Project Fire

Where there’s Smoke there’s Fire! And where there’s fire, there’s Steven Raichlen. Following the breakout success of Project Smoke, the New York Times bestseller that brought Raichlen’s Barbecue! Bible® series to a new generation, comes Project Fire — a stunning, full-colour celebration of the best of contemporary grilling from America’s master of live-fire cooking.

No one knows his way around a grill like Steven Raichlen, and no one is better equipped to teach us how to deliver its best performance. Drawing on a combination of classic and boldly contemporary techniques, here are 100 inspired recipes that capture the full range of what grillers want to cook today. Consider your basic steak. Raichlen starts with the iconic — T-bone grilled over direct heat, smartly tattooed with grill marks and lavished, the way the pros do it, with sizzling beef fat. Then he teaches a technique new to most of us — reverse-searing, which allows you to grill a monster steak, like a beef tomahawk, to perfection while also imparting a haunting smoky flavour. Of course, there’s a Caveman Sirloin — meat seared right on the coals, as dramatic as grilling gets. Plus here’s how to blow-torch a veal chop. Spit-roast whole cauliflower on a rotisserie. Grill mussels in hay, squash on a salt slab, salmon steaks on a shovel over a campfire.
According to the latest Roy Morgan Research data, almost two-thirds of Australian households own a barbecue. In certain places, this figure rises to more than three-quarters of households, with country South Australia emerging as the nation’s highest-density barbecue-owning region, just ahead of the ACT.
From breakfast (Bacon and Egg Quesadilla) to cocktails (Grilled Sangria), from veggies (Caveman Cabbage and Smoke-Roasted Carrots) to dessert (Grilled “Piña Colada” and Cedar Planked Pears with Amaretti and Marscapone), Project Fire offers a radically righteous new take on live-fire cooking from the man who reinvented modern American grilling.