Leigh - Pure charcuterie: the craft & poetry of curing meat at home

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. Merediths 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 docombines 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. Im 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 dont 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. Itll make you dig out the meat grinder someone gave you years ago. Itll 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 youll 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 Ive been waiting my whole career for. Meredith takes an approach to creating charcuterie and guiding you through the process that Ive 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 dont envision creating charcuterie, Leighs 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. MeatPreservationHandbooks, 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 societys 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.

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 than 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 couldnt be touched in the world around me? Did that mean that it wasnt 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.