook. The recipes are great, but the story telling is better. This book will give you the recipes that won the Memphis in May competition and launched seven restaurants from New York to Las Vegas.

This book has become a legend in barbecue not because of its loads of great recipes (which it doesn't have) or its careful, step by step instruction (which is also doesn't have), but because it so perfectly captures the culture and history of true Southern Barbecue. This book will give you not just a taste of real barbecue but enough knowledge to not only make your own great, low and slow, traditional barbecue. If you are serious about barbecue, you already own this book.

This is The Book. When the Jamison's put this book together they created the real Bible of Barbecue, the one book most even modern barbecue cook starts with (and keeps going with). This is a great cookbook that puts barbecue in the hands of real people with hundreds of fantastic recipes for pretty much everything you can put in a smoker. If you want to learn to cook barbecue, this is the book to start with.

Julie Reinhardt is first of all a woman, a woman who is co-owner of Pete's BBQ, a barbecue joint up in Seattle. Julie is also a reflection of the modern world of Barbecue. A Northwestern girl who spent her summers in Alabama, Julie not only shows that barbecue is as much a woman's world as a man's, but the journey of barbecue from its Southern roots to the worldwide phenomena it is today. But don't be worried, this is not some revisionist, feminist cookbook. It is in fact a very traditional backyard barbecue cook (with some grilling thrown in for good measure).

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Bruce Bjorkman also known as Mr. Barbecue takes his years of experience and puts together the Bible of barbecue sauces. Bjorkman knows that a barbecue sauce isn't something that comes from a bottle and isn't something slathered all over everything. Real barbecue sauces are used over hours from start to finish in any real barbecue experience. This book gives you not only tons of great recipes but the understanding and skills you need to venture out on your own.

John Willingham takes his years of experience on the competition circuit and puts it all into this book. What you find here is 150 good recipes, the tips that make them better and the stories that make them great. Willingham is a legend of barbecue just like this book. Willingham encourages authenticity from making your own smoker to making sauces from scratch, and I mean scratch.