Comments: How committed are you to barbecue? Does a recipe with five or more distinct processes (a brine, injection, baste, paste, seasoning blend, herb bundle, wrapping mixture, braising base, glaze, finishing dressing, mustard moisturizer, finishing sauce, resting butter, and/or BBQ sauce) encompassing as many as 40 ingredients scare the innards out of you? Or does it get your juices going?

Because this is probably the best barbecue book on the market. It's just not for the faint of heart. Or those who don't like books with lots of words.

Adam Perry Lang is a classically trained chef whose early/mid-life crisis involved finding out that he liked barbecue as much as or more than fancy French food. So he entered (and won) a number of barbecue contests, opened a barbecue joint in New York City, and created recipes that confident cooks will love to recreate on the grill, in the smoker, and over open flames.

He is relentless in adding flavor to meat, making herb bundles to mop on a sauce, rather than using silicon brushes. He pours flavored butter on the cutting board so that the meat soaks up flavor as it rests and again when it is cut. He doesn't seem happy unless there are at least three processes (or four or five or six) and a dozen steps in the instructions taking the meat from start to finish (actually, there are a number of simple recipes, but they all jack up the flavor).

Lang also claims to offer at least one recipe for any cut of meat in the supermarket. So if you picked up something huge and inexpensive, you should have a great recipe available. If you picked up something expensive for a feast, likewise, you should have it under control. Chapters cover pork, beef and veal, lamb, chicken and turkey, side dishes, basic recipes (several sauces, herb bundles, sprays, butters, crumbs, dressings, etc.), a lengthy section on "barbecue basics," a short section on the science of barbecue, and a section on where you can buy specialty meats, and tools, and ethnic foods, and other ingredients and seasonings.

If you want to take your barbecue to the next level – or many next levels – this is the book with which to do it.