Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers by Marissa Guggiana
OutdoorHub 09.20.12
Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers is a no-holds-bar nose-to-tail dive into the ancient art turned modern mania that is meat cutting in America. Author and co-founder of The Butcher’s Guild, Marissa Guggiana, says it best: “there’s nothing precious about meat.” Sustainable meat and the revered “butcher-block rockstars” who practice this art of meat cutting, are the undeniably juicy subject of Primal Cuts.
From sausage making to perfecting stock, from the refined Tea and Plumb Rack of Lamb to the down-and-dirty Dirty Duck Rice, in Primal Cuts we get a taste of it all. The various kinds and cuts of locally-sourced meat are revealed and explored and the mystique is ripped open and made accessible.
This tomb is a world-class culinary education in itself, with a foreword by the most famous butcher in the world, Dario Cecchini and an intro by the infamous Andrew Zimmern. Primal Cuts is stuffed with useful tips, helpful diagrams, detailed step-by-step photographs, and, of course, mouth-watering recipes that take you from hot dogs to headcheese and everything in between.
The past few years have brought charcuterie into every bar from Houston, TX to Houston St. in NYC, and filled every book store with pages of meat, meat, and more meat, but Primal Cuts was at the helm of the whole animal butchery movement in 2010 and the meaty renaissance that has since ensued. Primal Cuts stood out on nearly every Best of 2010 list in NYC, LA, San Fran and Chicago and now we’ve revised and updated this ingenious and entirely informative meat bible. You’ll learn how to cook in dry heat and in wet heat, how to smoke, bake, and BBQ. This updated and revised version is teeming with the most innovative ideas, philosophies, techniques, and trade secrets from the most succulent sources. Guggiana is and has been at the forefront of the sustainable meat and farm-to-fork movement. There isn’t another book like this one. Go ahead. Take a bite. We dare you.
In Primal Cuts, there is no chop left behind. Everything is included and covered: an entire section on hamburger basics from everyone’s favorite meat purveyor turned TV host Pat LaFrieda to Pig Ear Terrine by Food & Wine Magazine’s The People’s Best New Chef 2011, Jamie Bissonnette. Adventurous locavores will learn how to cook conventional and unconventional cuts, how to talk to and what to ask their local butchers, and even how to source whole animals for their home freezers!
Much more than just a cookbook, Primal Cuts is a revealing look into the lives, philosophy, and work of true food artisans, all bound by a common respect for the food they produce and an absolute passion for what they do and a deep respect for the way the animals that give their lives.
Features:
- 100 Meat Recipes
- 50 Profiles and Portraits of America’s Best Butchers and Chefs
- Practical Advice on Techniques and Tools
- Hundreds of Diagrams, Illustrations, and Photos
- Home Butchering How-To
- Tons of Trade Secrets
“This oversize paean to the many joys of dismembering whole beasts features nose-to-tail recipes from many of the country’s new butcher-block rock stars.” –Time Out New York
