Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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85 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EXCELLENT INTRODUCTION FOR HOME SAUSAGE MAKERS, October 23, 1999
By A Customer
This is an excellent introduction to sausage making. It has tips on technique, ingredients and equipment and is also chock full of recipes, many of which have been geared to the production of "healthy" product--including sections on fish and poultry. It's only weakness is that it doesn't discuss any particular topic in great depth--but that can (most likely) be forgiven in a text designed to be an introduction, albeit a complete one. If you're going to make sausage on an occasional basis, this would be an excellent book to have as your only text on sausage making.
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59 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Coaching, weak sausage, July 15, 2004
By A Customer
I've had this book for a while now, and have made a few different sausage recipes from it. First off, the book is very good on encouraging readers to try making their own sausages, and it gives a lot of detail on what's involved in the process for various styles of sausage (smoked, loose, dried, links, etc.). The information about dealing with casings was right on the money and very easy to follow--I'm not sure I'd have gotten the good results I have without this particular section. Overall, the instructions are very clear, accurate, and really encouraging and helpful for beginners.Unfortunately, this is kind of where the good news ends. So far, I've found the recipes to be kind of wanting. They're clever, and it's a comprehensive selection of sausages, but all the ones I've made have been pretty weakly spiced. I'm not talking about them not being hot enough--I like spicy food, but I don't think everything needs to be spicy--I'm talking about not having sufficient quantities of spices. For example, the bratwurst I made from their recipe didn't taste much like anything except meat. This is a fairly subtle sausage at the best of times, but as recommended in the book it's flavorless. I have consistently found that I need to greatly increase the amount of spices in the sausages beyond what the recipes call for to get a flavor that seems appropriate. I'm a serious and very experienced cook, so I don't think it's a problem on my end. But your mileage may vary. With that said, though, I still can recommend the book as a good starter into the concepts and techniques of sausage making. Would I buy it again? Maybe not. Will I refer to it again now that I have it? Definitely--on the technical side, it won't steer you wrong, and it's very user-friendly.
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58 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book for hands on advice. Buy It., January 5, 2006
`Home Sausage Making' by Susan Mahnke Peery and Charles G. Reavis is a great small book in its third edition since it was originally published in 1981 by the very small publishing house, Storey, which specializes in culinary titles. Reading this book shows up the dangers to a reviewer in reviewing the very first book one encounters on a specialized subject such as home sausage making. Just three days ago, I reviewed `Bruce Aidells' Complete Sausage Book' by meat and sausage experts Aidells and Denis Kelly, published by cookbook behemoth, 10 Speed Press. Naturally, with Aidells' reputation and my liking the previous two books this pair have done, I gave the book a very complementary review.
Now, I read another book on exactly the same subject and I find an even better book that addresses all of the criticisms I had of the Aidells and Kelly book. Specifically, it makes liberal use of illustrations of both equipment and technique, with the added bonus of being very specific about health hazards and the means for avoiding them, by being clear about cooking, aging, and smoking temperatures. Thankfully, there is enough difference between the two books and they are both inexpensive enough to make it worth your while to own both. If you really need to limit yourself to one, the Aidells / Kelly book is better for the armchair sausage buff, who is more interested in things to do with sausage and with the scoop on what is in the sausage he buys at the deli, megamart, or specialty meat store. Peery / Reavis is better for people who are really interested in actually making sausage, based on the much better illustration of sausage making equipment and technique, and fewer recipes, compared to Aidells / Kelly on what to make with sausage.
Peery / Reavis also has a much broader interpretation of what constitutes sausage. In addition to all the obvious preparations, this book includes recipes for making scrapple (2 recipes) and other American favorites. While both books include lots of famous international recipes for fresh and cured sausage, Aidells / Kelly presents these recipes is a more organized fashion which is better suited if you happen to want to make a Spanish or Cajun or oriental sausage.
I compared the recipes for `basic breakfast sausage' in both books and found the ingredients to be virtually identical. The only difference in ingredients is the presence of dried marjoram in Peery / Reavis and their substitution of brown sugar for granulated white sugar. Peery / Reavis' procedure was also more detailed, especially since it was oriented toward making sausage in casings while Aidells / Kelly refers you the general technique on filling casings without repeating the instructions for the specific recipe.
While Aidells / Kelly organizes their recipes by region, Peery / Reavis organizes their recipes by ingredients, giving us chapters on:
Pork Sausages
Beef, Lamb, and Veal Sausages
Combination Sausages
Game Sausages
Poultry Sausages
Seafood Sausages
Vegetarian Sausages
Both books have lots of sidebars on the origins and trivia about sausages. The introduction giving the history seems like one of them cribbed from the other, as they both seem to touch on the same bases, right down to the references to sausage in Homer's `Odyssey'. Aidells / Kelly is just a bit more interesting in this background information; however the charm of Peery / Reavis' background from U.S. bratwurst central in Sheboygan, Wisconsin is not lost in their obvious love of their subject.
As a trivial aside, I must object to Peery / Reavis' comment on Otto von Bismarck's comparison of sausage making and lawmaking, as Bismarck's intent was clearly to illuminate the nature of lawmaking and politics and not to make a culinary comment.
Both books are very good. Get both, but get Peery / Reavis first if you really want to make sausage yourself.
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