Horn Barbecue: Recipes & Techniques from a Master of the Art of BBQ

Matt Horn, the most celebrated new chef and pitmaster in the world of barbecue, reveals his smoke-cooking secrets in Horn Barbecue. 

Any backyard cook can master genuine smoke-cooked BBQ with the 70 amazing recipes—plus loads of tips, tricks, and down-home bar-b-q wisdom—in Horn Barbecue.Matt Horn, one of Food & Wine’s ten “Best New Chefs” for 2021, is the most exciting new talent in American barbecue in years. His Horn Barbecue restaurant in Oakland, California, recently awarded a rare “Michelin Guide Restaurant” designation, has lines outside that run for blocks and hundreds of rave reviews in local and national media. The draw? Cooked-to-perfection meats rubbed, mopped, basted, and sauced the way good BBQ should be, plus comforting sides and fixins’ and inspired desserts and drinks. Now the restaurant’s secret recipes, and many more from Matt’s own personal repertoire, are revealed in the pages of this exciting, user-friendly, and beautifully photographed book.Matt’s barbecue style, which he calls West Coast Barbecue, is original. Other barbecue cookbooks focus on one regional tradition, such as Texas or the Carolinas. Matt draws on both of those traditions—and recipes from them appear liberally in this book—but he draws on other traditions as well and adds his own California-style spin to the mix, by working in lots of veggies and fruits and by featuring things like poultry and seafood, which are non-traditional BBQ proteins.Rookies who just bought their first backyard smoker (or who want to smoke on a standard grill) as well as seasoned BBQ veterans will find a whole world of new ideas in this authoritative guide to cooking low and slow over smoky, smoldering woods. It includes:Pork Ribs, Beef Ribs, Pork Shoulder, and Burnt EndsMatt’s grandmother’s amazing recipe for Smoked OxtailsSouthern-style classics, like Hot Link, Smoked Catfish, and Smoked JambalayaTexas-style Beef Brisket, in Matt’s unique styleEasy-to-make sides, such as Smoked Pit Beans, Cornbread, Hoe Cakes, and Watermelon SaladCrowd-pleaser desserts, from Banana Pudding to Peach Cobbler to Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Matt also tells his own inspiring story of how he learned to make BBQ and open a restaurant, and about how his journey echoes and continues the glorious lineage of African American barbecue in the US—an amazing yet often unknown history.

About the Author

Matt Horn is a rising star in barbecue and, as one of Food and Wine's ten "Best New Chefs for 2021," in the US restaurant scene generally. Matt grew up in the agricultural breadbasket of North America, California’s Central Valley, where he built his own smokers from discarded oil barrels and abandoned propane tanks. His barbecue education included extended stays with his grandparents in Oklahoma, where he picked up their secret BBQ recipes and learned the basics of the German-inflected Texas-style BBQ that prevails in that state. As his interest in barbecue grew, he studied with the Texas legend Robert Patillo, of Patillo’s BBQ in Beaumont, but he remains to this day largely self-taught. About eight years ago, Matt started doing pop-up restaurants just about anywhere that would have him, from breweries to wineries to churches and farmer’s markets, and he became a San Francisco Bay Area legend as a result. In September 2020 he opened his first restaurant, Horn Barbecue, in Oakland, which has been getting rave reviews in both local and national media and where lines to get in regularly stretch for a block or longer; the restaurant recently landed a coveted "Michelin Guide Restaurant" designation and is a 2022 James Beard Foundation "Best New Restaurant in the US" finalist. Matt is beloved in the Bay Area and is the founder of the Horn Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to food equity and social justice, which daily feeds people in need free lunches of barbecued brisket and other dishes. He lives with his family in the Oakland area.