Barbecue contests are serious business. Major competitions and festivals now take place in twenty-eight states, and there are twenty BBQ associations and societies across the country committed to encouraging the art of smoking and grilling meat. While thousands of chefs compete for the best ribs or brisket, low-key backyard BBQ competitions are springing up all over the country, offering amateur smokers the chance to become the neighborhood BBQ king or queen. Arthur Aguirre’s BBQ team, Major League Grilling, has won nearly twenty awards in his first two years of BBQ competition, including Grand Champion at the Soybean Festival in Mexico, Missouri. In this book he compiles his prize-winning recipes with those of competitors across the country to offer the best rib, pit-fired poultry, brisket, and pulled pork recipes. From applewood smoked turkey to Napa Valley ribs to smoked meatloaf in a bacon weave, this book has something for every BBQ enthusiast. In addition, readers will find tips for concocting the perfect rubs, glazes, and sauces.

Only Ardie and Paul, the go-to sources on barbecue, can earn the trust--and the secret recipes--from some of the nation's barbecue legends. Tasty sides include tips, tricks, techniques, fun memorabilia, full-color photos, and firsthand recollections of tales from the pits culled from over a century of combined barbecue experience. With more than 100 recipes for mouthwatering starters, moist and flavorful meats, classic side dishes, sauces and rubs, and decadent desserts, this book should come with its own wet-nap. * Whether it's spicy or sweet, Texas or Memphis, this is the best collection of American barbecue recipes. * Ardie's BBQ alter ego, Remus Powers, PhB, has earned profiles in many barbecue books, tons of magazines, and more than a few national newspapers. He's graced the Food Network and PBS, appearing in various documentaries on 'cue and great American cuisine. * Paul has appeared on The Today Show, Discovery Channel, CBS This Morning, Talk Soup, and Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal. He was also featured in AARP's Modern Maturity Magazine, Saveur, and The Calgary Herald, and he has written articles for Food and Wine, Fine Cooking, and Chili Pepper magazine.

Presents a collection of recipes with instructions for cooking many dishes on the grill.

Barbecue: It’s America in a mouthful. The story of barbecue touches almost every aspect of our history. It involves indigenous culture, the colonial era, slavery, the Civil War, the settling of the West, the coming of immigrants, the Great Migration, the rise of the automobile, the expansion of suburbia, the rejiggering of gender roles. It encompasses every region and demographic group. It is entwined with our politics and tangled up with our race relations. Jim Auchmutey follows the delicious and contentious history of barbecue in America from the ox roast that celebrated the groundbreaking for the U.S. Capitol building to the first barbecue launched into space almost two hundred years later. The narrative covers the golden age of political barbecues, the evolution of the barbecue restaurant, the development of backyard cooking, and the recent rediscovery of traditional barbecue craft. Along the way, Auchmutey considers the mystique of barbecue sauces, the spectacle of barbecue contests, the global influences on American barbecue, the roles of race and gender in barbecue culture, and the many ways barbecue has been portrayed in our art and literature. It’s a spicy story that involves noted Americans from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama.

Steven Raichlen, a national barbecue treasure and author of The Barbecue! Bible, How to Grill, and other books in the Barbecue! Bible series, embarks on a quest to find the soul of American barbecue, from barbecue-belt classics-Lone Star Brisket, Lexington Pulled Pork, K.C. Pepper Rub, Tennessee Mop Sauce-to the grilling genius of backyards, tailgate parties, competitions, and local restaurants. In 450 recipes covering every state as well as Canada and Puerto Rico, BBQ USA celebrates the best of regional live-fire cooking. Finger-lickin' or highfalutin; smoked, rubbed, mopped, or pulled; cooked in minutes or slaved over all through the night, American barbecue is where fire meets obsession. There's grill-crazy California, where everything gets fired up - dates, Caesar salad, lamb shanks, mussels. Latin-influenced Florida, with its Chimichurri Game Hens and Mojo-Marinated Pork on Sugar Cane. Maple syrup flavors the grilled fare of Vermont; Wisconsin throws its kielbasa over the coals; Georgia barbecues Vidalias; and Hawaii makes its pineapples sing. Accompanying the recipes are hundreds of tips, techniques, sidebars, and pit stops. It's a coast-to-coast extravaganza, from soup (grilled, chilled, and served in shooters) to nuts (yes, barbecued peanuts, from Kentucky).