Cookstr’s Pre-Summer Cookbook Roundup

Welcome to the Clever Cookstr, your ultimate window into the kitchens of the world’s best cooks. As you can imagine, we get a fair number of cookbooks coming across our desks here at Cookstr, so today I’d love to share with you some of my favorites for this summer. They all tackle DIY techniques that can be a little intimidating, so I’m making a summertime resolution to try a few recipes from each of them.

Learn to Preserve

The first is “Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry: Recipes and Techniques for Year-Round Preserving.” This one came out in November, but in case you missed it, now’s a great time to get into some of these DIY techniques for preserving all the great summer produce we’re coming up on: fruit jams and jellies, tomato salsa, and lots more.

I think that home canning and preserving can be really scary if you’re tackling it for the first time, and Cathy does a fantastic job of breaking it down for you.  I also love that there are tons of ideas for how to use the ingredients you’ve canned and preserved – so you don’t just end up with all of these jars of tomato sauce and strawberry jam and beef stock with no idea what to do with them!

It’s great to know how to make sweet pickle relish, but even better to know how to use it in fish sticks with tartar sauce. And Cathy really understands the magic and alchemy of what happens in the kitchen, preserving (no pun intended) everything that inspires wonder about these age-old techniques, while making them feasible for a home cook.

Get Smokin’

Another cookbook I’m so impressed by is “Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto,” by Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay.  Again, this one is taking a technique and type of cooking that’s obviously a project, and turning it into something you can explore and master. More than just a collection of structured recipes, this book is full of guidelines that teach you how to be confident cooking barbecue.

There are tons of sidebars about everything from how to buy brisket and the fluctuating price of meat to the all-important question of what to drink with barbecue. This is obviously a great Father’s Day gift, but if mom is a smoked meat fan, mix it up a little and give it as a belated Mother’s Day gift, too.  I’m obsessed with the photos in this book, too – the brisket and spare rib pictures are mouthwatering.

The story of Aaron’s restaurant in Texas, and how his passion for barbecue developed, makes this a fascinating read, as well. I don’t think cookbooks are very common beach reads, but I think I’m going to try to make that happen this year!

Scream for Ice Cream

One more cookbook that’s perfect for summer is “No-Churn Ice Cream: Over 100 Simply Delicious No-Machine Frozen Treats,” by Leslie Bilderback. The premise of this book is that you don’t need an ice cream maker to make delicious cold treats, which is good news for all of us who start craving it regularly this time of year.

The flavors in this book are pretty tempting,too: you get everything from basic chocolate and vanilla to  chocolate goat cheese, chocolate cardamom, thai iced tea sherbert, and even beet pistachio sorbet. Leslie also understands the importants of add-ins like fruit, nuts, cookies, and candy, which provide all those chunky bites I love.

Those are just 3 of the cookbooks I’m excited about this summer! Send us a note of connect with me on Facebook to let us know which ones you’ll be using this season. Tune in next time for more tips and tricks from the kitchens of the world’s best cooks!