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

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Authors: Susan Mahnke Peery, Charles G. Reavis
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$16.95~~
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Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

13 reviews
Sales Rank: 9225

Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 7 x 0.8

ISBN: 158017471X
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.36
UPC: 037038174717
EAN: 9781580174718
ASIN: 158017471X

Publication Date: January 15, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 13

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Home Sausage Making March 27, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

I think it is a great book in instructing you on making sausage.

2 out of 5 stars

Underwhelming June 8, 2006
25 out of 28 found this review helpful

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.

4 out of 5 stars

I agree: Good Coaching, weak sausage April 27, 2006
Two days ago I made about 9 pounds of sausage using 3 different recipes in this book and 3 different meats.

This is my first sausage making attempt and the book did a great job of teaching me the process. But I agree with the 'Good Coaching, weak sausage' review. The recipes are pretty under-spiced and generic. I guess it gives me a good baseline for creating my own recipes, though.

So, if you know what you're doing and are looking for recipes- look elsewhere. If you're a sausage newbie, this is a great book to teach you what you need to know.

5 out of 5 stars

Excellent book for hands on advice. Buy It. January 5, 2006
44 out of 47 found this review helpful

`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.

4 out of 5 stars

Very good survey of the basic techniques. September 26, 2005
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

This book proves to be outstanding in introducing a person who is completely unfamiliar with the basics of sausage making. After reading this book one will know everything that one needs to know to confidently procure the right equipment, shop for the right ingrdients, and how to get started. The tips on food hygene were helpful, but the dangers of poisoning related mishandling meat seem overstated, and may spook some people from untaking a tradition that was for centuries carried out before refridgerators and certainly in less clean circumstances than the modern kitchen. All in all, it's a clear simply written introduction to the craft of sausage making and that makes it ultimately a success.

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