Life of Fire: Mastering the Arts of Pit-Cooked Barbecue, the Grill, and the Smokehouse

Pitmaster Martin impresses with his fiery debut, a celebration of West Tennessee barbecue and a thrilling exploration of live-fire cooking. To paraphrase Shakespeare, one fire in its time plays many parts, its utility here filling seven chapters. The first, entitled “Birth,” offers advice on wood selection and blaze maintenance; a young fire (“intense and fleeting”), for instance, is ideal for vegetable dishes like charred carrots with sorghum and buttermilk. When flames reach middle age, they emit the slow and patient heat needed for an open pit, where spareribs, continually flipped and mopped with a vinegar “creek sauce,” are a three-hour labor of love, and a whole rabbit, bathed in wine or beer, cooks low and slow, before being brushed with a mayo-laden Alabama white sauce. A fire’s “golden years” are spent on the main event, a daylong whole-hog barbecue. In this expansive chapter, Martin covers everything from sourcing the pig to using a hatchet and mallet for prepping the beast. As the coals cool, potatoes can be baked directly in the embers, as can foil packets filled with vegetables. Meanwhile, cold-smoked meats and heavenly desserts like strawberry pie emerge in the fire’s afterlife. The hours add up but the barbecuing never gets old in this satisfying outing. (Mar.)