Raichlen is the author of The Barbecue Bible, which won the Julia Child Cookbook Award. I won a copy of that excellent tome in a Goodreads First Reads drawing, and I’ve used it every summer since then. So when I noticed that his guide to vegetables on the grill was available, I leapt on it. My thanks go to Net Galley and Workman Publishing for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Summer is the best time of the year to eat healthy foods, and yet when we attend a barbecue, often the only vegetable dish is the potato salad, and possibly an anemic tossed salad or plate of tomatoes. Raichlen proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. This nifty cookbook provides starters, entrees, and includes some ideas I’d never considered, like making bread or pizza on the grill. I made the green bean rafts (stuck together with skewers, cooked on the cooler part of the grill, liberally oiled) and the hobo packs. I think the latter is due for change to a more sensitive name, but Raichlen didn’t invent this category of food preparation, and we cannot hold him responsible for the term. As to the food inside the pack, it was delicious, and has made its way into the regular rotation for summer barbecues at my house.

The sad part here is that for those of us eating vegetables as part of a weight loss regimen, the benefits are limited. Again—not the author’s fault. It’s impossible to cook vegetables on high heat this way without adding a lot of fat into the mix. It’s a matter of physics, and there’s nothing we can do about it; if I surrendered rather easily to the need for gobs of olive oil, surely no one can fault me. I look forward to trying the recipe for Tuscan Edamame next.

One of the things I appreciate most about this author is that he doesn’t use his book as a sales tool. It burns me up when I purchase a cookbook, only to find that many of the writer’s recipes include some secret blend of flavorings that can only be obtained by ordering it from—you guessed it—the author. Raichlen doesn’t stoop to this practice, and his recipe calls for ingredients that are are readily available and reasonably affordable. My one complaint, and it’s a minor one, is that too many of these recipes call for me to do a great deal of kitchen prep, involving many dishes and sometimes a food processor, before venturing out to the barbecue. For me, the joy of barbecuing, apart from its delicious results, is to spare myself all that time in a hot kitchen (or a cool one that results in astronomical energy bills.) I don’t want to come back inside after a barbecue and have to contend with a mountain of bowls and pans that need washing. I like to keep it simple.  However, this can be done by picking and choosing which recipes to try.

Most of these recipes are not vegetarian in nature, so if that’s your wheelhouse, you will be happier looking elsewhere, assuming that someone somewhere has written such a book. I don’t need it, so I haven’t searched. But what you can make here is scrumptious.

I generally like reading digitally, but cookbooks are a pain in the butt to read on a phone or tablet, so for that reason, I suggest you buy this nifty cookbook on paper. Summer isn’t over yet, so get it now!