Podcast Episode 3 - Peace Love & BBQ

The speaker introduces a cookbook called "Peace, Love, and Barbecue" by Mike Mills and Amy Mills-Tunnicliffe. They discuss their personal experiences with barbecue and how the book includes recipes, stories, and information about different barbecue regions. The speaker also shares their own experiences with barbecue competitions and highlights some of their favorite recipes from the book, such as Mama Faye's Homestyle Potato Salad and Elizabeth's Smoked Salsa. They recommend the book for all levels of cooks and mention that Amy Mills now runs the family restaurant, 17th Street Grill. Howdy, everyone, and welcome back to Cookbook Review. This is episode three, and today we're going to be looking at a cookbook that I've had for several years now. It is near and dear to my heart. It is something that I have thoroughly enjoyed. I go back to this book on many, many occasions, and it's something that I really am passionate about, and that is in the world of barbecue. The book is called Peace, Love, and Barbecue, Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue, and it's written by Mike Mills and his daughter, Amy Mills-Tunnicliffe, and it was written in 2008, or sorry, 2005. It has 102 recipes in it. What's amazing, you've got 11 appetizer recipes, 11 soup and salad recipes, 17 side dishes. That's what gets me, is the side dishes. Never realize how many side dishes you need to make a really good meal. Seven main dishes, 13 barbecue, 10 desserts, 11 sauce, mop, slathers, and injection recipes, six rubs, eight beverages, and eight that use pulled, chopped, and sliced barbecue. Now, I've done barbecue competitions for a couple years, or I did them for a couple years. I haven't done them for a couple years, but anyways, I did them. My uncle and I had a barbecue team with my cousins, and sometimes my kids would join us and be very helpful during that whole process. I don't know if anybody out there has done competition barbecue, but boy, that's a tough one. Really, really difficult to do. I was very fortunate, actually. In my second competition, there was 85 teams, and we were able to place tied for 13th on our brisket and got in the prize money. Then we were invited to an invitational barbecue competition, and we took 10th place on our ribs and got into the prize money with that one as well. Love barbecue. I don't think there's much that can be said about the smell other than it is intoxicating. It's inspiring. It brings back great memories, and barbecue is just a great, great thing. Very different from grilling. It's low and slow, and it is not something to be taken lightly because it's a religion in certain areas, basically. This book really encompasses a lot of things. It is part autobiography about Mike Mills and his journey into barbecue and getting into owning several restaurants and going on with that. And then it talks about several barbecue legends, pit master legends, if you will. It's a great read, very easy read. And for me, it makes me really want to travel more to these areas where barbecue is very, very much inbred into their culture. You never realize that Chicago is a barbecue mecca, but you got to think back, you know, many, many years ago that Chicago was one of the largest cattle yards in the United States next to Kansas City and Texas. So there's a lot of good barbecue restaurants throughout all of Illinois, but as you get down into southern Illinois, you're within a couple hundred miles of St. Louis, Memphis, all these, you know, Knoxville, all these wonderful barbecue towns, cities, areas, regions. And that's the good thing about barbecue is barbecue is very regionally driven. Texas, they don't really use any sauces for their brisket. Beef is king down in Texas, by the way, where you go to North Carolina and pork is king there, and they have a lot of very tangy, mustardy, vinegary barbecue sauces to go with the pork, apple cider vinegar sauces. Then you get up into Memphis and Kansas City where you get, you know, beef and pork and chicken, and the sauces are kind of sweet and molasses and tomato based. So very regionally driven, and this book talks about that. And it explains, you know, certain things of regions and sauces, and just it's an overall great read. Like I said, it's been in my collection now for probably 10, 12 years now, if not more. And I refer to it frequently for the rubs, you know, recipes or whether it be for a side dish. Probably one of my favorite side dishes to make out of this is one that's called Mama Faye's Homestyle Potato Salad. It's just great flavors. And then there's an appetizer, and it's called Elizabeth's Smoked Salsa. It kind of threw me because it's actually, it's not done on the smoker, but it uses smoked paprika in it to bring out the smoky flavor. The veggies are grilled over direct heat, which then does give it a little bit of a smoky flavor. But in the term of smoke, it's not, you know, slow smoked or anything like that. And it has this great recipe for barbecue stuffed baked potatoes. I don't know if you guys have ever had a stuffed baked potato with barbecue, whether it be pulled pork, pulled chicken, chopped brisket, you know, whatever. It is absolutely amazing. And if you ever get a chance to make it or to try it at a restaurant, I highly recommend it. And then to top it off, you've got some great recipes in here for desserts. And probably one of my favorite things of all time is peanut butter. And there's a peanut butter pie recipe in here reminiscent from Big Bob Gibson's Barbecue. I don't know if you guys have ever heard about that, but I highly recommend you looking it up. And if you can get down there and try their barbecue, they are award-winning time and time again. And Chris Lilly does a great job down there. But yeah, this book, you know, there's, like I said, 102 recipes. It's published by a company called Rodale. And it has 342 pages. And I really think you're going to like this. And it's a beautiful cover. You know, it stands out. It's kind of like a burnt orange with big, bold black letters and writing on it. And the pictures in here are wonderful. You've got old-time pictures. Most of them are black and white. Some of them are kind of like a sepia tone. But for the most part, they're all black and white. But the great read and you get to follow along with Mike Mills and his family as they crunch along the barbecue bark trail, if you will, through the years. And I hope you give it a read, give it a try, and add this book to your collection because I think you'll really, really enjoy it. And it's suitable for all levels of cooks, you know, on the sides and stuff. And if you're new to barbecue, this is the book for you to get into. It really walks you through the whole process of, you know, getting started and injections and rubs and how long to let them sit before they go into the pit and the types of wood to use, what the do's and don'ts, you know, things not to add certain spices and certain herbs, you know, when you put them into a smoker, when they counteract with the...or interact with the smoke and the heat, a lot of times they get bitter and they'll put an off-putting flavor onto the meat that you're smoking or even veggies that you're smoking. But yeah, give this book a read. I think you're really going to like it. And Amy Mills is now a...she's the founder...or not founder, but the owner-operator of the restaurant that they have called 17th Street Grill. And I believe that's in Murfreesboro or Murfreesboro, Illinois. And they do a great job. You know, her father passed away back in 2020 with a short illness. And so she took the reins and is running the company now and is doing a great job from everything that I've read and seen. So give it a read, let me know what you think. All right, we'll see you next time. Have a great day.