Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay Explore Meat and Fire in New Cookbook

All the best things come in threes: characters in a joke, cartoon animals (like chipmunks and ducklings), and now books on cooking meat. Local smoke purveyor Aaron Franklin and his co-star Jordan Mackay are back on the shelves with Franklin Smoke: Wood. Fire. Food., a tribute to cooking at home with the most elemental of materials.

The trilogy began almost a decade ago with Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto, the book that put on paper the magic that happens at the eponymous restaurant. Four years later Franklin Steak: Dry-Aged. Live-Fired. Pure Beef. appeared, moving into the home kitchen with more meaty goodness.

With Franklin Smoke, the pair has emerged from the pandemic with what Franklin calls a "state of the union," both an update to the previous two books and an expansion of these ideas as well. As with all things smoke, it starts with fire.

"The premise of the book initially was how to utilize all the different stages of a fire," Franklin says. "So you can cook a meal on a campfire. You could build a fire in a fire pit in the backyard, and as it's starting, you could put some food up here, let that rest. Once you get down to coals, you do this, put this aside."

While beef and other land-based proteins take center stage, the authors dive under the sea for other ways to use that heat. There's also an element of revisiting previously trod territory. Readers will notice some subjects Franklin just can't quit, with the king of barbecue meats front and center.

"You know the first one had an 11-page brisket recipe. This one has a 27-page brisket. Stream of consciousness, if you will? It kind of recaps all the things I've learned over the last nine or 10 years," he says.

With photography by legendary barbecue photographer Wyatt McSpadden and with large doses of both theory and practice, Franklin Smoke should help home cooks tame a fire to delightful and delicious ends.

Franklin Smoke: Wood. Fire. Food.