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title: "Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto [A Cookbook]"
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# Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto [A Cookbook]

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Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto [A Cookbook] - Kindle edition by Franklin, Aaron, Mackay, Jordan. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto [A Cookbook].

Review: My favorite book on smoking meat - Franklin Barbecue by Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. If you want a barbecue cookbook that has lots of unique, creative recipes, this is not your book. This book is for people who enjoy smoking and eating meat and who enjoy reading about the experiences of someone who learned how to smoke meat and soon opened an extremely popular restaurant. There are four barbecue recipes, and they don’t start until page 147. The recipes are for brisket, pork spare ribs, beef (plate) short ribs, and turkey breast. At page 174, he’s on to other topics. There are also recipes for four sauces and three sides. He winds up with recommendations for beer to drink with your barbecue. Chapter One is Aaron’s life story – how he learned how to build and adapt things, including barbecue smokers, how he bought used equipment and started his restaurant on a shoestring budget. And he reviews some of the great BBQ restaurants in Central Texas. Chapter Two gives a brief description of several types of smokers – the original pits, the offset smokers, and the upright drum smoker. He does not mention the Weber Smokey Mountain or any similar vertical types that have a fire chamber in the bottom, a water pan above that, and food grates above that. I suppose I could consider these to be variations of the upright drum smoker. All of Aaron’s smokers are offset. He started on a very cheap, flimsy New Braunfels Hondo. After that all of his smokers were offsets homemade from 500 gallon or 1000 gallon propane tanks. He briefly mentions the Big Green Egg and similar kamado style cookers. Not surprisingly, his cookers have names – Number One, Number Two, Muchacho, Rusty Shackleford, MC5, Nikki Six, and Bethesda. Then he tells quite a bit about how to build your own offset smoker – how to procure a used 1000 gallon propane tank, add doors, grates, legs, chimney, and fire chamber, including the necessary welding and cutting equipment. Not many readers of this book are going to take this on, I’ll bet. The most useful information here is his recommendation for a thermometer – the Tel-Tru Barbecue Thermometer BQ300. (p 62) Chapter Three is Wood. All of Aaron’s smokers are made to burn wood, not charcoal. He likes all kinds of hardwoods but mostly uses post oak, because he likes it and it is plentiful around Austin. He started out shopping for wood in Craig’s List, and found that a lot of sellers were dishonest. They would stack wood in such a way to make to look like a cord when it was much less. Then he found a seller who was honest and dependable and stayed with him. There is a glut of oak available in central Texas because the drought is causing trees to die. It is best to cut down a live tree, cut and slit it into smaller pieces, and let it dry for 6-12 months, until it is about 20% water. But sometimes you go with trees that died from drought. Mesquite is pretty strong. Hickory is strong, but not as strong as mesquite. Fruit tree wood is milder. Wood should be dried for a few months, or it will be too green, it will have too much water in it, and won’t burn well. Green wood is heavier and you can feel that it is heavier. Chapter Four is Fire + Smoke – how to start the fire and keep it going with good smoke. Aaron lights a few charcoal briquettes in a chimney starter, puts them in the fire chamber, and puts some wood on top of them, and they light. He only uses wood for cooking. You don’t get smoke from charcoal, gas, or electricity. You need wood for smoke. Most other books say to use charcoal plus a few chunks of wood to get the smoke. I do that with my Weber Smokey Mountain and I think it works fine. Smoke contains solids, liquids, and gases. The gases are invisible, but they do the most to penetrate into the meat and give it flavor. Chapter Five is Meat. Aaron always gets Angus, grade prime, which is ethically raised, with no growth hormones or antibiotics, not frozen and never been frozen. Freezing breaks down fibers and makes the meat floppy and mushy. The lesser grades, in order, are choice and select, and they have less marbling fat. Aaron keeps his briskets 14 to 21 days after the packing date before he cooks them. Dry aging means hanging it or putting it on a rack to dry. Wet aging is done in a vacuum-sealed package. You don’t want dry aged for barbecue. Aaron doesn’t want a lot of rock-hard fat on the outside of the brisket – it is a sign of growth hormones and antibiotics. Yellowish, not white, fat indicates grass-fed beef. There are three cuts of beef ribs: chuck, rib, and plate. Ribs 1-5 are chuck, 6-12 are rib. He says “We go for the plate ribs 6, 7, 8 – right in the middle of the rib cage, which have the longest, widest, meatiest bones, like brontosaurus ribs.” Aaron really doesn’t like pork ribs that have been “enhanced” – injected with water and salt. He likes pork from a hybrid heritage breed – a mix of Chester White and Duroc. Six is the cook. This pretty much puts it together and gives specific instructions for pork ribs, beef ribs, brisket, and turkey breast. He likes to cook at 275 degrees, hotter than some pitmasters that use 225 degrees. He uses a lot of rub – mostly just pepper (16 mesh) and Morton kosher salt at a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio. He doesn’t like fresh ground pepper. He wants it ground a few days or a few weeks before using, because he doesn’t want the flavor to be strong, but he wants to use a lot of pepper because it helps the smoke to stick to the meat. Before applying rub, you can optionally apply slather – mustard, water, oil, or vinegar. He uses an offset smoker, but always uses a water pan to add humidity. He explains the smoke ring on brisket. He gets slightly technical here, but don’t worry, he is always clear. Chapter 7 is Serving + Eating, and mostly from the restaurant point of view, but helpful when you are serving friends and family. I have read several books on barbecue and smoking, mostly borrowed from the library, and this is far and away my favorite. I liked it so much I bought it after reading a library e-book. It seems odd that I like it so much, since Aaron exclusively uses offset smokers fired with wood, and I use a Weber fired with charcoal, but so much of the information here is going to be useful with any equipment. Another thing that adds to the enjoyment of the book is that you can google Aaron Franklin and find lots of barbecue information on the web, and you can find his TV show on Public Broadcasting – so after a while you feel like you know him personally.
Review: Making great BBQ comes only as a result of a slow - Making great BBQ comes only as a result of a slow, relaxed approach, a Zen style state of mind, good wood, good meat, a lot of hours in the smoke, and drinking beer. There is no other method that works, every one of those items is required. Yes you have to drink beer, no...wine doesn't work, and hard liquor will be a disaster. It isn't that smoking a great brisket has a super-secret, hell, we've been making great BBQ in our backyards forever here in Texas. Most of us that have worked with our hands for a living at some point in our lives understand the process, have been doing it naturally and doing it without conscious thought, and enjoying that succulent-just-perfect-brisket that makes people go suddenly silent as they eat with an introspective intensity that would make a brain surgeon at work seem flighty. What this book does is explain all this in detail and keeps your interest as it does. It explains what good wood is, what good smoke looks like, how that smoke acts on the meat, what good meat is, and how it takes the long slow (low and slow) steady approach to accomplish the goal. It also provides a very interesting personal history of the man behind the book, worth reading all by itself as a rags to riches success story - and his success is from a work ethic that few would be able to maintain for more than a month, yet Franklin does it every day, year after year after year. When you see the number of hours he puts in each week you'll shake your head in wonder that any man can keep that up. Many of the reviews say there is no magic instruction that if you follow you'll get it right - but there is, it's not just one thing though, it is all of the things. Follow those things and you'll end up a pit master yourself. What he does do is give you the mental tools to handle the multitude of variables that life can throw at you while making that brisket - and so it seems like kind of vague instructions to some. But they aren't vague at all. They are specific, detailed, thorough, logically sequenced, systematic, and even passionate. This is a fun read, and an instructive one.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| ASIN  | B00N6PFBDW |
| Accessibility  | Learn more |
| Best Sellers Rank | #225,215 in Kindle Store ( See Top 100 in Kindle Store ) #10 in Meat Cooking #25 in Southern U.S. Cooking, Food & Wine #37 in Barbecuing & Grilling eBooks |
| Customer Reviews | 4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars (11,382) |
| Enhanced typesetting  | Enabled |
| File size  | 62.1 MB |
| ISBN-13  | 978-1607747215 |
| Language  | English |
| Page Flip  | Enabled |
| Print length  | 364 pages |
| Publication date  | April 7, 2015 |
| Publisher  | Ten Speed Press |
| Screen Reader  | Supported |
| Word Wise  | Enabled |
| X-Ray  | Enabled |

## Images

![Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto [A Cookbook] - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1eMQR6hwYL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ My favorite book on smoking meat
*by S***G on November 29, 2015*

Franklin Barbecue by Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. If you want a barbecue cookbook that has lots of unique, creative recipes, this is not your book. This book is for people who enjoy smoking and eating meat and who enjoy reading about the experiences of someone who learned how to smoke meat and soon opened an extremely popular restaurant. There are four barbecue recipes, and they don’t start until page 147. The recipes are for brisket, pork spare ribs, beef (plate) short ribs, and turkey breast. At page 174, he’s on to other topics. There are also recipes for four sauces and three sides. He winds up with recommendations for beer to drink with your barbecue. Chapter One is Aaron’s life story – how he learned how to build and adapt things, including barbecue smokers, how he bought used equipment and started his restaurant on a shoestring budget. And he reviews some of the great BBQ restaurants in Central Texas. Chapter Two gives a brief description of several types of smokers – the original pits, the offset smokers, and the upright drum smoker. He does not mention the Weber Smokey Mountain or any similar vertical types that have a fire chamber in the bottom, a water pan above that, and food grates above that. I suppose I could consider these to be variations of the upright drum smoker. All of Aaron’s smokers are offset. He started on a very cheap, flimsy New Braunfels Hondo. After that all of his smokers were offsets homemade from 500 gallon or 1000 gallon propane tanks. He briefly mentions the Big Green Egg and similar kamado style cookers. Not surprisingly, his cookers have names – Number One, Number Two, Muchacho, Rusty Shackleford, MC5, Nikki Six, and Bethesda. Then he tells quite a bit about how to build your own offset smoker – how to procure a used 1000 gallon propane tank, add doors, grates, legs, chimney, and fire chamber, including the necessary welding and cutting equipment. Not many readers of this book are going to take this on, I’ll bet. The most useful information here is his recommendation for a thermometer – the Tel-Tru Barbecue Thermometer BQ300. (p 62) Chapter Three is Wood. All of Aaron’s smokers are made to burn wood, not charcoal. He likes all kinds of hardwoods but mostly uses post oak, because he likes it and it is plentiful around Austin. He started out shopping for wood in Craig’s List, and found that a lot of sellers were dishonest. They would stack wood in such a way to make to look like a cord when it was much less. Then he found a seller who was honest and dependable and stayed with him. There is a glut of oak available in central Texas because the drought is causing trees to die. It is best to cut down a live tree, cut and slit it into smaller pieces, and let it dry for 6-12 months, until it is about 20% water. But sometimes you go with trees that died from drought. Mesquite is pretty strong. Hickory is strong, but not as strong as mesquite. Fruit tree wood is milder. Wood should be dried for a few months, or it will be too green, it will have too much water in it, and won’t burn well. Green wood is heavier and you can feel that it is heavier. Chapter Four is Fire + Smoke – how to start the fire and keep it going with good smoke. Aaron lights a few charcoal briquettes in a chimney starter, puts them in the fire chamber, and puts some wood on top of them, and they light. He only uses wood for cooking. You don’t get smoke from charcoal, gas, or electricity. You need wood for smoke. Most other books say to use charcoal plus a few chunks of wood to get the smoke. I do that with my Weber Smokey Mountain and I think it works fine. Smoke contains solids, liquids, and gases. The gases are invisible, but they do the most to penetrate into the meat and give it flavor. Chapter Five is Meat. Aaron always gets Angus, grade prime, which is ethically raised, with no growth hormones or antibiotics, not frozen and never been frozen. Freezing breaks down fibers and makes the meat floppy and mushy. The lesser grades, in order, are choice and select, and they have less marbling fat. Aaron keeps his briskets 14 to 21 days after the packing date before he cooks them. Dry aging means hanging it or putting it on a rack to dry. Wet aging is done in a vacuum-sealed package. You don’t want dry aged for barbecue. Aaron doesn’t want a lot of rock-hard fat on the outside of the brisket – it is a sign of growth hormones and antibiotics. Yellowish, not white, fat indicates grass-fed beef. There are three cuts of beef ribs: chuck, rib, and plate. Ribs 1-5 are chuck, 6-12 are rib. He says “We go for the plate ribs 6, 7, 8 – right in the middle of the rib cage, which have the longest, widest, meatiest bones, like brontosaurus ribs.” Aaron really doesn’t like pork ribs that have been “enhanced” – injected with water and salt. He likes pork from a hybrid heritage breed – a mix of Chester White and Duroc. Six is the cook. This pretty much puts it together and gives specific instructions for pork ribs, beef ribs, brisket, and turkey breast. He likes to cook at 275 degrees, hotter than some pitmasters that use 225 degrees. He uses a lot of rub – mostly just pepper (16 mesh) and Morton kosher salt at a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio. He doesn’t like fresh ground pepper. He wants it ground a few days or a few weeks before using, because he doesn’t want the flavor to be strong, but he wants to use a lot of pepper because it helps the smoke to stick to the meat. Before applying rub, you can optionally apply slather – mustard, water, oil, or vinegar. He uses an offset smoker, but always uses a water pan to add humidity. He explains the smoke ring on brisket. He gets slightly technical here, but don’t worry, he is always clear. Chapter 7 is Serving + Eating, and mostly from the restaurant point of view, but helpful when you are serving friends and family. I have read several books on barbecue and smoking, mostly borrowed from the library, and this is far and away my favorite. I liked it so much I bought it after reading a library e-book. It seems odd that I like it so much, since Aaron exclusively uses offset smokers fired with wood, and I use a Weber fired with charcoal, but so much of the information here is going to be useful with any equipment. Another thing that adds to the enjoyment of the book is that you can google Aaron Franklin and find lots of barbecue information on the web, and you can find his TV show on Public Broadcasting – so after a while you feel like you know him personally.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Making great BBQ comes only as a result of a slow
*by B***H on October 20, 2016*

Making great BBQ comes only as a result of a slow, relaxed approach, a Zen style state of mind, good wood, good meat, a lot of hours in the smoke, and drinking beer. There is no other method that works, every one of those items is required. Yes you have to drink beer, no...wine doesn't work, and hard liquor will be a disaster. It isn't that smoking a great brisket has a super-secret, hell, we've been making great BBQ in our backyards forever here in Texas. Most of us that have worked with our hands for a living at some point in our lives understand the process, have been doing it naturally and doing it without conscious thought, and enjoying that succulent-just-perfect-brisket that makes people go suddenly silent as they eat with an introspective intensity that would make a brain surgeon at work seem flighty. What this book does is explain all this in detail and keeps your interest as it does. It explains what good wood is, what good smoke looks like, how that smoke acts on the meat, what good meat is, and how it takes the long slow (low and slow) steady approach to accomplish the goal. It also provides a very interesting personal history of the man behind the book, worth reading all by itself as a rags to riches success story - and his success is from a work ethic that few would be able to maintain for more than a month, yet Franklin does it every day, year after year after year. When you see the number of hours he puts in each week you'll shake your head in wonder that any man can keep that up. Many of the reviews say there is no magic instruction that if you follow you'll get it right - but there is, it's not just one thing though, it is all of the things. Follow those things and you'll end up a pit master yourself. What he does do is give you the mental tools to handle the multitude of variables that life can throw at you while making that brisket - and so it seems like kind of vague instructions to some. But they aren't vague at all. They are specific, detailed, thorough, logically sequenced, systematic, and even passionate. This is a fun read, and an instructive one.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review
*by P***N on October 2, 2020*

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*Last updated: 2026-03-13*