Praise for Pure Charcuterie
There are plenty of books about charcuterie out there, but none couple technical know-how with the eloquent approach to language and learning that Leigh employs. Making charcuterie is indeed an art form. Meredith’s artful writing inspires us to be that kind of artist. Her thoughtful approach to instruction makes it possible to actually be one. I will refer my own students to this book again and again for that reason.
CAMAS DAVIS Portland Meat Collective, Meat Collective Alliance
Meredith Leigh does something with Pure Charcuterie that most chefs strive a lifetime to do—combines the worlds of ethical meat production with innovative ingredients and techniques such as koji curing and wild game recipes. Pure Charcuterie is a must-own for amateur and professional butchers alike.
CHEF CLARK BARLOWE Heirloom Restaurant, Charlotte, NC
In this beautifully rendered book, Meredith Leigh takes us on a poetic journey through the world of charcuterie showing us step by step the key concepts and principles of home curing for the novice. I’m excited to embark on the journey she lays out in this amazing book and I hope to meet you along the way. I guarantee you it will be a rewarding one, as I don’t know of anyone that can make a description of making mortadella sound poetic, funny, emotionally engaging and most importantly to the point.
REY TAGLE Instagram: @home_charcuterie
This book will make you hungry. It’ll make you dig out the meat grinder someone gave you years ago. It’ll make you want to change the world. Meredith Leigh is one of the foremost young authorities on sustainable meat. Her latest book, woven with recipes, philosophy, and poetry, is so much more than a step-by-step on charcuterie. Read it, and you’ll see that the ingredients of good food extend far beyond your kitchen.
REBECCA MARTIN Managing Editor, Mother Earth News
Pulling no punches, Meredith Leigh balances the scientific “whys” of curing fundamentals, food safety and sanitation, while encouraging curiosity and flavor artistry. Her prose make will you feel like you have a teacher and mentor beside you each step of the way to create salty, fatty, delicious, pure charcuterie.
TANYA CAUTHEN Owner, founder, butcher, Charcutier, Belmont Butchery, Richmond, VA
Pure Charcuterie is the book I’ve been waiting my whole career for. Meredith takes an approach to creating charcuterie and guiding you through the process that I’ve never seen before in print. . . . This is a book for advanced professionals and beginners alike. There has not yet been a book about charcuterie that speaks a more resonate and relatable tone.
JEREMY UMANKSY Larder Master/Owner, Larder Delicatessen & Bakery
In Pure Charcuterie, Meredith Leigh takes the reader on a meaty, and yet artistic journey into the wonderful world of curing meats. This book should be on the pantry shelf of every meat loving maker out there – and even if you don’t envision creating charcuterie, Leigh’s prose, detail and passionate voice will help you understand the history and process behind the textures and flavors you so savor.
HANK WILL Editorial Director, Mother Earth News
Copyright © 2018 by Meredith Leigh.
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Interior design by Setareh Ashrafologhalai
Cover photo by Cindy Kunst / Clicks Photography
Printed in Canada. First printing November 2017.
This book is intended to be educational and informative. It is not intended to serve as a guide. The author and publisher disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk that may be associated with the application of any of the contents of this book.
Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Pure Charcuterie should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below. To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com
Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:
New Society Publishers
P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada
(250) 247-9737
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Leigh, Meredith, 1983-, author
Pure charcuterie : the craft & poetry of curing meat at home / Meredith Leigh.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-86571-860-9 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-55092-653-8 (ebook).—ISBN 978-1-77142-248-2 (EPUB)
1. Meat—Preservation—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Cooking (Meat). 3. Cookbooks. I. Title. II. Title: Craft and poetry of curing meat at home.
TX612.M4L45 2017 641. 4'9 C2017-905681-6 C2017-905682-4
New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.
This book is dedicated to anyone who does real work every day serving the land, serving other beings, supporting none of society’s illusions, and receives no credit, but does that work anyway. I honor you.
And for my loved ones who look me in the eye daily.
You have my heart.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 ON INTENTION
Synergy
Sourcing
Safety / How It Works
Equipment and Supplies
2 ON PRECISION
Sausage Primer
Sausage Processing
Apple Horseradish Sausage
Miso & Pickled Ginger Sausage
Rabbit Andouille
Buttermilk Boudin Blanc
3 ON SUSPENSION
The Terrine
Chutney & Confit Terrine
Pâté of Thirds
Working (Wo)man’s Lunchbox Pâté
60-20 Suspension
Pâté Gratin
Mortadella
4 ON WHOLENESS
Dry Curing
Wet Muscle Curing
Bacon
Corned Beef & Beef Pastrami
Lardo
Tasso Ham
Pork Shank Confit
Coppa or Capicola
Black Pepper Culatello
5 ON COLLABORATION
Fermented Dry Sausages
Making a Charcuterie Cabinet
Starter Cultures and Beneficial Molds
Koji Charcuterie
Growing Koji
Chile, Mustard & Pickled Celery Salami
Calabrese-Style Salami with Vanilla & Lardo
Nduja
Koji Venison Bresaola
Five-Spice Koji Lomo
6 ON CULMINATION
Cooking Sausages
Smoking Meat
Building Your Own Cold Smoker
Serving and Storing Charcuterie
Additional Recipes
Homemade Horseradish
Homemade Miso Sauce
Pickled Ginger
Fermented Sweet Pepper
Pickled Celery Leaves
Fennel Pickles
Candied Jalapeño Pepper
Pimento Cheese Spread
RESOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A NOTE ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
INTRODUCTION
I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT good food as a sensory journey and a form of activism, one that pleases and awakens the whole being. I believe that food can move us, physically, mentally and even spiritually, provided it is experiential and not severed from its genuine roots. In the world as I know it today, this makes food and media like it more valuable t
han ever.
As a girl, growing up poor in the city, I was constantly underwhelmed and alarmed with the charade of social performance and the dilution of art in mass entertainment. I was confused. How come the way I felt couldn’t be touched in the world around me? Did that mean that it wasn’t real? Books, dead writers and poets became a place for me. I dove into a more comfortable subsurface world with art, with writers who must have felt some of the ancient depth and longing that I had felt, with the courage to speak about it, even if only in metaphor. I wanted to create like that, but the academia around literature and poetry was intimidating. I believed there were so many things I needed to know to make art. So I studied, and in studying the art became more lost, in a machine of technique I only sometimes understood. Around that same moment I started growing food, and that became the grandest embodiment of real art that I had ever encountered. It still is.
I gave up writing, then, for a very long time. Instead I lived within organic farming and nature: the soil, the sting of the okra plant, the skins of the fruits and the sticky songs of the bugs. It seemed to me, in this realm, that two and two made ninety. How was such resonant experience, such emotional palpability, possible, just from the raw tools of nature? It was too much. It was everything. As the grandeur of growing food expanded in my life, the fact that it was (and is) so political, so connected and so fundamental added ever more allure. This. This would be my art.
About five years ago, I embraced my writing again. From poetry of loss and beauty to technical tomes on grinding meat, here I am. A writer. Everything is art, suddenly. I can touch what is real through writing. I can touch what is real through farming and food. But now, how can these arts marry into one? How can it then be of service? I write this at a time of deep transition in our culture. A book about curing meat, of all things! How can I convey worthwhile material of this nature to a troubled world? Who can possibly understand the bearing of a cured sausage on a hurried, frightened culture? Would a poem help you understand the importance of seeds? How can I show what is real? Pull your head up from your phone and touch this plant. Cut here. Smell this. Be gentler. Have a taste.
Meat preservation arose from necessity. It is trending now as art. I hope this book can successfully argue that there is no difference between these two things. We need the collusion of art and necessity in our collective mindset, now more than ever. We need to understand that what is real and important is also what is moving and beautiful. It also very often ends up being what is most functional. That is why we are drawn to it. That is why you want to know, and you want to do. To create. That is just it! That you and your people have a history of thrift, rather than the waste you see on a daily basis. That the ones who came before you made trusting marriages with the land, and that you need not only inherit irreverence. That we came from industrious souls, unafraid of mystery and committed to beauty and flavor. In the midst of pop culture and the confusion of our times, you want to see, hear, feel, taste and smell the victory of a genuine craft. You want to become vulnerable to what is softly real, not weakened, and not afraid of what is so distant and out of control. You are, after all, just an imperfect, innocent piece of nature.
I believe that in the search for what is genuine, the answer is to create. Cured meats are works of art that will open you to the land that feeds the animal, the mindful slaughter and butchery of the meat that so affects quality, and the creative possibility within yourself that curates these efforts into flavorful food. Cured meats are growing in popularity, and that is a very good thing. However, the representation of charcuterie as gourmet, over time, has created cultural and culinary blockades against the best representation of cured meat, and the accessibility of its creation. In trying to marry art and necessity, this book aims to ensure that we do not engage in the dangerous misconception that the everyday cook will not be able to cure meats. I challenge my students to consider that America is one of the only places on Earth where the rich can steal traditions and even ideas from the poor, and convince the poor that they don’t want them back.
The cultural attitude du jour is that cured meats are refined, and they are, but not by money or by class as we perceive. While their right preparation is a labor of time, talent and skill, the way we monetize time, talent and skill should receive ample skepticism. Quality cured meats are created by extremely industrious people from meager circumstances the world over. Preserved meat products arose from need and ingenuity, simple resources and pure ingredients. Art, born of necessity. Let us not forget this, and let us also celebrate it, by ensuring that we have twelve-year-olds hanging hams in their closets, and urban homesteaders cold smoking bacon on the stoop.
So therefore, in solemn worship of salt, dedicated to the unfathomable variation in soil, and powerfully dependent on the pig, the duck, the tin-tinged organs, we forge ahead. We want back in there. Let us into the space we can feel all over. We want more of what is real, and we want to savor it, slowly. We want things that are beautiful, meaningful. We want things that last.
ON INTENTION
What good does it do
to lie all day in the sun
loving what is easy?
MARY OLIVER Starfish (1986)
THE UNDERPINNINGS of this book are slightly grandiose. I have been so inspired and so informed by nature and food, that I presume to somehow encapsulate the connectivity of art and sustenance into sausage. At first consideration, this seems ludicrous, even to me. But when the poof of spores from a beneficial mold explodes softly in my kitchen, or I can smell in the soil the inkling of a spring supper, I feel like this intention is not ludicrous at all. And not optional.
My simplest of charges in the pages that follow is to situate the reader comfortably in the world of curing meats. Technique and process and principle will rule the day, in that regard. But I refuse to ignore the social, intellectual and spiritual enlightenment that guides that process properly. In other words, there is an attitude and a mindset that I wish to impart, in hopes that it lends to your success, and to a general activism that craft food must address.
SYNERGY
There isn’t the space in this book to provide butchery instruction, or thorough discussion of the life, death and processing of the animal as it pertains to the quality and uniqueness of the charcuterie product. That’s the stuff of my first book, The Ethical Meat Handbook. However, it is the synergy of all these important factors, in addition to the proper knowledge and appropriate creativity of the cook, that make cured meats so delightful.
Taking even a brief moment to consider the incredible interplay of factors that leads to the experience of charcuterie is already mind-blowing. Ponder for a moment, for example, the myriad effects of an animal’s life on the composition of its muscle and fat. Here are a few:
• What the animal ate
• How much the animal moved
• How healthy the animal was
• What non-feed inputs were used in raising the animal
• What breed the animal was
• The composition of the animal’s parents, and older generations
• The age of the animal at slaughter
• The stress level endured in life
• The quality of the animal’s death
• The amount of fat on the body
The list goes on. Add to that some of the factors to consider in processing:
• Whether the carcass was aged
• Whether the carcass was kept at proper temperatures
• Whether the meat was injected with water or other additives
• How well or with what aim the carcass was butchered
• How long the meat or fat has been kept in storage before sale
Again, we could go on. The point of this exercise is to respect the inherent complexity we work with, and to recognize that it is a combination of these factors that lead to the result that is every single animal we eat. It’s nearly mind-boggling, isn’t it? Just a quick jaunt over the list above sets o
ne’s mind afire with the nearly infinite combinations of factors that come into play. This is one of the primary motivations behind the case of Ethical Meat, the subject of my first book. The assertion that Ethical Meat exists, and that it requires input and buy-in from players all across the supply chain, is based on the recognition of synergy.
Synergy is the secret sauce in all systems. It refers to the potential created by many diverse factors combining. It is the fireworks of collaboration. When one thing touches another thing, they create energy and products together that neither single thing can create on its own.
You surely recognize that this is the foundation of cuisine. Pesto is pesto because when basil, garlic, parmesan, olive oil, pine nuts and salt come together, they create a magical goo that wouldn’t be possible without all of these components. It would change if you changed any one of them. Its overall impression depends on the distinctness or relative goodness of each of its components, and on and on and on. Dedication to the idea of synergy not only creates a beautiful space in the mind of any cook, but it leverages that space to continue expanding, remaining strong in what we know and can control, and humble in the face of what we don’t know and cannot conquer. This combination of kinship with nature and its products and anonymity in the face of creation is the mindset of good learning. Good learning is the chief requirement of sound artistry.
SOURCING
Good charcuterie starts with good meat and good fat. Good meat and fat come from an animal that had a good life, a good death, a good butcher and a good cook. The surest way to find such meat and fat is through direct relationships with farming and farmers.
While many of the recipes in this book are designed around pork, the principles can be adjusted and applied for any species. Homesteaders working with modest landholdings might consider animals that can be raised there, such as rabbits, ducks or, in some cases, small ruminants. When venturing toward larger animals for beef heart pastrami or confit pork shank, seek out specialty farmers or butcher shops when you can.
Pure Charcuterie: The Craft & Poetry of Curing Meat at Home Page 1
