Product Description

Grilling is the most basic method of cooking there is. It dates back to the time of cavemen -- food plus fire equals good. But when it comes to healthy food from the grill, evolution has been slow, producing lots of nutritionally sound but incredibly bland recipes.

Until now. Bobby Flay's Grilling for Life is, first and foremost, about getting the biggest, boldest flavor possible from food and fire while making healthy choices all the way. Imagine a lifetime of Espresso Rubbed BBQ Ribs with Mustard-Vinegar Basting Sauce; Bricked Rosemary Chicken with Lemon; Chinese Chicken Salad with Red Chile-Peanut Dressing; Grilled Beef Filet with Arugula and Parmesan; Grilled Salmon with Lemon, Dill, and Caper Vinaigrette; and Garlic-Red Chile-Thyme-Marinated Shrimp.

For food that is good for you and full of his signature big style and big flavor, Bobby Flay will teach you how to use herbs, spices, heart-healthy oils, citrus zests and juices, honey, and vinegars in place of sugary commercial sauces and marinades. He'll show you how to enhance flavor by toasting nuts, seeds, and spices on the grill; roasting garlic in a covered grill to add to vinaigrettes and marinades; and grilling slices of lemon, lime, and grapefruit to serve on the side.

Bobby believes that we all need a full and balanced diet to be happy and healthy, so the book has everything you need to keep grilling for life: veggies chock-full of fiber; delicious complex carbohydrates (the right carbs) that not only fight heart disease but break down slowly, leaving you feeling fuller longer; fish rich in omega-3 oils; and, of course, the full range of proteins.

To sharpen your skills by the fire, Bobby Flay's Grilling for Life includes the sections "Equipment" (a very short list); "Fahrenheit 101," a temperature chart that helps you navigate rare, medium, and well-done; "Meals in Minutes," offering suggestions for the time-challenged; and "Party Foods," great party menus for everything from a cocktail party to an Italian feast.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15145 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Even though each recipe in Flay's new guide to grilling is accompanied by an analysis provided by nutritionist Joy Bauer (including number of calories and grams of carbs, sugar, fat, sodium and fiber), the Food Network star insists this is not a diet cookbook. Flay's goal, he says, is not to encourage high-protein living, but rather to give readers the nutritional information they need to support a healthy diet. Written with the help of Stephanie Banyas and Sally Jackson, the introduction and headnotes capture Flay's tone and provide clear direction and interesting tips. It's easy to make grilled food healthy, and therein lies Flay's test: he must make this book necessary—otherwise readers could just throw some chicken and veggies on the grill and call it a day. He rises to the challenge by skipping fake, processed foods like Splenda and bottled barbecue sauce, instead favoring fresh herbs, spices and "good carbs" such as multigrains and vegetables and "good fats" like olive oil and salmon. Flay is an advocate of moderation, and his trademark use of bold flavors in dishes like Grilled Red Snapper with Grapefruit-Thyme Mojo, and (skinless) Grilled Duck Breast with Black Pepper-Sweet Mustard Sauce bring out appealing contrasts and result in food that's satisfying even if it's reduced in calories, carbs or fat. (May 10)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Just in time for a new season of outdoor cooking, television food-maven Flay (with coauthors) brings out another compilation of grilling recipes. This time Flay jumps on the carbohydrate-control bandwagon and designs recipes that reduce simple sugars without eliminating the complex carbohydrates that are less nutritionally negative. For those who think of grilling as a carnivorous endeavor, Flay begins with recipes that show how much vegetables profit from contact with a hot grill. Asparagus, fennel, mushrooms, and zucchini all gain additional taste and texture and combine perfectly with assorted herb and cheese vinaigrettes. Thanks to their relatively low-fat content, fish and shellfish make for healthful eating. Flay loves to season them with bits of mango or citrus fruits, whose acidity enhances what might be flat flavors. Hot peppers play a significant role here, in seasoning both seafood and red-meat choices. To wash down all these items, Flay includes some recipes for cocktails and nonalcoholic drinks. Grilled fruits, imaginatively dressed, make appropriately healthy dessert offerings. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

First things first: I am not a nutritionist. I am a chef. I am not looking to create a new diet fad. Nor am I trying to jump on somebody else's bandwagon. What I am looking to do is to show how a healthy lifestyle can be enhanced by delicious meals from the grill. And this isn't just any food, for there are plenty of diet books and magazines with nutritionally sound (and a lot of bland) recipes out there already. This is the food that people want to eat -- exciting, full of flavor -- and it just so happens that you can make all of it while keeping within the guidelines of many of the current popular diets. Modifying the way you eat doesn't mean that you shouldn't really enjoy your food or that you can't feel proud to serve it to family and friends. I could never put a dish on the table that I didn't feel met both of those standards.

I'm not talking no carbs or low carbs, nonfat or low-fat. I am talking about the right carbs, the right fats. I can't write a book about something I don't believe in. I have always been a supporter of all things in moderation, and this book has nothing but heart and body healthy choices all the way.

You would have to be living under a rock not to have noticed the carbohydrate-cutting diets that have flooded the media and, in turn, totally changed the way Americans eat. I haven't spent one night in the kitchen of one of my restaurants in the past year without someone sending back the breadbasket or saying "No potatoes with that steak!" So I did a little research. And I think that some of these diets may be on to something--up to a point. But when I looked at the low-carb products and recipes out there -- the revised breads, the barbecue sauces -- I knew that I could never cook or eat that way. Soy flour may have its place, but it's not in my kitchen. And Splenda -- what is that? Beyond the taste, it's just not natural. Sucralose (the base of Splenda) is a chlorocarbon. I'm not eating chlorine.

I can make some adjustments, but this can't be about substitutions. Too many recipes out there advocate the use of fake, processed food. I care too much about taste (among other things) to do that. I believe in purity of flavor. I'm not going to use sugar substitutes or imitation anything, but I do present a variety of dishes that will fit perfectly with today's carb-conscious lifestyle.

Healthy grilling seems too simple to even need a book. Maybe you think that grilling is nothing more than a hunk of meat tossed on the grill. But if you know anything about me and the way I cook, you know that I can never leave it at that. I want taste! I want excitement! I'll show you how to take your proteins from basic to outstanding without using the unwanted carbs found in many of today's prepared sauces and marinades. I think that the grill is the perfect instrument for preparing healthy, flavorful food. The grill, however, isn't the true focus of this book. Well-balanced and delicious food is. So go ahead and use a charcoal grill, a gas grill, a grill pan on the stove, or pop something under the broiler. In this instance, I think it's fair to say that how you cook is less important than what you cook.

And this book is not all meat -- no way! I believe that we need a full and balanced diet to be happy and healthy. Like I said earlier, it's all about making the right choices with the right foods, all without overloading on artery-clogging fats. Heart-healthy oils like olive and canola, omega-3-rich fish like salmon, tons of veggies chock-full of fiber -- they are all in here. I wanted to include some fantastic complex carbohydrates, too, with grilled buckwheat flatbread, salads with great grains like farro and bulgur, and whole-grain bread as the base for my sandwiches and burgers. Not only are they delicious, but complex carbohydrates are also so good for you -- they fight heart disease and are slower to break down in your body, leaving you feeling fuller longer.

I have a signature style, and I want to demonstrate how that style can be used to enhance the flavors of all of your carb-conscious favorites and show you the way to a few new ones. And, yes, I might have to make some modifications to reduce carb intake. But remember, it will still be all about flavor! I would never do anything less.

I set out to write this book because I felt that people were getting too caught up in this crazy, carbless nonfat world. I believe that we should be able to eat everything -- in reasonable portions. That being said, I wanted to find a way to bring good nutritious foods -- and especially good carbs -- back into the mix, while keeping my emphasis on flavor. I have definitely made concessions in order to keep the numbers in check, but this is not a low-calorie, low-fat, low-sodium book. There are many recipes in here that do meet those standards, and if you are eating by the numbers, you should be able to find quite a few options. I don't know anyone who wants to eat a big steak or lobster with butter every night of the week, and you shouldn't. Remember -- moderation! That also means, however, there should be a time to indulge. I've made space for those indulgences. Don't cut out all carbs or fats; just pick the right ones. Don't indulge in heavy food every night; know when to celebrate with a special meal. I promise you can do it all, and with more flavor than you ever imagined. Just start with some good carb grilling!

Copyright © 2005 by Boy Meets Grill, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Flay's Grilling for Healthy Living. Very Good but not Great.
`Grilling for Life' is the second Bobby Flay book I have reviewed and it is very similar to his last book. Like `Boy Gets Grill', it is relatively short at only 75 recipes to the earlier book's 125. It is correspondingly less expensive than similar celebrity cookbooks. At a list price of $22, it is worth about 120 recipes if it were priced at the celeb cookbook median of $35. The theme of the book is highlighted by a nutritional analysis of all the recipes plus a selection of recipes that naturally avoid empty calories, saturated fat, and excess sodium.

In addition to the low recipe count, you also get the budget treatment from the photography, which is almost entirely in black and white and almost entirely of small amateur looking snapshots of Bobby at the grill. The book has none of the insider culinary wisdom I have seen in my last two reviewed books written by chefs (Gordon Ramsay and Michael Schlow). On the other side of the coin, Bobby does give us some very nice, no nonsense introductory chapters on basic grilling equipment; cooking to safe meat temperatures; herbs, spices, and chiles; flavorings; and basic grilling how-tos. All of these sections are done in the confident style of someone who knows what he is talking about and without a trace of doubt. This is in spite of at least one egregious error that probably has Alton Brown cringing in his `Iron Chef America' anchor chair at his colleague's scientific gaff. The error was in Bobby's correctly rejecting an artificial sweetener for the very wrong reason that it contained chlorine. Just two pages later, Bobby sings to the importance and varieties of table salt, which is half chlorine and half sodium, an explosive metal!

Flay repeats one really great feature from his earlier book when he gives the titles of each and every recipe in his table of contents. He also repeats his appendix of Internet sources.

The overriding raison d'être of this book is to give us nutritionally sensible recipes, ideally to replace all the high saturated fat, high sugar recipes in all the world's previous grilling recipes. And, the nutritional analysis is done by a professional dietitian, Joy Bauer, who oddly, is not given author's crediting, only the honor of writing the foreword.

One very good thing about the book's nutritional strategy is that it does not follow any one-diet plan. Rather, it gives you all the facts you need to have about the amount of total fats, saturated fats, cholesterol, carbohydrates, sugar, protein, sodium, fiber, and total calories. Thus, you pick your regimen and look for the recipes that fit that regimen, be it low carb, low fat, high fiber, or low calorie. The problem is that in order to find the recipes that best fit your lifestyle, you have to be pretty sophisticated about nutrition. For example, is 410 milligrams of sodium a lot or a little? It seems like a big number, yet a milligram is a very, very small amount. The same recipe shows 30 grams of fat, which seems like a small number, except that a gram is 1000 times larger than a milligram. The blocks of nutritional analyses would have been just a little more useful if they would have included the minimum daily requirements for a middle aged person of slightly higher than normal weight. A similar service would have been to give a nutritional summary for the party menus at the end of the book, summing up all the statistics for the various dishes in the menus. A third nutritional service the book overlooks is to provide a good moderate calorie / low carb barbecue sauce. In the index, there is no reference to any recipe for barbecue sauce at all. A fourth idea would have been to give a cross reference of recipes by type of diet, whether low fat, low calorie, low carb, or vegetarian.

Bobby's general outlook on healthy eating is the same as mine and the same as Rachael Ray's point of view in her latest book, '30 Minute Get Real Meals'. That is, avoid empty calories and eat reasonably sized portions. Bobby (and Rachael) both avoid extreme products such as 0 fat imitation cheeses and other dairy products. This is important not only because non-fat dairy (and many dairy imitation products such as margarine) simply do not behave the same as the real thing when baked or sautéed. Like Bobby, I also like to avoid the synthetic weight loss foods as you can never tell what some of the many chemicals put into the mix will do to you over time. We learned our lesson on margarine and transfats. I'll stick to moderate amounts of real butter and vegetable oils and go easy on other animal fats.

So why provide all the statistics when the objective would have been served by portion sizing, replacing white bread with lettuce wraps and whole grain flatbreads, and avoiding transfat sources. As I said above, these numbers are still useful if either carbohydrate or protein or fat content is important to your regimen.

As far as the recipes go, they are all classic Flay, with lots of strong flavors from chiles, cilantro, garlic and onions, vinegars, ginger, fresh herbs, and strongly flavored cheeses. There are a few grill friendly recipes such as cole slaw that are not actually grilled, but the large majority of the recipes have one or more grilled ingredients. Flay keeps the recipe selection on the healthy side by using lots of vegetable recipes (15), seafood recipes (26), and poultry recipes (11). That's over 2/3 of the recipes right there. There are only 16 four hoofed meat recipes and 8 drink and dessert recipes to round out the count. In addition to the selection, I really like the very simple organization into basic ingredients. All this really fits Bobby's `no nonsense American boy made good in the kitchen' persona.

Recommended to health conscience grilling enthusiasts.

Grillin' With Those Good Carbs
Flay is grillin' genius and consummate spokesman for smoke in cooking. Here he takes off on carb craze by teaming up with a nutritionist to provide grillin' recipes with good carbs in mind. Further, the nutritionist (Joy Bauer) testifies that Flay utilizes lots of disease busting ingreds, e.g. olive oil, chile peppers, etc. He's interested here in purity of flavor.

Collection is extensive and creative, not just carb redos of some regulars, although some are included as well. Those tried so far are fabulous, e.g. Grilled Fennel and Orange Salad with Almonds and Mint; Grilled German Sweet Potato Salad; Red Cabbage and Beet Slaw; Grilled Spice-Rubbed Vidalia Onions; Buckwheat Pizza with Cilantro Pesto, Jack Cheese and Grilled Shrimp; Grilled Red Snapper with Grapefruit-Thyme Mojo; Souvlaki with Merguez Sausage and Pepper-Yogurt Sauce; Cantaloupe-Mint Agua Fresca;

Each recipe has great, clear instructions along with sections on equipment, sources, menu/party suggests.

Thus, this is serious consideration for the healthy conscious into great grillin' food for friends and family.

Good but misleading!
I liked the book but was surprised by the amount of fat in some of the recipes. Although I believe grilling is healthier than pan cooking or frying, I was surprised by the amount of recipes that had nothing to do with grilling. From salads to desserts. I was hoping for more on grilled desserts that are light and fresh off the grill. Liked the book, but was disappointing in many of the recipes and the fat count on alot of the recipes are high!