Eater: 15 Spring Cookbooks We’re Excited About This Year

Michelin-starred pitmaster Evan LeRoy breaks down his secrets to the best barbecue in the nation, sharing nearly 100 innovative techniques and recipes that have made LeRoy and Lewis one of Austin's most popular barbecue joints.

This barbecue bible is essential reading for any griller who wants to learn from the best. LeRoy shares the tenets of barbecue with illustrations, step-by-step photography, and nearly 100 delicious recipes for mains, sides, and desserts that run the gamut from bacon ribs to smoked banana pudding.

Barbecue is not a set menu; it’s a cooking method—and nobody knows this better than Austin-based chef Evan LeRoy. As the co-owner, pitmaster, and mastermind chef at LeRoy and Lewis, one of the most popular and acclaimed BBQ joints in Texas—not an easy feat—LeRoy has reinvigorated the old style and staked his claim as a modern master of the barbecue game.

In New School Barbecue, LeRoy encourages home cooks to think differently about the barbecue they’re already familiar with, going beyond the “classic” dishes everyone serves. The methods he outlines can be applied to any cut of any meat (including lamb, chicken, beef, goat, and pork), any type of produce (avocados, cauliflower, squash, and more), and almost any cuisine.

And LeRoy’s techniques work on all kinds of outdoor cookers: offset smoker, pellet smoker, a kamado grill, or an old-fashioned Weber kettle grill, so anyone will be able to apply his recipes and recommendations to their setup.

This book is perfect for fans of Franklin Barbecue who want to take their dishes one step further with new flavors, techniques, and ingredients.

Evan LeRoy is an Austin native who has been a fixture in the extremely competitive Texas barbecue scene for almost a decade. He rose to prominence cooking inventive barbecue at Freedmen’s, and eventually opened his own food truck, LeRoy and Lewis, with partners Sawyer and Nathan Lewis in 2017, serving what they call “new school barbecue.” The restaurant ranks highly on the Texas Monthly Top 50 Barbecue Joints, and LeRoy has taught barbecue all over the world. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Lindsey, and their daughter, Frankie. Paula Forbes is the author of 2018’s The Austin Cookbook, helped write The Big Texas Cookbook by the editors of Texas Monthly, and coauthored Cured: Cooking with Ferments, Pickles, Preserves & More with San Antonio chef Steve McHugh. Formerly an editor at Eater and Epicurious, and cookbook critic for Lucky Peach magazine, Forbes is currently the senior food and drinks writer for Texas Monthly magazine and the editor of Stained Page News, an IACP Award–nominated cookbook newsletter with over 13,000 avid cookbook fan subscribers. She lives in Austin, Texas. Daniel Vaughn is the author of The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue, the coauthor of Whole Hog BBQ: The Gospel of Carolina Barbecue, and the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly. He has traveled the world sampling smoked meats at over 1,800 barbecue joints, most of which are in Texas.