Best Charcuterie Cookbooks

[Chris Hennes]

We have a number of very active topics here related to charcuterie: to list just a few...

• Making Bacon
  
• Making Sausage
  
• Making Guanciale
  
• Making Pastrami
  
• Meat Grinders
  
• Meat Slicers
  
• Sausage Stuffers
  
• Smokers
  
• Cellars and Chambers for Curing and Aging
  

Clearly then, there is a TON of interest in the topic. We have a HUGE cooking topic on Ruhlman and Polcyn's book (two of them, actually!):

• Cooking with Ruhlman & Polcyn's "Charcuterie": 2008-Present
  
• Cooking & Curing from "Charcuterie": 2005-08
  

But not much else discussing the other books available. In particular, I own

• Aidells, Bruce Aidells' Complete Sausage Book
  
• Child & Beck, Mastering the Art of French Cooking v. 2
  
• CIA, Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen
  
• Kutas, Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing
  
• Marianski & Marianski, The Art of Making Fermented Sausages
  
• Ruhlman & Polcyn, Charcuterie
  

Of these, I think Ruhlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie is maybe the best book for beginners. Some of the recipes are not particularly interesting, but the foundations it lays are solid, and it's very approachable. From there, Marianski & Marianski's The Art of Fermented Sausages is a very technical, in-depth treatise on dry-cured sausages and is an excellent reference. The others primarily serve as sources of recipes for me: some good, some not so good.

What books am I missing? What are your favorites?

[Dave the Cook]

Interesting that except for Charcuterie, which I agree is a great gateway book, we have none in common (that's about to change, as I'm one click away from buying the Aidells book).

In my collection:

• The old-school Grigson, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery
  
• Kinsella and Harvey's matter-of-fact Professional Charcuterie
  and two others that aren't entirely about charcuterie, but include significant sections:
  
• Preserved, by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton
  
• Paul Bertolli's philosophical and engrossing Cooking by Hand
  

[nickrey]

I have used Antony and Araminta Hippisley Coxe's Book of Sausages as a reference to see what is in various sausages before going on to create my own versions.

Having read the savage Amazon critiques, however, I feel compelled to add:

Don't buy this book if you:

1. want recipes with exact quantities of everything

2. are expecting sources for American suppliers

3. are turned off by a British author having the temerity to slant their book towards UK content and terminology

Otherwise with these shortcomings, it is a good source book to see what goes into various sausages from around the world that you may have come across.

Charcuterie also involves making products not encased in skin. I also use the Time-Life book on Terrines, Pates and Galatines which has good pictorial guides to producing many classic dishes.

As an on-line resource (not a book but, hey, we're new media savvy), check out Len Poli's sausage recipes on this web site. He also lists a number of books on sausage making on his resources page.

Edited January 19, 2010 by nickrey (log)

[dougal]

I think Ruhlman's book is the best and safest tutorial.

But some of the recipes are hardly authentic.

However, I think its unquestionably the best starting point.

Jane Grigson's book is great, but, wow, she was very heavy-handed (by modern standards) with the saltpetre (nitrate).

Excellent for background reading, recipe inspiration and putting things in a historical (and geographic) context though.

I really like Bertolli's book, but I regret to admit that as yet, I haven't used it much.

"Preserved" covers lots of things (beyond meat), and consequently nothing gets covered in great detail. No really major horrors though. Could be all the non-geek needs to get started - and hooked.

I was a bit disappointed with Kutas' Sausage Recipes - which is grossly unfair because it is actually just that, a book of recipes (or formulas) for sausages, written for an american audience. But that's about all it is.

I was even more disappointed when I saw Peacock's "The Sausage Book" because of the frankly sloppy approach that it advocates, and the amount of padding that can be inserted to turn a few pages of real content into a book-product. No thanks!

Admirable as many of Hugh Fearnley-Whittinstall's aims might be, his charcuterie stuff is very hit or miss. Many of his cures seem to be based on traditional cures for preservation, rendering things terribly salty. What makes it an issue is that this extreme saltiness isn't remarked upon in the text. One brine even listed a salt concentration that is actually beyond saturation!

And then there is the DRIED RAW chorizo recipe which includes no nitrate/nitrite and no starter culture either. I remain convinced that this is a potentially dangerous mistake - which I think probably results from confusion with a recipe for a FRESH chorizo, which would be cooked before eating.

Interestingly, the exact same 'confusion' with Chorizo (no starter or cure in a sausage for drying and eating raw) is repeated in Darina Allen's new "Forgotten Skills of Cooking" which unsurprisingly lists HFW's "Meat" in the Bibliography. Forgotten Skills has some nice recipes for using the various products, but needs other books for support on the basics. For example, the Foraging section discusses various attractive recipes for using Alexanders, but has precious little on distinguishing them from other, rather similar looking but poisonous plants!

I'm still a bit ambivalent about Walker's "Practical Food Smoking". The 'trade-qualification-textbook' style is ghastly. I doubt it is up to date on regulations, but it certainly indicates how commercial smoking operations have to work. Again small, cheap and quite a lot of real content.

A little book that I really do like is Erlandson's "Home Cooking & Curing" which is actually about smoking rather than US "BBQ" cooking.

Its short (not padded with waffle), cheap and authoritative. What's not to like?

I'm still a bit ambivalent about . The 'trade-qualification-textbook' style is ghastly. I doubt it is up to date on regulations, but it certainly indicates how commercial smoking operations have to work. Again small, cheap and quite a lot of real content.

My preferred recipe for Merguez has its origin in one of the Moro books by Sam & Sam Clark (just checked - it was in Casa Moro). Highly recommended beyond the few bits of charcuterie.

There are all sorts of odd snippets that one gleans online, but outstanding must be the USDA Meat Processing Inspectors Handbook - and its discussion of the calculations of allowable Nitrate and Nitrite levels in cured products. Quite apart from what a safe actual level in food might turn out to be, its eye-opening to look at some of the simplistic assumptions underlying the formal calculations of what the content is to be declared to be. PDF for free download: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISDirectives/7620-3.pdf

One example

If nitrate is used in conjunction with nitrite, the limits of the two compounds

are calculated separately and the permitted maximum of each may be used.

To appreciate the full wisdom of this, you have to recognise that nitrate doesn't actively cure the meat at all until it has itself been degraded to nitrite ... And that they are not talking about the residues after curing (which is what you eat), but instead they are referring to the amount permitted to be added to the meat at the start of the cure!

Oh, and this is what I should have asked for for Christmas: "Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer"

I'll just have to get it for myself now ...

Edited August 14, 2010 by heidih
Fix links (log)

[Blether]

Buy-before-you-look Amazon has furnished me so far with:

(already mentioned) Harvey & Kinsella; Erlandson's Home smoking & curing; and (at last !) Jane Grigson.

(not mentioned yet)

Sausage - A.D. Livingston. I also have his Cold-smoking and Salt-curing Meat, Fish & Game. I like A.D., he has a whiff of the backwoods about him.

Home Sausage making - Reavis. This one in particular is a victim of 'buy before you look' for me. a lot of it is things like Kielbasa that are part of American immigrant heritage, but not part of mine. Which is fine, but not what I was looking for at the time.

[Chris Hennes]

For my birthday this year I got a copy of Marianski et al.'s new(ish) book, Polish Sausages, Authentic Recipes And Instructions. Their writing style never ceases to make me laugh. For example:

Geographical location plays a significant role too when making up new recipes. Mountain people or highlanders raise animals such as sheep or goats and they will have their own recipes where those meats will play a dominant role. They would probably love to eat more pork but it is hard to imagine a 250 lbs pig jumping over the rocks with goats and sheep looking in amazement.

They are highly opinionated, but generally pretty well informed. In particular, there is a lot less "cover your ass" in the food safety chapters, and more "these are the facts, you decide how to proceed." I will stop short of declaring them absolutely correct on these issues (I'm waiting for Modernist Cuisine to come out and turn all of our food-safety knowledge on its head...), but they do seem to know what they are talking about, citing lots of apparently-solid research on the subject.

I have not made any of the recipes in the book, but they are all apparently taken verbatim from old Polish government standardized recipes. Hard to say if that's a good thing or a bad one (of course the authors make a case for the high quality of the recipes).

Anyone else have a copy of this one?

[Chris Amirault]

I've got Ruhlman, Aidells, CIA GM, Bertolli, and Grigson. Very interested in your reports about the Marianskis, making me wonder if there isn't room for one more.

I have to say that I really enjoyed reading a lot of these books front to back, especially Grigson, Bertolli, and Ruhlman (which I read in one sitting at the Boston Children's Museum years ago). Something about the long curing process helps with structure and style....

[MaxH]

I haven't seen it mentioned at all in this thread, but Victoria Wise's American Charcuterie (ISBN 0670808431 in original hardcover, and readily available used) broke this ground in the modern US a quarter-century ago. (Wise, original chef at Alice Waters's Chez Panisse, early 1970s, opened a pioneering traditional French-style charcuterie shop nearby -- the "Pig by the Tail," aka to locals the "Charcuterie," one of the original "gourmet ghetto" businesses to open near Chez Panisse in Berkeley.) It actually was much like neighborhood charcuteries in France -- I'd had recent experience with them when Wise's shop opened, and I remember the resemblance.

Although I don't have the other books to compare it to, a professional cook commenting ("customer review") on Amazon claimed to use this one the most, among several titles.

[Chris Hennes]

Have you been happy with the recipes in Wise's book?

[dougal]

... Victoria Wise's American Charcuterie (ISBN 0670808431 in original hardcover, and readily available used) broke this ground in the modern US a quarter-century ago. (Wise, original chef at Alice Waters's Chez Panisse, early 1970s, opened a pioneering traditional French-style charcuterie shop nearby -- the "Pig by the Tail," aka to locals the "Charcuterie," one of the original "gourmet ghetto" businesses to open near Chez Panisse in Berkeley.) It actually was much like neighborhood charcuteries in France -- I'd had recent experience with them when Wise's shop opened, and I remember the resemblance.

Although I don't have the other books to compare it to, a professional cook commenting ("customer review") on Amazon claimed to use this one the most, among several titles.

Have you been happy with the recipes in Wise's book?

Does anyone know any more about this book?

It sounds interesting - but it also seems odd that it would garner just the one Amazon reviewer comment ...

Maybe it was simply 'before its time'?

300 pages, sounds like plenty content. What's the scope? Who's it written for? Or to put it another way, what kit is expected, or what areas are skipped over because of needing 'specialist' kit, maybe like a curing chamber ... ? Is it principally a recipe compilation, a technique tutorial or what?

Any information would be welcome!

[MaxH]

[Re Victoria Wise's American Charcuterie}Does anyone know any more about this book?

... seems odd that it would garner just the one Amazon reviewer comment ... Maybe it was simply 'before its time'?

Bear in mind that publication need only be before amazon.com's time (as this one was) for limited notice there, and amazon.com is relatively recent in the history of cookbooks.

I was flipping through Victoria Wise's book when I posted about it earlier. Wise credits as an inspiration Jane Grigson's Art of Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, which Wise read in London soon after its publication. Wise's book is aimed at US home cooks although some recipes (with 20 pounds of this or that) seem scaled to available whole butcher cuts rather than typical household portions. Sections: Basic Ingredients and Techniques for Charcuterie; Terrines, Pâtés & Galantines; Sausages; Preserved Meats, Fish & Fowl; Main Dishes; Cold Compositions [long]; Savories; Sweets. She's not the only author to promote the idea of an old-world curing crock that might contain several different meats at once (later convenient for mixed-meat dishes like Alsatian choucroute or Burgundian potée). I got the book soon after publication and may have used it, but out of memory. It would own some US importance among books on this specialty, as it seems to've opened up the subject to some people (as for instance Julia Child opened up Guide-Culinaire repertoire to a generation of US home cooks).

Apropos Grigson, discussion upthread mentioned her heavy nitrate use, but I didn't spot mention of how curing chemistry has evolved more generally, since that book's publication. In recent years, curing practice changed to prevent toxic nitrosamines, and I believe the protocol now (at least in US) entails not only avoiding excess curing agents but also anti-oxidants and nitrites only, avoiding nitrates. I mentioned this recently in current eG "Botulism concerns" thread after checking US food-safety regulations. Any cookbooks with curing recipes, unless recently published or updated, may be out of date about those details.

[dougal]

Max, thanks for the comments on Wells' American Charcuterie - I shall definitely be seeking out a bargain-priced copy!

It was me that commented above about Jane Grigson's somewhat liberal use of Nitrate.

And also me that posted a link to a free download of the US regulatory 'bible' - the Meat Inspector's handbook.

Its a pretty bizarre mis-mash.

But its definitive as to legal commercial practice in the USA.

And as such deserves to be on every Charcuterer's bookshelf.

Whatever nonsense it may contain!

In the USA (not in over-regulated, risk-averse Europe), Nitrates can not be used in curing Bacon. This is specific to Bacon and at that, Bacon for sale in the USA.

There has been plenty time for similar regulation in Europe, and the authorities have decided that it would serve no purpose.

Download the pdf (Adobe Acrobat Reader document). (Link posted upthread).

Go to the 32nd page of the pdf - the page is 27 by the page corner number) to see the start of the Bacon detail.

Then go to the 17th page of the pdf (with page number 11 in the corner) to see the limits for nitrate and nitrite in Table II. In the USA, Nitrate is ONLY banned from Bacon (and baby foods).

Incidentally, you can see what the position is on "antioxidants" (like Vitamin C, ascorbic acid) in Chapter 4 -- where they are described as "cure accelerators" !!!

Go back a page to the introduction to Chapter 2.

There you will find a splendid example of regulatory illogic that nobody seems at all concerned about.

The same weight proportions of Nitrate and Nitrite are cited for the Sodium and Potassium salts --- DESPITE it being acknowledged that this means different amounts of the active Nitrate and Nitrite ions.

Except for bacon - where different levels ARE permitted!

Either the sodium or the potassium salt of nitrite may be used for curing products, but the weight

limitation (based on sodium) is the same for both salts. This limitation was established when the

sodium salt was the only one permitted. Later, the potassium salt was allowed to be added at the

same level. This level is safe, but rather conservative because potassium is a heavier element than

sodium and a greater weight of a potassium salt must be used for the equivalent amount of nitrite

or nitrate to be in the product. The bacon regulation, which is more recent than those governing

other cured products, also permits both salts, but at different limits for each salt.

Please don't get the idea that US Regulatory requirements are framed in the light of the very latest scientific knowledge.

They aren't.

IMPORTANT HEALTH WARNING re the Handbook and its arithmetic.

In the calculation formulae where they say "percent" they mean proportion. Really!

If something is at 10% -- you'd have to enter 0.1 NOT 10 to get the right answer ...

Edited August 16, 2010 by dougal (log)

[MaxH]

dougal, thanks for info on the Meat Inspector's Handbook and for clarifying the only partial obsolescence of Nitrates. FYI, other US gov't standards also specify current permitted curing procedures (including the food-additives section of Title 9, Code of Federal Regulations). In the other eG thread I mentioned, a University of Georgia paper reviewing curing methods summarizes: Nitrate is prohibited in bacon and the nitrite concentration is limited in other cured meats. In other cured foods, there is insufficient scientific evidence for N-nitrosamine formation. These publications often mention antioxidants as cure "accelerators" -- I gather it's among their effects.

... Please don't get the idea that US Regulatory requirements are framed in the light of the very latest scientific knowledge. They aren't.

No argument here! As an occasional reader of US food regulations I've come to appreciate the gaffes. An utter classic concerns common Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), component of absinthe liquors (banned in the US, as in some other countries, until recently). US regulations changed recently to allow absinthe manufacture, but left intact the larger, longstanding regulatory gaffe: The Wormwood plant itself was banned in 1915 as a US food ingredient, on the basis that it contains thujone (an herbal principle scapegoated in 19th-century France for absinthe's supposed toxicity). Not long after that absinthe ban, thujone was found to be in many herbs, including familiar cooking herbs never branded toxic, and bearing the highest safety classification in the very US regulations that banned Wormwood for containing this chemical. People have remarked online about this contradiction since the 1990s. The recent US change allows Wormwood use, yet still requires a thujone-free finished product. In contrast to (for example) common Sage, Salvia officinalis -- never banned, regulated, or labeled toxic, though its thujone content has been publicly known for 80 years or so to be about the same as Wormwood's.

[dougal]

... FYI, other US gov't standards also specify current permitted curing procedures (including the food-additives section of Title 9, Code of Federal Regulations). In the other eG thread I mentioned, a University of Georgia paper reviewing curing methods summarizes: Nitrate is prohibited in bacon and the nitrite concentration is limited in other cured meats. ... These publications often mention antioxidants as cure "accelerators" -- I gather it's among their effects.

Three brief points :

- AFAIK, the Meat Inspectors (the guys the Handbook is written for) are responsible for enforcing ALL the various Federal requirements, thus their Handbook brings everything (for meat-processing chemistry) together in one publication.

- They don't actually check, OR HAVE LIMITS FOR, the actual amount of Nitrate or Nitrite - IN - the product !!! (Which IS what we limit in Europe.) All that the US limits is the exposure to curing salts during the process. From which a rather questionable calculation is made to produce the so-called "in-going" amount for the process - which is what the regulations actually limit. But that's NOT a "real" concentration. Looking at the assumptions underlying the calculations should stop any non-commercial producer from thinking that there's any real precision in the numerical "limits" so frequently cited.

- Cure Accelerators (like Vitamin C) are in Chapter 4. But proper Antioxidants (like butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), and propyl gallate) are in Chapter 8 "Antioxidant Calculations".

Yes, I know Vitamin C is an antioxidant ...

Anyone geekily interested in Charcuterie really ought to take a look at this book. (And its a free download.)

It does put things in a somewhat different context.

[jmolinari]

I own:

Charcuterie - good beginner book. Some small inaccuracies, but overall great starter book

Cooking by hand - This was my 1st book on curing, even before Charcuterie, and i think the chapter on it is better than all of Charcuterie, and worth purchasing the book for that chapter alone. The rest of the book is great too.

Art of..Marianski bros: GREAT GREAT book. Probably the hardest to read due to a lot of scientific content, but they seem to have done a lot of research and answer many questions that many people curing meats have. They discuss different starter cultures, and why it's ok for some to be slower than others etc.etc. They have long chapters on equipment and a whole bunch of recipes. It's a fantastic book.

I have a slew of Italian books as well on the subject, and they're OK. I use them mostly for inspiration and ideas, actually one of them from 1976, and no longer in print, is very good.

[dougal]

...

Art of..Marianski bros: GREAT GREAT book. Probably the hardest to read due to a lot of scientific content, but they seem to have done a lot of research and answer many questions that many people curing meats have. They discuss different starter cultures, and why it's ok for some to be slower than others etc.etc. They have long chapters on equipment and a whole bunch of recipes. It's a fantastic book. ...

I've heard that the "2nd Edition" has been 'turned into English' more comprehensively than the first was - something to watch out for! The 2nd edition is on my wish list.

Which one have you got Jason?

[jmolinari]

Dougal, Not sure, i got it soon after release, so probably the 1st edition. I hope they didn't remove the science, that's what made it so useful though. Maybe you're referring to the grammatical mistakes?

[dougal]

I think the first edition was said to be a bit 'Polish' in its use of English - I don't think its a total overhaul, just a pro editing/layout job!

[jmolinari]

I think the first edition was said to be a bit 'Polish' in its use of English - I don't think its a total overhaul, just a pro editing/layout job!

Yeah..that sounds about right:) It's still awesome though.

[scotty2]

Dougal, I can't seem to find the link to the Meat Processor's handbook. Could you point me in the right direction?

[dougal]

Dougal, I can't seem to find the link to the Meat Processor's handbook. Could you point me in the right direction?

It was one of the things mentioned in post #4 this thread, but no matter, here it is on its own -

US Dept of Agriculture, Processing Inspectors' Calculations Handbook: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FSISDirectives/7620-3.pdf

ADDED - Reminder - in the calcs "percent" does NOT mean percent! Its proportion - see the worked examples!

Edited August 25, 2010 by dougal (log)

[repoman]

There is a new book coming out this fall that looks kind of promising, though not a comprehensive guide. Its called "Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers" by Marissa Guggiana It's kind of a nose-to-tail cooking book which has a handful of charcuterie recipes. I have access to an online preview and it had quite a few charcuterie recipes/techniques.

[Chris Hennes]

Thanks, repoman. Here's the amazon.com page on that book. The books sounds compelling even outside the charcuterie aspect: from the publisher's description:

• 50 Profiles and Portraits of America’s Best Butchers
  
• 100 Meat Recipes for the Home Cook
  
• Practical Advice on Techniques and Tools
  
• Hundreds of Diagrams, Illustrations, and Photos
  
• Home Butchering How-To
  
• Tons of Trade Secrets
  

[RobertCollins]

I just pre ordered Primal Cuts. If I keep reading and buying from this thread, I'll be so broke that I can't afford to send a request for quote to my banko attorney.

[dougal]

I haven't seen it mentioned at all in this thread, but Victoria Wise's American Charcuterie (ISBN 0670808431 in original hardcover, and readily available used) broke this ground in the modern US a quarter-century ago. (Wise, original chef at Alice Waters's Chez Panisse, early 1970s, opened a pioneering traditional French-style charcuterie shop nearby -- the "Pig by the Tail," aka to locals the "Charcuterie," one of the original "gourmet ghetto" businesses to open near Chez Panisse in Berkeley.) It actually was much like neighborhood charcuteries in France -- I'd had recent experience with them when Wise's shop opened, and I remember the resemblance.

Although I don't have the other books to compare it to, a professional cook commenting ("customer review") on Amazon claimed to use this one the most, among several titles.

Have you been happy with the recipes in Wise's book?

OK, so my (paperback) copy arrived today - naturally, I haven't used any recipes yet.

But some first impressions.

It seems worthwhile. Happy to give it shelf space.

There are technique discussions. Even a reasonable sequence of drawings to illustrate 'linking' fresh sausages. Perhaps outmoded by *video* but illustrative (!) of the helpful coverage. Seems not to expect much prior knowledge without being patronising -- however some recipe quantities are for quite large batches (though some are quite small). There's a preponderance of volume measures (other than for meat).

Significant that there seem to be NO 'air-cured' (dried meat) recipes at all. And nothing being smoked either.

I think the book was maybe mis-titled.

Was the "Pig by the Tail" shop really a 'charcutier' or was it a 'traiteur'?

There's a lot of stuff that definitely IS NOT charcuterie! Pasta salads? Pickled herring? Moroccan carrots? Mushrooms stuffed with snails or with spinach and ricotta? Roast Lamb? And (I kid you not) Shortbread and even beyond that, Chocolate Truffles.

Apart from the fresh sausage, it strikes me as being more the stock-in-trade of a French traiteur - a deli selling prepared foods.

Almost the first half of the book covers patés, fresh sausages and salted/brined meats & fish.

Then we get into the sort of recipes that, while interesting enough (even if some do foreshadow 'fusion' cuisine), really cannot possibly be described as charcuterie.

Best charcuterie book?

Don't think so.

But interesting nevertheless.

Edited September 4, 2010 by dougal (log)