Book Review: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Smoking Foods

Title: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Smoking Foods
Author: Chef Ted Reader
ISBN: 9781615641550
Released April 3, 2012
Paperback or available as eBook
320 Pages
Buy on Complete Idiot’s Guide or Amazon

Summary:

Loaded with over 60 mouthwatering recipes, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Smoking Foods has everything you need to know for preparing tender meats, sensational side dishes, and other delicious foods to become a master smoker.

Review:

A few weeks ago we purchased a new grill that came with a smoker by Smoke Hollow. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Smoking Foods arrived at the perfect time to try out the smoker portion of the grill and to test drive Chef Ted Reader’s recipes.

My spouse experimented with the Mediterranean Spice Rub recipe on Sunday from this book on our steaks and smoked them with maple wood. Yum! This recipe is quite versatile; use on meats as a rub or paste, or even add with oil and vinegar to make a dressing for salad.

A personal favorite in this book was the wood flavoring guide. Ted does a great job explaining what woods you should pair with certain meats and seafood. The timing guidelines for brining, marinading, and curing meats was an invaluable resource. There is also an explanation of where different cuts come from the animal and summary of how to be prepare them included at the beginning of each chapter. It reminded me a bit of the original Betty Crocker cookbooks, but otherwise hard to find these details and explanation of uses in most cookbooks.

Overall, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Smoking Foods is a wonderful resource and very user friendly for the beginner to even someone quite experienced with smoking. We can’t wait to try out more of Ted’s recipes and tips as the summer progresses.

About Ted Reader:

Ted Reader is an award-winning chef and food entertainer, who’s parlayed his passion for food into a culinary tour de force that includes more than a dozen cookbooks, shelves of food products, live culinary performances, TV and radio cooking shows and appearances as well as culinary demonstrations, a catering company and teaching.

Known for his pyrotechnic charm and fearless culinary spirit, it’s no surprise that GQ magazine labeled him the “crazy Canuck barbecue kingpin.” The dude just loves to cook!

Ted’s quest for creating “real food for real people” has seen this high-profile culinary barbecue guru demonstrate his flair for grilling in all venues from swanky ball rooms to the Pacific Ocean to a downtown Toronto parking lot. Today, he owns more than 100 barbecues, grills and smokers in all shapes and sizes and never goes anywhere without one in the back of his truck.

The Five Meat Smoking Commandments

Chef Ted Reader’s brings on the smoke and the flavor with these tasty tidbits

Meat smoking is becoming very popular in local restaurants this season, and Chef Ted Reader has come up with these five easy tips from his new book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Smoking Foods, to help you get rolling the first time you fire up your smoker, and every time to follow.

1. Be prepared: As we have always been taught, proper and thorough preparation is very important, especially to be successful in meatsmoking. Assuming you already have a smoker, the first step would be the food preparation. Your final result out of the smoker will only be as good as the ingredients you put into it, and it is important to always buy good-quality ingredients – or the best you can afford. Before bringing your food out to the smoker, a fire will need to be created to prepare the smoke. You’ll need to prepare your smoker ahead of time, keeping in mind how long your meat will take to smoke, and what fuel sources you will need during the process.

2. Be patient: Timing is crucial, that’s all there is to it. Waiting for foods to smoke, and tending the fire to maintain a consistent temperature can be tedious, but are important to successful smoking. If you have the perseverance to wait it out, you’ll discover the art of creating truly delicious foods.

3. No peeking: Do you remember baking cookies, and being yelled at by your mother to stop opening the oven? It’s easier said than done, but meat smoking follows the same guidelines. A seemingly-harmless 30 second peek could add approximately 20 minutes to your smokingtime. The less you peek, the sooner you eat!

4. Practice makes perfect: “Every time you smoke, it’s a chance to improve on what you did last time and create new flavours that will make you and your guests deliciously happy” exclaims Ted Reader, in his new book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Smoking Foods. Perhaps try challenging yourself by timing how long it takes for charcoal to reach its perfect white-hot temperature. Keeping track of what you have done will only help make you a better smoker, so try keeping notes and set goals to improve each time you cook.

5. Have fun! It takes the right combination of ingredients, time and patience to infuse wonderfully smoky flavours. A job well done is only measured by how tasty the food is and how much fun you had while preparing your meal. “The sweet smell of smoke, tending the fire, andsmoking food to delicious perfection—that’s what it’s all about!” says Ted.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for the purpose of creating this review. The thoughts and feelings expressed are my own. No other compensation was received.

About Karen