Customer Reviews

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

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`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!

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!!!

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.

If you're unsure about your commitment to sausage making, don't let your uncertainty dissuade you from buying this book. While his sausage recipes are indeed excellent (I've made a few of them), a large portion of the book provides recipes for using sausage in recipes. And those recipes are very good. Personally, I think the book's worth the price for the cornbread stuffing (with pork sausage and andouille) alone.

While visiting from Indiana, my brother told me about making sausage. He bought a grinder and a book. Said I would no longer wonder about the fancy sausages I got in Portland. He convinced me. I bought an attachment for my Kitchen Aid, picked up Bruce Aidell's book and that was that! I bought some casings from the local whole foods store and some meat, spices and stuffing goodies and started making the best sausages I have ever eaten! This book has all the recipes and they are wonderful! Easy to follow. No pictures, but it is a book about grinding and stuffing. Who needs pictures? The book is great! Want to make your own sausages? Buy this book. Adds a new dimension to cooking...or grilling!

The word "complete" is because this cookbook shows you both how to make sausages, and then how to cook with them. I liked the sausage making recipes, but was not very impressed with the sausage cooking section.

This book is really 2 different books in one, so I will describe them separately. The first part, which is the first 100 pages, is full of wonderful, useful, and very rare recipes for making fresh or cured sausages. The second part is 200 pages is a pretty standard collection of recipes that use sausages, which I am less enthusiastic about.

The first 20 pages of the sausage making section supplies information for making and curing sausages. The rest of the section has individual recipes for many different types of sausages. It has sections on: country style, southern, german / east european, southwest, mediterranean, asian, game, and seafood. You quickly learn that despite their variety, sausages are really just ground meat with many seasonings (getting the texture just right and fighting with the meat grinder is a different story). The only difficulty with this part is the necessity of a meat grinder; in most cases, you cannot use a food processor. The other problem is getting the sausages casings; you can just make them in bulk (which is how I usually use them, as I am too lazy to go through the trouble of stuffing them into casings), or go to a local, old fashion meat butcher and get them there.

The recipe section is a little less interesting. It has: breakfast, appetizers, soup, sandwich, pasta, grains, seafood, poultry, meat, and sides. The quality of the recipes is OK, but not exceptional (sort of like the recipes in those magazines in the check-out lines at the grocery store). The recipe section is a moderately useful section, since you can use store bought varieties of sausages. The problem here is that the recipes are arranged in standard fashion; organizing according to the sausage they use would have been more helpful. That way, if you have some sausage sitting in the refrigerator or freezer, it would be easier to find a recipe that uses them.

Some of the page references are wrong.

These sausage recipes gather dishes from across the country, providing a treatise on different kinds of sausages and regional variations. Recipes blend with Aidell's travels across America in search of great sausages, providing a wide range of sausages and ethnic insights. No color photos, but the easy recipes and colorful descriptions don't need them.

This book is both interesting to read and informative to those that desire to attempt to create good food rather than just but it. It is documented well with creatively laid out recipes and has a page in the back listing mail-order sources for herbs and spices as well as sources for sausages and specialty meats.
It is worth the price as a resource guide and a good read for food lovers.

I have used this cookbook now for six months or so. The book looks very nice and has some good pointers on grinding, making and stuffing sausage. I have tried a number of the fresh sausage recipes (mostly pork). The breakfast sausage recipe is really pretty good, although probably too hot for your average breakfast palatte (and I like hot food, works great for gravy though). A number of the other sausage recipes seem very bland (especially the Italian recipes, both sweet and hot). I was actually pretty amazed by this in that Aidell's is a premium brand of sausage.

As a professional restaurateur/novice sausage maker I went shopping for a book that could provide some guidance together with a variety of recipes. I reviewed the 6 books available from my library and this was the only one I wanted to keep around. Aidell provides great base recipes and helpful timely tips for me and my crew as we tweak and develop our own recipes and techniques. I shall point out that Aidells' brand of commercially packaged sausage is inferior to the quality and flavor produced when following the recipes in this book. But really that should not have come as a surprise since homemade is usually worth the effort.
We produced a most respectable medium heat level smoked andouille yesterday using Aidells' recipe using only half of the cayenne and red pepper called for. Call me a wimp but I think full strength would have brought tears to a Cajun's eyes.