Home Book of Smoke Cooking: Meat, Fish & Game, Jack Sleight and Raymond Hull

I read 16th (1981) printing of the 1972 edition. Sleight and Hull break up their topic into manageable sections.

A general introduction to smoking, assembling the equipment, building smoke ovens, brining containers, making good brines and seasons, etc.

Chapters 4-7 focus on particular kinds of meats, poultry, wild game, fish and shellfish. Chapter 8 is an introduction to sausage making. Chapter 9 covers cheese, nuts, seeds, eggs, frog's legs, blueberries, and garlic bread. Chapter 10 discusses canning smoked foods. Chapter 11 discusses "Big-Scale Production" of smoked foods.

Filled with helpful diagrams and explanations, easy reading, and good instructions on where to get special ingredients or tools.

Field Guide to Meat, Aliza Green

One thumb up.


Aliza Green's "Field Guide to Meat" has a subtitle. The subtitle is a very comprehensive claim.

The book is broken into general headings covering specific meats: beef, veal, pork lamb, poultry and game birds, game and other domesticated meats, sausage and cured meats.

Each of the sections starts with a description of the species of animal, the variety of the animal in the world, where the animal is grown for food in the world, and how it is generally cut.

Green includes a diagram for each animal with the various cuts labeled. Names of cuts and varieties are given in English, Spanish, Italian, and French.

After a general summary of the cuts of meat, Green devotes a small section to each cut, identification, buying, quality, preservation, and preparation.

There are 200 + color photos of meat cuts in the central part of the book. Most of these photos are referred to throughout the rest of the book.

The sections on beef, veal, pork and lamb are fairly comprehensive. The sections on poultry and game birds as well as game and other domesticated meats are much briefer in content on each animal. However, they cover many many more types of meat and foul.

This volume does not cover the topic of meat cutting, butchering, or seasoning/drying. It is a meat purchaser's guide, not a meat preparer's guide.

The final section on sausages is merely descriptive and historic. This volume does not teach how to prepare and cure meat or sausages.

All in all I believe the book tries to live up to the claim in the subtitle. Perhaps the word "prepare" should be replaced with "cook," since "preparation" also includes butchering and cutting--both topics which the book does not cover.

In general the recipes are helpful suggestions. But there are a great proportion of minimalist "roll it in flour and cook it" recipes.

I bought the book based on the description at Amazon. From that description I mistakenly thought the book could help me learn to butcher and make my own cuts of meat from various animals. I am not the target audience for this book.

This book is aimed at the supermarket/meat-market shopper who doesn't care about the butchering and just wants a nice cut to cook. It fits that purpose fairly well. The way the photos are arranged will make the book wear out fairly quickly. The book is well indexed and can instruct a novice in cooking meats he or she may have never experienced before.

Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game, John Mettler

Two thumbs way up.

Mettler's guide is well organized, well written, and very helpfully illustrated. He begins with a chapter on "Tools, Equipment, and Methods" which lists and pictures various knives, saws, lifting equipment, and other kinds of equipment that the home butcher needs to make the work smooth. He outlines some general guidelines on best temperatures hanging/aging and meat preparation as well as advice on keeping the meat clean.

Then follow chapters on various kinds of meat: Ch. 2 Beef; 3 Hogs; 4 Veal; 5 Lamb; 6 Venison; 7 Poultry; 8 Rabbits and Small Game; 9 Less Popular Meats (like goats, horses, and bison).

Each of these chapters is very well illustrated both with respect to planning the cuts and making the cuts. Elayne Sears drew the illustrations, and the book is worth looking through just for her drawings alone.

Chapter 10 focuses on Meat Inspection. Ch. 11 covers Processing and Preserving; the causes and prevention of spoilage; how to freeze meat; dry cures and pickling; smoking meat; corned beef and tongue; sausage; and other preserved meats.

Chapter 12 consists of 37 recipes for items from short ribs to Pheasant Piccata.

There is a good glossary, a chart of weights and measures, and a very good index (by Eileen M. Clawson).

This book was edited by Dianne Cutillo. The art was directed by Cynthia N. McFarland, and the book design is by Jennifer Jepson Smith.

The book was revised and updated in 2003 by Martin Marchello.

The author, John J Mettler passed away in 2001. He was a veterinarian in upstate New York for more that 30 years.