SpitJack has always been about more than equipment. Good tools matter, but so do technique, experience, and understanding what you are trying to accomplish.

The books, websites, and resources below are ones we recommend for cooks who want to go deeper into meat injecting, barbecue, knives, rotisserie cooking, and cooking with fire. Some are practical references, some are classics, and some simply reflect the way we think about cooking at SpitJack.

The Ultimate Guide to Meat Injecting

The Ultimate Guide to Meat Injecting — SpitJack
Our practical guide to meat injecting for serious home cooks, barbecue cooks, competition cooks, and anyone who wants to better understand what happens when seasoning and moisture are carried directly into meat.

The book covers injection recipes, ingredient roles, injectors and needles, injection technique, timing, food safety, cleaning, troubleshooting, and the differences between injecting poultry, pork, beef, brisket, and other meats.

SpitJack meat injector owners can receive the digital edition free. The book can also be purchased separately.

Learn More About The Ultimate Guide to Meat Injecting →

Meat Injecting

There are surprisingly few books devoted specifically to meat injecting. Most barbecue books touch on brining, marinades, injections, or internal seasoning only as part of a much broader subject. For that reason, we are keeping this section deliberately short rather than recommending books simply to fill the shelf.

The Ultimate Guide to Meat Injecting — SpitJack
Our guide is focused entirely on meat injecting: how it works, what to inject, how recipes are constructed, which needles and injectors to use, and how technique changes with different meats and cooking methods.

Barbecue & Smoking

The Barbecue! Bible — Steven Raichlen
A broad and approachable reference to grilling and barbecue traditions from around the world. It is especially useful for understanding just how many different ways there are to cook with fire.

How to Grill — Steven Raichlen
A technique-driven book with extensive step-by-step photography. A particularly good reference for cooks who want to understand methods rather than simply follow recipes.

Project Smoke — Steven Raichlen
A practical introduction to smoking foods, from basic techniques to more adventurous applications. Useful for both beginners and experienced barbecue cooks.

The Brisket Chronicles — Steven Raichlen
An entire book devoted to one of barbecue's most challenging and rewarding cuts. It covers brisket across multiple cooking traditions rather than limiting the discussion to a single style of barbecue.

Pitmaster: Recipes, Techniques, and Barbecue Wisdom — Andy Husbands & Chris Hart
A practical barbecue book built around technique, experience, and the knowledge developed by serious competition and professional barbecue cooks.

Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto — Aaron Franklin & Jordan Mackay
More than a collection of recipes, this is a detailed look at wood, fire, smokers, meat selection, brisket, and the reasoning behind Franklin's approach to barbecue.

Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling — Meathead Goldwyn
A useful counterbalance to barbecue folklore. Meathead looks closely at the science of heat, smoke, meat, seasoning, and cooking techniques, and challenges a number of long-standing barbecue assumptions.

Knives, Knife Skills & Butchery

Knife Skills Illustrated: A User's Manual — Peter Hertzmann
A detailed reference to using, choosing, and maintaining kitchen knives. Its extensive illustrations make it particularly useful for learning actual hand and knife movements.

Mastering Knife Skills — Norman Weinstein
A practical guide to fundamental knife work, including grip, cutting techniques, sharpening, and working with a wide range of ingredients.

Knife: The Culture, Craft and Cult of the Cook's Knife — Tim Hayward
A different kind of knife book. Hayward explores the history, design, craftsmanship, makers, and culture surrounding the cook's knife. Recommended for anyone interested in knives as tools as well as objects of craft.

Rotisserie & Live-Fire Cooking

The Rotisserie Grilling Cookbook: Surefire Recipes and Foolproof Techniques — Derrick Riches & Sabrina Baksh
One of the relatively few modern books devoted specifically to rotisserie cooking. It covers equipment, setup, technique, troubleshooting, and recipes for poultry, pork, beef, lamb, and other foods.

Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way — Francis Mallmann
Mallmann approaches live-fire cooking as both a technique and a philosophy. The book explores several distinct ways of using fire and heat and is particularly good for cooks interested in becoming more comfortable working directly with fire.

Whole Hog BBQ: The Gospel of Carolina Barbecue with Recipes from Skylight Inn and Sam Jones BBQ — Sam Jones & Daniel Vaughn
A detailed look at the whole-hog barbecue tradition of eastern North Carolina. It covers the history, culture, pits, fire management, and techniques behind cooking an entire hog over wood coals.

Fireplace & Open-Hearth Cooking

The Open-Hearth Cookbook: Recapturing the Flavor of Early America — Suzanne Goldenson & Doris Simpson
One of the most useful practical references to traditional American hearth cooking. It covers fire building, tools, techniques, and recipes developed specifically for cooking at an open fireplace.

Cooking with Fire: From Roasting on a Spit to Baking in a Tannur — Paula Marcoux
A broad exploration of traditional fire-based cooking techniques. Marcoux approaches the subject as both a food historian and a practical cook, covering spit roasting, hearth cooking, baking, grilling, and other ways humans have cooked with fire.

Websites, Blogs & Other Resources

The web is full of cooking information, but a few sites stand out for the depth of their material, the experience behind it, or their usefulness as ongoing references.

Barbecue & Live-Fire Cooking

BarbecueBible.com — Steven Raichlen
Recipes, techniques, equipment information, and articles covering grilling, smoking, and live-fire cooking.

AmazingRibs.com
An unusually deep barbecue resource with extensive information about meat science, heat, smoke, grills, smokers, thermometers, techniques, and barbecue myths.

Historic & Hearth Cooking

Old Sturbridge Village
A living-history museum in Massachusetts where traditional New England foodways and open-hearth cooking are regularly demonstrated and taught.

Historic Deerfield
An excellent New England resource for historic foodways, hearth cooking, domestic life, and traditional crafts.

Plimoth Patuxet Museums
A major resource for understanding seventeenth-century foodways and cooking techniques, including the role of wood fires in everyday food preparation.

Townsends
A particularly accessible resource for historic cooking. Their articles and videos demonstrate eighteenth-century recipes, hearth techniques, tools, ovens, and other early cooking methods.

Knife Skills

The Culinary Institute of America
The CIA publishes useful educational material on professional kitchen fundamentals, including knife skills, ingredient preparation, and cooking techniques.

SpitJack Resources

We have also built a growing collection of our own guides and reference material based on the products we sell and the kinds of cooking our customers do.

Meat Injecting Information Hub
Guides to injectors, needles, technique, recipes, safety, troubleshooting, and injecting specific meats.

The Ultimate Guide to Meat Injecting
Our complete guide to meat injecting, including recipes, technique, equipment, ingredients, safety, and troubleshooting.

SpitJack Recipes
Recipes from throughout SpitJack's history, including meat injecting, barbecue, rotisserie, holiday, and fireplace cooking recipes.

Fireplace Cooking Guide
An introduction to open-hearth cooking, building and managing a cooking fire, choosing firewood, fireplace equipment, kitchen fireplaces, and cooking safely with live fire.

More recommended books, websites, and SpitJack resources will be added as we find material that we believe is genuinely useful.