Hi there and welcome!
I have been smoking for about a month now and I had the same question while doing my research.
I found that many people recommended the book
Smoke & Spice so I bought it and I also bought
Franklin Barbecue: A Meat Smoking Manifesto.
I can say that Smoke & Spice was not exactly what
I was looking for. It is a good
recipe book for identifying a dish, what to season it with, and good at giving a general idea on cooking and what goes with a dish. What it lacked that I was looking for was information on:
- Pairing types of smoking wood with the recipe or dish - Nothing like "use hickory with this dish" or "a blend of cherry and oak for this dish". No recipe I have seen in the book recommends a type of wood to use with the recipe itself.
- Also it did not give any info on smoking time vs cooking time. As far as I can tell all recipes are smoked and cooked the same amount of time. No "smoke for 3 hours and cook for an additional 2 hours".
- Open to any recipe at random and I bet you money it says to cook at temperature 200-225 degrees (or 200-220 range, cant remember). There is no technique or information on different cooking temp ranges and what they may or may not offer, just the one cooking temp range for every dish.
- No mention of Internal Temperature (IT) for the meat in any recipe that I have found! All recipes I have seen mention cooking times as apposed to IT. I felt this was a major missing component because everyone knows or should know that temperatures can fluctuate and can be uneven in a smoker. I thought mentioning an IT with a cooking time would have been extremely helpful for a beginner or anyone new to that recipe.
Please don't think I'm bashing Smoke & Spice, I'm just sharing my experience and my expectations of the book with you :)
As for
Franklin Barbecue: A Meat Smoking Manifesto, it was much more of what I was looking for. If the book is 300 pages, it only has like 8 recipes in it. I got it to learn how brisket is well made. Franlkin's brisket is widely regarded as the best in the world and his success seems to be mostly dependent on technique and practices as apposed to a recipe of ingredients.
I haven't finished the Franklin book but I can tell you it is an enjoyable read that feels like a journey into smoking rather than a recipe book or a cold "how to" book. It feels like you are standing with a mentor drinking a beer and cooking with him as you conversate about what is going on with the cooking and how the approach to what you are doing actually came to be.
Finally, this forum is hands down the best source I have seen for recipes, cooking techniques, practices, and ideas. It feels like a merger of Smoke & Spice and the Franklin book but on a grander scale. Just work on your search skills and you can basically find what you need, find something close to what you need, or you can ask about it.
Best of luck and good cooking :)
