10 hours ago, Duvel said:I strongly recommend The River Cottage Meat Cookbook. It has a cradle to table approach, describing how animals are properly reared, how to select good sources and how to treat the meat (and hence the animal) with respect. Coming from a former vegetarian background I think it would make a very wholesome entry into meat cooking and enjoying ...
It contains recipes for most animals (incl. game) and a diverse selection of cuts (not completely, but almost nose to tail). I do like the book very much.
I really love that aspect of the book too, and that is why I bought it in the first place - the whole Part One about understanding meat with detailed advice about how to buy meat, what types of cuts work for certain dishes, diagrams for each animal, etc.
Two caveats. First, it's a British book, so some of the information is not directly relevant to the US (this is discussed in the notes to the US edition at the end of the book). Second, I wasn't particularly impressed with the few recipes I tried. It wasn't the reason why I had bought the book, but since recipes constitute more than half of the book, I thought I should mention it. However I like how the recipes are arranged by cooking technique (roasting, braising, grilling, etc). I think that made a lot of sense.
