Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book : Recipes from America's Premium Sausage Maker [Paperback]

Bruce Aidells (Author), Denis Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

Fans of Aidells sausages know there's a whole world beyond kielbasa, and it starts with Bruce Aidells gourmet sausages. In BRUCE AIDELLS' COMPLETE SAUSAGE BOOK, the king of the links defines each type of sausage, explains its origin, teaches us how to make sausages, and treats us to his favorite recipes for cooking with them. Hundreds of related tips and essays on Aidells' never-ending quest for yet another great sausage round out the collection, which includes color photos of 16 of the most mouth-watering dishes. With the COMPLETE SAUSAGE BOOK in hand, you'll be ready to add this most versatile, hearty, and satisfying ingredient to your gourmet cooking repertoire.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Although it's not readily apparent, this is actually a new edition (only very slightly revised) of Aidells and Kelly's Hot Links and Country Flavors (o.p.). However, it remains an excellent book Aidells and Kelly are known for mouthwatering recipes and entertaining (The Complete Meat Cookbook), and libraries whose original copies have aged badly, or that missed it the first time around, will want to add this. In addition, Aidells's delicious sausages are now far more widely available, in gourmet and other specialty markets, than they were when the book was originally published, so there should be new interest from their fans as well.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Bruce Aidells' Complete Sausage Book shows how much flavor and excitement a good cook can extract from a single, somewhat common ingredient. Sausages came about to make palatable those edible but less choice scraps and leftovers from the butchering process. Over time sausages have become national symbols: Poland's kielbasa, Germany's wursts, and America's hot dog. Along with coauthor Denis Kelly, Aidells inventories the world of sausages, including Asian varieties as well as more familiar European and American types. In addition to instructions for making these sausages, he offers recipes that feature sausages, from breakfast dishes through hearty stews such as Polish bigos and the noteworthy Pennsylvania Dutch apple and sausage stew, Schnitz und Knepp. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 314 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press; 1ST edition (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580081592
• ISBN-13: 978-1580081597
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.8 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking by Ingredient > Meat, Poultry & Seafood > Meats

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Source on Fresh Sausage. Buy It!, January 2, 2006

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book : Recipes from America's Premium Sausage Maker (Paperback)

`Bruce Aidells' Complete Sausage Book' by meat and sausage experts Aidells and Denis Kelly is the third book by Aidells I have reviewed and it easily maintains the consistently high quality I have come to expect from this writing team on the subject of meat. Along with the team of Schlesinger and Willoughby, they seem to be the reigning kings among culinary writers on the subject of meat, more especially on the subject of pork and sausage.

For starters, I strongly recommend this book for all people interested in reading about food and in cooking, even if you have no interest in making sausage yourself. In many ways, it is as good as the recently published book `Charcuterie' by the team of culinary journalist Michael Ruhlman and charcuterie expert and chef, Brian Poleyn, if only because Aidells and Kelly are better at staying focused on their primary topic. `Charcuterie' is very good, but if what you really want to know about is sausage, Aidells and Kelly are much better.

One thing these two books do for me is to completely reassess my opinion of Emeril Lagasse and his `Pork Fat Rules' mantra. It is so easy to take this as bluster, yet both books in one voice say that pork fat is the cream of the crop when it comes to animal fats. Beef suet is too grainy and chicken fat melts at too low a temperature to be useful for a lot of cooking applications for which pork fat is so good.

It is important to note that while this book does touch on the subjects of smoked and cured sausages, its primary subject by far is fresh sausage that you can make at home. Next to the affirmation of pork fat, I was most pleasantly surprised by the great variety of fresh sausage recipes and in the antiquity of so many of these varieties. It is easy to believe that hot and sweet Italian sausage and German bratwurst and Spanish chorizo and Polish Kielbasa have been around a long time and it is not unexpected to find that the Cajun specialties boudin and andouille are pretty old. However, it is surprising to find that ingredients such as apples and dried tomatoes are not modern foodie concoctions, but easily as old as fennel and garlic as sausage ingredients.

Another major epiphany I take from this book is the fact that along with pasta, canned tomatoes, olive oil, onions, garlic, parsley, anchovies, eggs, flour, milk and capers, sausage is one of the most versatile items one can have on hand in your pantry, as it can be used as a flavorful addition to a really wide variety of dishes. The only caveat is that fresh sausage must be frozen in order to keep it safe and it's frozen shelf life may not be much more than two months. Even so, this book will give you more than enough good ideas for using that sausage to keep you from forgetting about the stash of charcuterie goodness.

The book is divided up by three major topics. The first and shortest is on basic fresh sausage making techniques and the methods for hot and cold smoking fresh sausage. Even if you never use these techniques, the interested foodie should really know how these techniques work and what they do, so you are in a better position to make the best use of products of these two techniques. My biggest criticism with this book comes in this section which would have been much better done with a few good diagrams of various types of smoking devices. Most of this material would have been harder for me to appreciate had I not seen Alton Brown's popular `Good Eats' parody of `Iron Chef' where he cold smokes bacon with one of his typically McGyveresque contraptions.

The authors make simple sausage making sound easy, and with the right precautions, it really is. All you really need to convince yourself of this fact is to realize it is not much more than making meatloaf. The main concerns come with the care and sanitation involved in grinding the meat, as a dirty meat grinder is an open invitation to unwanted microbial beasties. And, while the book supplies sources for sausage making tools, I suggest you do the Martha Stewart routine of searching out tag sales for solid metal meat grinders you can probably get for a song.

The second major section covers recipes for making a wide variety of sausages. The chapters within this part cover:

American Sausages:
American Farmhouse Sausage with 10 recipes, including smoked sausage and chicken and apple sausage.
Southern Sausages with 9 recipes, including Boudin, Andouille, Chaurice, Tasso, and Pickled Pork.
Midwestern Sausages with 14 recipes influenced by Germany, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe.
Southwestern Sausages with 6 recipes influenced by Spain, including chorizo and poultry sausage.
Mediterranean Sausages with 13 recipes including Italian, Spanish, and Greek sausages.
Asian Style Sausages with 5 recipes including mushrooms, chicken, and shrimp.
Game and Seafood sausages with 12 recipes including salmon, duck, crawfish, buffalo, and venison.

The third major section (Part II) covers recipes for using sausage in dishes. Recipes are organized in ten (10) chapters on:

Breakfast All Day
Sausage Starters: Appetizers and Salads
Sausage Based Soups
Sausage Sandwiches and Pizzas
Lotta Pasta (and Sausage)
Better Beans and Grains
Sausage with Fish and Seafood
Cacklers and Gobblers: Poultry and Sausages
Red Meat and Sausage
Sausage Spiked Side Dishes

This is more than enough evidence to convince me to have sausage on hand on a regular basis. And, one piece of very good news is the fact that nitrites in sausage are no longer considered a health risk and by making your own sausage, you can avoid almost all the unwanted chemicals put into commercial sausage.

This is a foodie `must have' book!

56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars absolute keeper, April 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book : Recipes from America's Premium Sausage Maker (Paperback)

Okay, I bought this book, went out to get the food grinder and sausage stuffer attachment for my KitchenAid. I read and scanned the book over and over again. I finally decided to try the fresh Italian sausage and the chicken and apple recipe. I kept stalling and putting it off..well finally I got so sick of postponing that I actually got out of bed at 2 a.m. in the morning. Rolled up my sleeves and went right into it.

From grinding, to mixing, to clean up took me at least 4 hours. You have to remember that this is the first time I ever attempted something this crazy. I was petrified. What did I get myself into? But know what... the sausages were incredible. I practically ate the first batch of Italian sausage all of 3.5 lbs by myself. I had the hardest time sharing it with my kids who stared at me drooling with those puppy eyes begging to have a taste of what Mama was eating. And when I have to use these sausages for a pasta dish for some visiting friends, I actually regretted inviting them over since I wanted to eat the sausages myself. That bad..and that good!!

Sorry for the long story..but anyways here's the lesson for me. I won't know till I try and that's all it took me. Once. So for you who are intimidated with the whole thing but who loves to eat like me it's all worth it. Here's an excellent book to start your journey to becoming a sausage maker. And you will see the great difference between a store bought and something you made yourself.

Another book I found useful is Home Sausage Making by Charles something. Have an incredible time eating!!!

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insanely great book (if you want to make sausage)!, January 29, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book : Recipes from America's Premium Sausage Maker (Paperback)

I really bought this book to make cajun boudin, as well as andouille sausage. My dream was to make gumbo with my own andouille, and darned if it didn't turn out perfect the first time. We've made Chorizo, Linguica, and are looking at a poultry-Thai sausage next!

To truly get the most out of this book you need the following:

1) a meat grinder (I use my Kitchen-Aid with an attachment

2) a sausage filling attachment for your meat grinder (not required, if you're just going to make patties!)

3) some medium hog casings (again, not required, if you're just going to make patties!)

4) a smoker (not required, if you're not making smoked sausages, of course!)

However! The second half of the book is recipes USING sausage, so you could just buy the sausage at the market and enjoy the recipes (but what's the fun in that?)

This is a fantastic book, highly recommended, with interesting background essays on several of the sausage varieties. The sidebar on "Hot Boudin and Cold Beer" is right on the money.