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"Cool Smoke: The Art of Great Barbecue" (Image courtesy St. Martin's Griffin Press)
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Chicken wings, photo outtake from "Cool Smoke: The Art of Great Barbecue" (Photo courtesy St. Martin's Griffin Press)
Tuffy Stone, the five-time World Barbecue champion, reality-TV star and owner of local barbecue chain Q Barbeque, is a man who appears to chase the answer to a question — any question about cooking over fire — in his head, first weaving through a matrix of possibilities before telling you all of them. So it is perhaps fitting that Stone will share some of that knowledge in his first book, “Cool Smoke: The Art of Great Barbecue,” which drops in mid-May from St. Martin’s Griffin. It’s a delicious read.
“I wanted to focus on using smoke like a seasoning … and cooking to the perfect tenderness,” Stone says. “I wanted to pull not only from my competition background, but from my experience as a chef in French and global cuisines.”
In the book, Stone shares his winning Cool Smoke rub and barbecue sauce, perfected over a decade on the competitive barbecue circuit. Though the book focuses heavily on traditional preparations of pork butt and spareribs, readers will also find ingredients like Aleppo pepper and fennel pollen, which Stone says might raise eyebrows among seasoned ‘cue hounds.
The volume is beautifully shot, with Stone, who counts photography as one of his passions, signing off on every image, from rustic scenes of burn boxes brimming with fire to whole hogs flayed and roasting on the grill. Close-ups of technique, such as cleaning and preparing a brisket for the smoker, are sprinkled throughout the sections on equipment, competition barbecue, meats, sides and salads, and desserts. A favorite recipe of Stone’s is spice-rubbed chicken wings with celery-seed white sauce, which he describes as less heavy than traditional wings, with a tanginess from the mayo-based preparation. Having sampled them during Stone’s cooking demo at last year’s Fire, Flour & Fork, I can attest they are the best chicken wings I’ve ever eaten.
When covering a topic as well-traversed as barbecue, the new edition could feel as unoriginal as a K-tel compilation. We’ve heard these songs — so why buy them again? Because Stone’s version eclipses the work of his predecessors. He not only shares tips and tricks for catching blue ribbons, but also how to get dinner on the table quickly, with flavors that are both trendy and timeless.
