Charcuterie: salting, smoking, and curing meats

[KBCraig]

One of my Christmas presents (okay, okay, I ordered it and told Mary thank you!) was Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn.

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in any aspect of preserving meat. While I don't think they cover actually slaughtering the critter (I'm just getting started in the book), they do cover pretty much everything from that point on. Salt curing, sugar curing, cold smoking, hot smoking, canning, drying... They include recipes, processes, and techniques for all the major forms of preserving meats from many cultures. It's interesting from both the historical point of view, and the scientific. And if you're just a big ol' carnivore like me, it will have you dying to try some of the recipes.

If you just want to try making your own bacon from a slab of pork belly, or turn your duck into confit de canard and duck breast prosciutto, or slaughter a hog and make true country cured hams and sausage of every variety, this is your book.

I can only read a couple of pages a day; otherwise, I get too tempted to run out and buy a feeder pig and sharpen my knives.

Edit to add: they don't restrict themselves to meat. They also cover basic salting/curing/fermenting techniques for vegetables, such as pickles and sauerkraut.

[Pat McCotter]

Do they answer Friday's question from last year - looking for pemmican?

[KBCraig]

I think they mention pemmican, but it's not in the index.

[Jim Johnson]

   
Pemmican Recipehttp://www.natureskills.com/pemmican_recipe.html

Downer Alert:  Pemmican is a concentrated food that is best consumed sparingly, when you are active, and not for an extended period of time. Consumption of hard fat can be unhealthy for sedentary people, and protein over consumption can overload the body with uric acid (which may lead to gout) and calcium oxalate (the mineral which forms kidney stones).  Ketones may also build up in the system, causing kidney damage. Ketones are strong acids and are harmful to your body.  (A sign of protein over consumption is ketone breath, which smells like nail polish or overripe pineapple.)