We have an enormous collection of recipes for marinades, dry and wet rubs, spice pastes, cures and brines, bastes, mops, and slather sauces in this cookbook, Barbecues Sauces, by Steven Raichlen. These are followed by after-marinades and board sauces, salsas, relishes, sambals, and chutneys. The recipes are well written, ingredients mostly readily available (though some only online), and recipes are broken up by many good sidebars (like the “Lowdown on Lemon,” “Ennobled by Adobo”) and also little treatises (like “Spices and How to Use Them,” “The Mystique of Marinades”). These are useful interludes. Occasional photographs are pleasant. Unfortunately, the text runs continuously throughout; that means many recipes spill to overleaf pages, an inconvenience to the cook. Recipe headnotes are nice and informative. Many sidebars called “Try This!” give helpful information. But who are the cooks who can use this overwhelming number of recipes? For the average home cook, this cookbook is a waste of shelf space. A small number of serious, dedicated grill masters may find this cookbook useful. But very few cooks would find, e.g., smoking their salt a worthwhile home project or use injector sauces.
