D. Masterman | Monday, November 08, 2010

A friend recommended this book and it proved to be a great recipe mine. It's fun to make sausages now -- since almost all of them turn out to be tasty and interesting. I love the western and maple ones especially!

Kristi G., mom of Sage | Thursday, May 20, 2010

I am new to sausage making and this was the book I picked. It has a pretty long section just explaining things - equipment, casings, techniques, tricks, basically a very good primer.

The recipes that I have tried, I will agree, are too weakly spiced for my taste, but that's easy enough to solve, I just added more in the same proportions.

It covers all the basic sausage types. It's best, in my opinion, for the beginner as a primer, than maybe as a great recipe book per say. It

Royal Caroler | Friday, February 19, 2010

Home Sausage Making : How-To Techniques for Making and Enjoying 100 Sausages at Home

The book is great. You can't put it down. It gives information on equipment, choices, sources for spices, different casings and more. It gives stories on histories on various sausages, recipies on veal, pork, chicken, game, vegetarian and more. A great find that inspires you.

Baker Man | Wednesday, August 12, 2009

This book has everything you need to know about getting started in sausage making. It is well written and informative. It remains in my reference book collection for some of the outstanding recipes inside. I have won BBQ contests with the Bavarian summer sausage and the Polish sausage recipes, no kidding! This is a must have if you are interested in making sausage at home.

How does fresh sausage taste? You may never eat store bought sausage again, not willingly at least!

Kristen LaChance | Wednesday, June 17, 2009

I bought it as a wedding shower gift. I opened it and read a little of the book and it seemed really cool. The recipients were thrilled.

G. Austin | Monday, January 26, 2009

While using a meat grinder I nipped the end of a finger off to the first joint. I didn't want to waste what I had ground up and remembered this book. I made an excellent sausage that we had for breakfast the next day. No one even suspected and all ate with zest. A great way to economize and keep green by helping friends contribute even after they have left us.

C. Louise Jensen | Sunday, January 11, 2009

Sorry I can not rate thiis products I gave as a requested Christmas gift Louise Jensen

Shadywood | Monday, October 13, 2008

I just purchased this book. Yesterday, I was ambitious and wanted to try out some of the recipes. I started out with the portabella sausage for a nice lunch meal. Easy and fantastic. A real keeper of a recipe.

Next, I wanted to try the cotechino. We hosted an exchange student from Reggio Emilia and I wanted to try this recipe from her home town. The results were good. A touch too much cloves for my taste, but passable. I'll cut the cloves to half the amount next time.

The third recipe was the chorizo. A very good recipe for a mildly hot version. It was perfect for my wife. It can easily be spiced up by just increasing the red pepper. The fennel seed was just right and I would not adjust that. Another keeper.

Finally, I made the bockwurst. I noted the quantity of cloves and was concerned. However, the first recipe for the portabella sausage was so good that I was going to trust the author. That was a mistake. Unfortunately, I did not sample any of the meat sausages until I had prepared and mixed all three. If I had sampled them as I went along, I would have never used the quantity of cloves specified in the bockwurst recipe. Three-quarters of a teaspoon of cloves was about three-quarters of a teaspoon too much. A pinch would have been right. Mace would have been maybe a better choice. It is disappointing since everything else with the recipe was very good.

The bockwurst is going to be edible only if it is included with other stronger flavors. The veal is a light flavor to start with and any spicing should be in moderation. I wasted $15 in ingredients. I will make this recipe again with only a pinch of cloves.

So, how do I rate this recipe book? I will give it four stars. The recipes look good and relatively easy with readily available ingredients. The negative is the author's fondness for cloves.

I will experiment with more of the recipes and will be more careful in following the prescribed seasoning. The levels of salt and pepper, so far, are just right. I have followed recipes for sausages from other sources and had batches that were much too salty. I plan to cut the quantities of suspect spices in all first-time future recipes and will sample the mix. I can always add additional seasoning before stuffing.

I would recommend this recipe book with the caveat that one needs to be initially conservative with following the spice quantities. You can always add more to suit. You can never remove or counter excessive seasoning.

M. Altemus | Sunday, January 20, 2008

This book has old information that is no longer recommended by food experts. SaltPeter is no longer a substance that should be used and it is included in some of the instructions in this book. There are VERY few actual sausage making recipes. Most of the recipes are for cooking WITH sausage as an ingredient. If I had purchased this book from a local store -- I would return it for a refund.

Laura A. Way | Thursday, October 04, 2007

I got the book to make bratwurst for an Okotberfest we were having and was nervous about making sausage for the first time. The book's instructions were very clear and easy to follow. I'm looking forward to trying many of the other sausages in the book!

Rubashov | Thursday, June 08, 2006

While the book is informative and provides good instruction about some of the basics of sausage making, it is nonetheless lacking in many respects. First, most of the book's recipes that I've made come out under-salted and under-spiced. While this is something that you can test for and adjust during production, it would have been better for the authors to simply provide quantities that produced sufficiently seasoned sausages. In short, most of the sausages end up bland, tasting more like plain ground meat than sausage.

Furthermore, the recipes utilizing sausage are unimpressive as well. Most cooks experienced enough to make fresh sausage probably don't need a recipe for a sausage omelette or sausage pizza.

Finally, and most importantly, the book misses some important techniques that are essential to proper sausage making. While they do make mention of freezing meats for 30 min. before stuffing, they don't sufficiently emphasize how essential it is to maintain near-freezing temperatures throghout the process until the casings or stuffed. Failure to do so will result in dry, crumbly sausages, something I learned the hard way. Additionally, there is no discussion of the "primary bind," an essential step in sausage making whereby the ground & spiced meat mixture is beaten (either by hand with a wooden spoon or with a paddle attachement in a stand mixer) for a couple of minutes before stuffing. This allows the meat to bind together, preventing a loose & crumbly sausage, yet this essential step is entirely absent from the book.

My recommendation would be to look at "Charcuterie" by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn. Not only does that book provide all the ins & outs of sausage making (plus the reasoning behind them) from award-winning professionals, the recipes are perfectly seasoned every time. The book has the added benefit of providing information on some more exotic things to do with meat as well, such as dry-curing hams, prosciutto, salami, etc.

B. Marold | Thursday, January 05, 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.

Anonymous | Thursday, July 15, 2004

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.

Anonymous | Saturday, October 23, 1999

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.