Author | Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Subject | Charcuterie |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Publisher | W. W. Norton |
Publication date | 2005 |
Media type | Hardback |
Pages | 320 |
ISBN | 0-393-05829-8 |
Preceded by | Bouchon |
Followed by | House: A Memoir |
Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing is a 2005 book by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn about using the process of charcuterie to cure various meats, including bacon, pastrami, and sausage. The book received extremely positive reviews from numerous food critics and newspapers, causing national attention to be brought to the method of charcuterie. Because of the high amount of interest, copies of the book sold out for a period of a few months at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. [1]
The book covers the various methods of charcuterie, including the "brining, dry-curing, pickling, hot- and cold-smoking, sausage-making, confit, and the construction of pâtés" that also involves more than 140 recipes for various dishes that have been made with the described methods. [2]
Reviews for the book were overwhelmingly positive. Mick Vann of the Austin Chronicle praised the use of "clear and concise instruction and revealing headnotes" and also said that the "realistic illustrations reinforce the text in an especially illuminating style, making it incredibly easy to follow the methods". [2] Hilary Hylton of Time called it a "bible among foodie bloggers, eat-local enthusiasts and cooking professionals". [3] Lorraine Eaton of The Virginian-Pilot said that the book "eloquently and patiently walks you through everything from bacon to Spanish chorizo." [4] Alison Arnett of the Boston Globe described how it is a "detailed, even fussy, manual" and also how the author in an interview with her was surprised at the success of the book. [5] Hsiao-Ching Chou of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said that the book "makes an impassioned case for 'why we still love and need hand-preserved foods in the age of the refrigerator, the frozen dinner, Domino's Pizza, and the 24-hour grocery store.'" [6] Chou also stated that the "intellectual cook will delight in reading and, perhaps, 'cooking' from this book." [7] Adina Steiman of the New York Sun said to cooks in her review, "if you love good sausage, quality salami, and honest bacon, you'll find this fascinating reading even if you only make the simpler recipes". [8] Scott Rowson of the Columbia Daily Tribune called it "approachable, yet exhaustively researched". [1]
Bacon is a type of salt-cured pork made from various cuts, typically the belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish, used as a central ingredient, or as a flavouring or accent.
Fatback is a cut of meat from a domestic pig. It consists of the layer of adipose tissue under the skin of the back, with or without the skin. Fatback is "hard fat" and is distinct from the visceral fat that occurs in the abdominal cavity which is called "soft fat" and is used to produce leaf lard.
Smoked meat is the result of a method of preparing red meat, white meat, and seafood which originated in the Paleolithic Era. Smoking adds flavor, improves the appearance of meat through the Maillard reaction, and when combined with curing it preserves the meat. When meat is cured then cold-smoked, the smoke adds phenols and other chemicals that have an antimicrobial effect on the meat. Hot smoking has less impact on preservation and is primarily used for taste and to slow-cook the meat. Interest in barbecue and smoking is on the rise worldwide.
Gravlax or graved salmon is a Nordic dish consisting of salmon that is cured using a mix of salt and sugar, and either dill or sprucetwigs placed on top, and may occasionally be cold-smoked afterwards. Gravlax is usually served as an appetizer, sliced thinly and accompanied by hovmästarsås, dill and mustard sauce, either on bread or with boiled potatoes.
Serbian cuisine is a Balkan cuisine that consists of the culinary methods and traditions of Serbia. Its roots lie in Serbian history, including centuries of cultural contact and influence with the Greeks and the Byzantine Empire, the Ottomans, and Serbia's Balkan neighbours, especially during the existence of Yugoslavia. Historically, Serbian food develops from pastoral customs that involved the keeping of sheep in mountain highlands, in a climate and regional context that favoured animal husbandry over vegetable farming; Serbian food is therefore traditionally richer in animal products and basic grains - corn, wheat and oats, than fresh vegetable dishes. Following the abandon of widely practiced pastoral lifestyles, Serbian food emerges through the middle ages heavily dependant not on lamb or mutton, but on the keeping of pigs for the annual cull and the production of various cured meats - sausages, bacon and ham products.
Charcuterie is a French term for a branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, such as bacon, ham, sausage, terrines, galantines, ballotines, pâtés, and confit, primarily from pork.
Tasso ham is a smoked, spiced, and cured meat, a specialty of south Louisiana cuisine. In this case "ham" is a misnomer since tasso is not made from the hind leg of a hog, but rather the hog's shoulder. This cut is typically fatty, and because the muscle is constantly used by the animal, has a great deal of flavor. The shoulder, which will weigh 7 to 8 pounds, is sliced across the grain into pieces about 3 in thick. These are dredged in a salt cure, which usually includes sodium nitrite and sugar. The meat is left to cure briefly, only three or four hours, then rinsed, rubbed with a spice mixture containing cayenne pepper and garlic, and hot-smoked until cooked through.
Curing salt is used in meat processing to generate a pinkish shade and to extend shelf life. It is both a color agent and a means to facilitate food preservation as it prevents or slows spoilage by bacteria or fungus. Curing salts are generally a mixture of sodium chloride and sodium nitrite, and are used for pickling meats as part of the process to make sausage or cured meat such as ham, bacon, pastrami, corned beef, etc. Though it has been suggested that the reason for using nitrite-containing curing salt is to prevent botulism, a 2018 study by the British Meat Producers Association determined that legally permitted levels of nitrite have no effect on the growth of the Clostridium botulinum bacteria that causes botulism, in line with the UK’s Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food opinion that nitrites are not required to prevent C. botulinum growth and extend shelf life..
Curing is any of various food preservation and flavoring processes of foods such as meat, fish and vegetables, by the addition of salt, with the aim of drawing moisture out of the food by the process of osmosis. Because curing increases the solute concentration in the food and hence decreases its water potential, the food becomes inhospitable for the microbe growth that causes food spoilage. Curing can be traced back to antiquity, and was the primary method of preserving meat and fish until the late 19th century. Dehydration was the earliest form of food curing. Many curing processes also involve smoking, spicing, cooking, or the addition of combinations of sugar, nitrate, and nitrite.
Michael Carl Ruhlman is an American author, home cook and entrepreneur.
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D’Artagnan (D'Artagnan, Inc., also known as D'Artagnan Foods) is a food seller and manufacturer of beef, pork, lamb, veal, pâtés, sausages, smoked and cured charcuterie, all-natural and organic poultry, game, free-range meat, foie gras, wild mushrooms, and truffles.
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