Barbecue Great Memphis Style

Rating:
Summary: Passion in need of structure
Review: Absorbing the content of this book was very difficult. I had to stumble over a significant number of interspersed shorts on Memphis BBQ teams to get to the "meat" of why I purchased the book. Stick to the recipes! The 64 pages of recipes were broken up by 24 pages of BBQ teams (over 1/3 of the book). Meat recipe pages to team histories ratio was 32/19 (over 1/2). Point made! Many recipes needed temperature ranges rather than subjective "medium-hot", "medium-low" etc. Directions for preparation were simple, a positive. However, since side dish recipes were provided, full meal suggestions (sides, desserts, bread etc) for each meat dish would have been helpful. In summary, the book could have been 1/3 shorter by writing a separate book on Memphis BBQ history. Perhaps including an index, listing recipe pages under different cuts of meat would have been helpful (refer to Smoke & Spice as an example). Memphis has a definite passion for BBQ, but their recipe books could use a "double helping" of structure.