2024 the best pulled pork recipe review

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Highlighting the best in Southern regional cookery, an award-winning writer presents a tempting array of nearly four hundred authentic recipes for both traditional and new Southern dishes, including everything from buttermilk biscuits, fried chicken, and pecan pie to innovative creations from some of the region's leading chefs.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 3rd edition (January 1, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0764576011
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0764576010
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
Reviewer: B. Marold
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: James Villas' 'BIG BOOK' at last. Buy it NOW!
Review: `The Glory of Southern Cooking' by outstanding American culinary journalist, James Villas is, in many ways, an answer to my quest for a `definitive' cookbook of Southern cuisine. Villas himself is too modest to claim being the final authority on Southern cooking. He even cites three works which are closer to being the `Mastering the Art...' for Southern cuisine than this work; however, he does attest to the fact that it is far more comprehensive than any of his earlier `general' cookbooks, which are based on his mother's North Carolina cooking experiences.For those who don't know Villas, he is the author of thirteen (13) earlier books, the best of which are collections of his columns from `Town and Country' and other culinary and lifestyle magazines. As such, Villas has been researching the far corners of `Southern Cooking' for the better part of 40 years, largely from the same insider's point of view as his friend, Craig Claiborne. After all this time, Villas' great hypothesis, for which he offers this book as a verification, is that the cuisine of the American South is as rich, diverse, and as involved as those of France, Italy, or China.Many writers have approached `Southern Cuisine' from the bottom up, such as Edna Lewis in her `The Taste of Country Cooking', Justin Wilson's several cookbooks, or Sallie Ann Robinson's `Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way'. Even more, it seems, have approached things from the top down, from the point of view of high-end restaurants specializing in Southern cuisine. Prime examples are celebrity chefs such as Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse and Frank Stitt. Books which seem to combine these two approaches are the many cookbooks from Paula Deen, based on her `The Lady and Sons' Savannah restaurant, the `Mrs. Wilkes Boardinghouse Cookbook' and the recent `The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook'. Of all these books, Villas seems to have three distinct advantages. First, his broad and long experience has enabled him to cover the cuisine(s) of the entire south (from which he excludes Texas, which he considers something of a land unto itself). Unlike, the Lees, the Deens, Wilson, Stitt, and Lagasse, he is not bound to the Tidewater, Cajun, Creole, or `soul' food styles. Second, his point of view has an element of the scholarly about it. Thus, while he may not be giving us the very best or most elaborate recipe for pimento cheese spread (he does that in `Stalking the Green Fairy'), we are assured of getting the recipe most familiar to the greatest number of `Southern Cooking' practitioners. Third, Villas explores that great middle ground of genteel home cooking and entertaining, below the great New Orleans restaurant practitioners but above the raw roots. A fourth virtue of Villas' presentation is that while many of his headnotes include personal information like the Lee Bros. chitchat, he goes into greater depth regarding the cachet surrounding various dishes and their role in Southern cuisine at large.These four points are interesting and make good reading; however, the best feature of the book for the student of Southern Cooking is the Introduction which covers more than 35 pages of material on `Equipment', `Ingredients', `Special Cooking Techniques', and `A Southern Glossary'. This is stuff that appears in no other book I have read on Southern cooking. It is by far the best argument Villas has for both the distinctiveness and richness of Southern Cooking. The high point is Villas' description of how to make a classic Cajun roux, which involves far more than the simple French white roux. Villas claims that he spoiled ten (10) attempts at the task before getting it right, in spite of being tutored by none other than Paul Prudhomme.And, the best feature of the book for the average cook is the fact that the book may be the very best source of recipes for virtually every classic Southern dish you can think of (as long as you don't want any Texas recipes). `James Beard's American Cookery' may just be a bit more complete and a bit more authoritative, but Villas is far more fun to read and his recipes are much easier to follow.A fine sample of Villas' range and emphasis is his chapter on barbecue. The 20 recipes cover Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Creole, Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Virginia styles, covering pork, veal, chicken, shrimp, fish, quail, duck, and rabbit, but no Texas or Kansas beef styles! Of course, Villas lets his personal preferences shine through now and again, when he considers Carolina pulled pork to be the king of all barbecue recipes. Of course, he doesn't weigh in on the theological arguments over the superiority of Lexington (western) versus Tidewater (eastern) recipes.While I can't guarantee Villas will have every single Southern recipe you may want or need, I can't find any of the classics I'm familiar with among the missing. I thought for a moment he may not have the fried pickle chips I had for the first time last year on a trip to Myrtle Beach, but there they were, on Page 22.It's easy to say that a cookbook is a good read or scholarly or well-written, but that doesn't address whether this is a good book from which to cook. Well, this is a good book for cooking, as well as all these other virtues. The recipes are written well, they are easy to read, the pages will photocopy well, and the tips and techniques are well presented, without being preachy. My happiest discovery was the recipe for shrimp remoulade, which tastes good simply by reading the ingredients.If you are put off by the extensive use of deep-frying, my best suggestion is to read Shirley Corriher's exposition on deep-frying in `Cookwise' to appreciate that the method actually doesn't add that many fat calories.I hope Villas keeps writing for us for a long time, but I suspect he has now given us the most important book of his career.

Reviewer: Recipe Diva
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: good recipes
Review: I like James Villas' books anyway, but am more than happy with this one. It features typical southern food. But I was also delighted to find a few recipes for rabbit in there too. My market carries rabbit now and I can't wait to try these new recipes for it. There is a recipe for candied sweet potatoes that is very close to the one my mother made for every Thanksgiving feast, although she did not add the vanilla and I would probably leave that out, too, but just to suit myself. It covers pickles and jams that sound great and work. I have been cooking for over 50 years and have way too many cookbooks in my collection. This one will go to the front of the line. I highly recommend this book. Note though, for all of you out there that MUST have a photo of every dish, there are some colour glossies but only a few. Personally and imho, I don't mind in the least that this is not a picture book. Just reading through the recipes is mouth watering enough.

Reviewer: TykishaP2010
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great Southern Cookbook and Hey They Even Mention Delaware in Here!
Review: As the granddaughter of transplanted Southerners, I thought that I knew it all when it came to Southern food but boy was I wrong. As I read every single recipe in this 400+ page book, I learned just how much I didn't know. As a young girl, I remember sitting in the kitchen watching my grandmother making some of the very same recipes that are listed in this book, and I thought that she was the weirdest woman in the world. Now I'm spending money on cookbooks like this to learn to make the very things that I shunned as a child. Growing up in Delaware, I used to be embarrassed by my Southern roots, the way that my family talked and the foods that they ate but it's now those things that I value. I'm now strangely proud of my country roots and learning to cook the food will show others just how proud that I am! This is a real-deal Southern cookbook written by someone who really knows the food and the culture! I'm really glad that I purchased this cookbook.

Reviewer: T
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Would be so much better if it didn't use cups
Review: A lot of recipes, most of which I'm sure are very good. I just haven't got around to making them yet. I would like more photos; I prefer my cookbooks to be a bit more visual, at the cost of slightly fewer recipes. This one has 6 pages of photos in the middle, and nothing anywhere else, not the best design in my opinion.The book has nicely written sections on equipment and ingredients, including where to source some of them (unfortunately this is only helpful for those of you in the USA), and the author explains a bit about each recipe including why he does things a certain way or why a certain ingredient is chosen.However, the reason why 2 stars get knocked off is: the use of cups. I find this extremely annoying, and it does normally impact my decision on whether or not to buy a cookbook. For liquids, fine, I get it, volume won't change enough to affect the recipe. But for solids, and especially things like turkey breast, or ham?? How on earth am I supposed to measure a cup of turkey breast? I can pretty much guarantee that I don't chop turkey in the same way as the author, and I'm quite willing to bet that the author himself will end up with different amounts of turkey if he measured it twice in a row. Ok, for a turkey casserole this might not matter all that much, but for other more sensitive recipes it does. Besides, if you're going to be inaccurate anyway, why not make it easier for us and say "2 small turkey breasts" or something along those lines which will actually help us when shopping for the ingredient in question?As good as the book is, I'm afraid I'm going to use it much less than I would have otherwise, and it has definitely put me off buying any more US-published cookbooks unless I read reviews stating that the author uses weights to measure ingredients.

Reviewer: vonxojn
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Not what I expected
Review: Tooooo southern for me. I’m from south and some of those dishes I have never heard of. It had very few pictures. I’m going to stick to online recipes...they have pics.

Reviewer: angela lee
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Not nearly enough pictures. Too big a book for my liking

Reviewer: Astrid Rauscher
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: as a fan of Southern Cooking this book is a resource of never ending "aahs" and "oohs" while reading through the recipes.Even for an European easy to follow and cook. I have alradey cooked several recipes from the book and not one was disappointing!