Win a Copy of 'The Big-Flavor Grill'

[Photograph: Ed Anderson]

Apparently, the joking title for Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby's newest book, The Big-Flavor Grill: No-Marinade, No-Hassle Recipes,, was 'Shut Up and Grill It.' While the title they ultimately chose is more politic, the directive really gets their point across: grilling does not have to be a laborious undertaking requiring 24 hours of forethought. It doesn't have to be fraught with chef-y aspirations and time-consuming preparations. It can be simplified, or rather, resimplified, since cooking over live fire is, in essence, primal and accessible.

Schlesinger and Willoughby don't bother with premeditated brines or marinades, instead opting for last-minute spice rubs or just a good dousing of salt and pepper. They prefer to introduce the touted 'big flavor' with audacious sauces and vinaigrettes that amp up the goods after they come off the grill. It's an easy, exciting change from the usual method, and one that may change the way you approach grilling from here on out.

Orange-Glazed Baby Back Ribs with Chile-Peanut Dust

This makes the 10th collaborative cookbook, many of them on grilling, for Schlesinger, chef and former owner of Boston's East Coast Grill, and Willoughby, former executive editor at Gourmet and current editorial director for magazines at America's Test Kitchen. When they fire up a grill, you better watch, listen, and take heed. In Big-Flavor Grill, they aren't just trying to cut corners; their method has its roots in a thoughtful re-evaluation of how to best build flavors that survive and complement such an aggressive cooking technique.

In most European-derived cooking, flavor is intentionally nuanced, built layer upon layer to achieve a final, harmonious cohesion. The grill has a tendency to burn through that subtlety pretty quickly. So they looked to the tropics for inspiration, where "...one flavor after another—sour, sweet, bitter, hot, aromatic, earthy—is laid out for your taste buds in rapid succession. Rather than the long, smooth ride on a single flavor, you get the jolt and hum of many tastes." In these hot climates, live-fire cooking is often the preferred, everyday cooking method, and the bold flavors of citrus, vinegar, garlic, ginger, and fresh chilies stand up naturally to the smoke and char.

Grilled Shrimp with New Orleans-Style Barbecue Sauce

Conventional wisdom holds marinades as the best way to tenderize and pump flavor into meat, but Schlesinger and Willoughby disagree. Marinades only serve to break down the top layer of meat, leaving it slightly mushy, and the flavors become blended and watered-down. They find that spice rubs applied just before grilling adhere better and stay intense and distinct. Likewise, they harness all that flavor that's usually tossed out with the marinade by introducing the acids and aromatics individually at the end of the process. By not combining anything beforehand, each ingredient retains its own character, and asserts itself unapologetically in each mouthful.

Grilled Skirt Steaks with Barbecue Bread Salad

They cover lots of territory in the book, offering recipes for a variety of meats and veg, from wings and ribs to tuna and corn, with a huge range of flavor profiles, like Indian, Thai, Turkish, Jamaican, and Mexican. Each chapter begins with a Super-Basic recipe, describing how to grill the simplest version of the star ingredient in the simplest way. (Even their method for gauging grill temperature is streamlined: just hold your hand six inches above the grill, and the length of time you can hold it there without pulling away lets you know whether your grill is hot, medium-hot, and so on.)

Then, each subsequent recipe in the chapter is given in three steps—Prep (while the fire heats up, mix the rub, make the sauce, etc), Grill (the basic recipe plus the occasional rub or glaze), and Top (finish with sauce or side for serving). Toss lamb chops with a lemony roasted garlic vinaigrette, or serve a curry-rubbed, whole chicken with vibrant tomato-mint chutney. Combine grilled new potatoes with balsamic, bacon, and sage, and wash it all down with a Pina Colada or homemade ginger beer. With flavors this dynamic and well-matched, you may never marinate again.

Eggplant with Feta and Maras Pepper

What better book to test over summer's final weekends than one all about 'no-hassle' grilling? It took me around two hours to prep all four recipes, and I was finished at the grill in enough time to actually enjoy the cookout. Low effort, high return—that's what I'm talking about, any day of the year. We'll start the week off with spice-rubbed steaks and a reimagined panzanella for their Grilled Skirt Steaks with Barbecue Bread Salad. Then we'll grill up their intense, Asian-inspired Orange-Glazed Baby Back Ribs with Chile-Peanut Dust. Because I was cooking for a native NOLA crowd, I couldn't pass up the spicy and buttery Grilled Shrimp with New Orleans-Style Barbecue Sauce. And we'll end the week on a lighter note, with the complexly flavored Eggplant with Feta and Maras Pepper, which gets a quick glaze of pomegranate molasses before coming off the grill.

With huge thanks to our friends at Ten Speed Press, we are giving away 5 copies of The Big-Flavor Grill this week. Just tell us how you like to add big flavor to your favorite grilled foods in the comments below.

Photographs reprinted with permission from The Big-Flavor Grill, by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby, copyright 2014. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House LLC.