Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers [Hardcover]

Marissa Guggiana (Author), Alice Wong (Editor), Katrina Fried (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: October 12, 2010

Butchery was nearly a dead art, until a recent renaissance turned progressive meat cutters into culinary cult idols. Inspired by a locally driven, nose-to-tail approach to butchery, this new wave of meat mavens is redefining the way we buy and cook our beef, pork, fowl, and game. The momentum of this revived butcher-love has created a carnivorous frenzy, pulling a new generation of home cooks straight into the kitchen—Primal Cuts: Cooking with America’s Best Butchers is their modern meat bible.

Marissa Guggiana, food activist, writer, and fourth generation meat purveyor, traveled the country to discover 50 of our most gifted butchers and share their favorite dishes, personal stories, and cooking techniques. From the Michelin star chef to the small farmer who raises free-range animals—butchers are the guide for this unique visual cookbook, packed with tons of their most prized recipes and good old-fashioned know-how. Readers will learn how to cook conventional and unconventional meat cuts, how to talk to their local butcher, and even how to source and buy their own whole animals for their home freezer. 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 love for what they do.

• 50 Profiles and Portraits of America’s Best Butchers
• 100 Meat Recipes for the Home Cook
• Practical Advice on Techniques and Tools
• Hundreds of Diagrams, Illustrations, and Photos
• Home Butchering How-To
• Tons of Trade Secrets

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Primal Cuts is a celebration of the art of the butcher…While the book covers many common cuts and options, it also explores — and gives recipes for — some lesser-known cuts and under-used animals. You'll learn the primal cuts for lamb, goat and venison in addition to understanding the different "personalities" of steaks (what distinguishes a filet from a strip steak, a rib-eye from flank). The recipes are both informative, and fun."
-Los Angeles Times

"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

"Marissa Guggiana’s Primal Cuts is proof that our obsession with butchery and whole-beast cooking hasn’t yet reached a saturation point. Filled with interviews from butchers and chefs, recipes, and charts (on topics like sharing a cow)—Guggiana’s book is a modern meat manual that celebrates the craft of old-world butchery and sustainably-raised meat without resorting to overwrought praise and glorification."
- 7x7 Magazine

“Primal Cuts is a book that celebrates butchers...full of straightforward, meat-focused dishes, each accompanied by a story about a member of the new, unexpected generation of American butchers — young, focused on quality and unwilling to compromise.”
- Richmond Magazine

"Marissa's ode to pork, lamb, beef, goat, duck and chicken is a can't-look-away book filled with well-worn recipes, illustrations and unfliching images of raw meat and white-coated butchers. A primal look at the food that fuels us, and a story of where that food comes from in all its carnivorous glory."
- BiteClubEats.com

"[Marissa Guggiana] has delivered the definitive guide to the country's carvers... At 287 pages and roughly as weighty as a rack of lamb, housed in a butcher-paper jacket, the book is full of butcher profiles, recipes, tips, philosophies and information along with hundreds of incredible photos."
- North Bay Bohemian

"Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers offers a focus on locally sourced meats with a survey of techniques and recipes from butchers across America, in effect creating a modern 'bible' packed with the latest meat insights.  Each step is illustrated in a visual cookbook that describes 100 recipes and covers everything from hot dogs to roasted goose and braised rabbit. The butchers themselves receive high profile in this unique presentation, highly recommended for any culinary collection."
- California Bookwatch

“A great book for people who want to know where their meat comes from.”
- Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make Us Human

“Anyone who laments the disappearance of the craft of butchery as a casualty of the industrial meat system will take heart in the very hopeful message of this book--that a new generation of butchers are restoring time-honored traditions in all corners of the country”.
- Paul Bertolli, chef, author of Cooking by Hand

About the Author

Marissa Guggiana is the president of Sonoma Direct, a purveyor of sustainably raised meats, the co-founder of Secret Eating Society and a leader in Slow Food, for which she was the charcuterie curator at the inaugural Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco. A contributor to Saveur.com, since 2008 Marissa has been the co-editor of Meatpaper, a quarterly magazine exploring the art, ideas, and culture of everything meat-related.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Welcome Books (October 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159962088X
• ISBN-13: 978-1599620886
• Product Dimensions: 1.4 x 8.4 x 10.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #310,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for chefs & home cooks alike!! November 27, 2010

By Cazman

Format:Hardcover

Primal Cuts is a fantastic book for learning the essentials of basic to experienced butchery for everyone. It has fast become an essential part of the books I use for work in my restaurant as well as great recipes for home. Thank you for making this book and promoting sustainable meat sourcing.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read for someone new to butchery December 21, 2010

By Mark Jones

Format:Hardcover

I've enjoyed meat all my life growing up in East Texas but never knew much about butchery. This is definitely a fine art that is fading and I will be seeking out some of these farmers that I'm local to to enjoy what they have to offer. Great book I thought.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended for any culinary collection December 16, 2010

By Midwest Book Review

Format:Hardcover

PRIMAL CUTS: COOKING WITH AMERICA'S BEST BUTCHERS offers a focus on locally sourced meats with a survey of techniques and recipes from butchers across America, in effect creating a modern 'bible' packed with the latest meat insights. Each step is illustrated in a visual cookbook that describes 100 recipes and covers everything from hot dogs to roasted goose and braised rabbit. The butchers themselves receive high profile in this unique presentation, highly recommended for any culinary collection.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Primal Cuts November 19, 2010

By Paula Shatkin

Format:Hardcover

what a gorgeous book! the stories are beautifully written, the photography is beautiful, and the recipes that I have tried are amazing.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Eat Meat? You Need This Book November 18, 2010

By Tod Brilliant

Format:Hardcover

You can shove stuff into your mouth, chew and swallow....or you can EAT.

And to me, that's the essence of Primal Cuts. These butchers offer deep respect for the animals they raise and slaughter for healthy, intentional meals. In a world gone crazy over food--with people paying ungodly sums to sup at 'rated' restaurants, it's amazing to me that the vast majority still have no idea about the process involved with rearing, slaughtering, butchering and preparing an animal for consumption. Once you know, once you've well and truly learned each step, every bite you take is filled with that knowing...and believe me, that adds some serious flavor.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Close Up to the Local Food Movement July 10, 2011

By Tom Freeman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

A real interesting book. It about encapsulates the essence of the local food movement. The books basically focuses on, I suppose, the people behind the movement. The leaders, in a way. Of course, only truly the known ones. It's very interesting how it is written. Each leader has a section to him or herself where they write a little story that focuses on their attachment to local food then there is a recipe or two.

Now the recipes are all obviously kind of difficult to make because they focus on local, sustainable meats which you obviously can only really attain at farmers markets. Though, there is also intersting tidbits of info such as how to make sausage and butchering all those sort of things.

Overall, I really liked it, I am a cook myself and very interested in local food so its nice to see people who share your passion. Buying this book is, in a way supporting the movement also. Its also a nice thing to have the book right on your bookshelf to remind you of it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent! December 31, 2010

By Jenna Shannon

Format:Hardcover

I received this book as a gift and I love it. It's well-written with beautiful photographs and do-able recipes. Overall, a great and entertaining resource. I had no idea butchers smiled so much!

3.0 out of 5 stars more image than info May 12, 2013

By K. Flagg

Format:Hardcover

Ii was trying to decided between this book and one other so I checked the reviews and they lead me to buy this one (and the fact it was a woman author didn't hurt). Must say l am a bit disappointed. I thought it would be more about the meat, instead it was more about fawning over the trend and the rockstar, hipster, meat cutters. The equivalent, for me, is when the wine industry dumb down labels (cartoons, cutesy names) to increase sales -especially aimed towards women. Don't get me wrong once and a while I will pick up a bottle of Mad,Psycho-b*tch wine but I am never going to take it seriously.

This book seem to lack the passion that the author clearly must have and instead made it "relevant" for greater sales and that's not bad, just sad that the meat is not the star of a book titled Primal Cuts. Like Darrio Cecchini said in the forward: "always respectful towards the killed animal, with the ethical imperative of always using the meat in the best manner possible, knowing that, since the beginning of time, these animals were given to mankind as a gift from God ".

I absolutely respect the butcher, it's a much harder job than most imagine, even at the grocery store leve. This is not a glamorous job but it's one they can be passionate about. I know, I've talked to a few and I've learned and want to learn more so that when I buy a piece of meat I too use it in the best possible manner.