Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn

Charcuterie exploded onto the scene in 2005 and encouraged an army of home cooks and professional chefs to start curing their own foods.

This love song to animal fat and salt has blossomed into a bona fide culinary movement, throughout America and beyond, of curing meats and making sausage, pâtes, and confits. Charcuterie: Revised and Updated will remain the ultimate and authoritative guide to that movement, spreading the revival of this ancient culinary craft.

Early in his career, food writer Michael Ruhlman had his first taste of duck confit. The experience "became a fascination that transformed into a quest" to understand the larger world of food preservation, called charcuterie, once a critical factor in human survival. He wondered why its methods and preparations, which used to keep communities alive and allowed for long-distance exploration, had been almost forgotten. Along the way he met Brian Polcyn, who had been surrounded with traditional and modern charcuterie since childhood. "My Polish grandma made kielbasa every Christmas and Easter," he told Ruhlman. At the time, Polcyn was teaching butchery at Schoolcraft College outside Detroit.

Ruhlman and Polcyn teamed up to share their passion for cured meats with a wider audience. The rest is culinary history. Charcuterie: Revised and Updated is organized into chapters on key practices: salt-cured meats like pancetta, dry-cured meats like salami and chorizo, forcemeats including pâtes and terrines, and smoked meats and fish. Readers will find all the classic recipes: duck confit, sausages, prosciutto, bacon, pâte de campagne, and knackwurst, among others. Ruhlman and Polcyn also expand on traditional mainstays, offering recipes for hot- and cold-smoked salmon; shrimp, lobster, and leek sausage; and grilled vegetable terrine. All these techniques make for a stunning addition to a contemporary menu.

Thoroughly instructive and fully illustrated, this updated edition includes seventy-five detailed line drawings that guide the reader through all the techniques. With new recipes and revised sections to reflect the best equipment available today, Charcuterie: Revised and Updated remains the undisputed authority on charcuterie.

ISBN:

9780393240054

Category:

Cooking With Meat & Game

Format:

Hardcover

Publication Date:

3rd September 2013

Publisher:

W W Norton & Company

Pages:

320

Dimensions:

30.9 x 23.2 x 6.2cm

Weight:

0.95kg

About the Authors

Michael Ruhlman is the author of nine non-fiction books, one collection of novellas, and nine cookbooks. He is the co-author with various chefs of ten other cookbooks. Best known for writing about food, chefs and the work of professional cooking, he has also written for The New York Times, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Gourmet magazine, and other publications.

As a young cook, Chef Brian was mentored by one of the first certified master chefs in the country, Chef Milos Cihelka, where he first learned and fell in love with the craft of charcuterie. Chef Brian now boasts over 45 years of culinary experience, 40 of which have been devoted to refining the art of charcuterie and 27 dedicated to educating the next generation of chefs/restaurateurs. He has consulted with such brands as Campbell’s, Kellogg’s, Hormel, Tyson, Preservation LLC, Northwest Airlines and more.