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Mark LaFay
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Published:
July 21, 2020

Charcuterie For Dummies

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Overview

The world of charcuterie is at your fingertips

Even if you’ve never cooked a slab of bacon in your life, you can prepare sausage and cured meats at home! In Charcuterie for Dummies, you’ll learn everything you could possibly need to get started, from choosing the right gear and finding quality raw ingredients, all the way through taking your parties to the next level with epic charcuterie boards.

Salami, bacon, prosciutto, and good-old-fashioned sausage are all on the menu with Charcuterie for Dummies. Author and meat master Mark LaFay will help you keep things safe and sanitary, equip you with some seriously awesome recipes, and teach you

a thing or two about which beers and wines to serve up with your meat. Choose a chapter and get started!

  • Get started curing meats at home with the highest quality raw ingredients, equipment, and recipes
  • Make everything from sausage and bacon to prosciutto, salami, and more
  • Learn how to pair your homemade meats with jams, nuts, cheeses, and pickles for epic charcuterie boards
  • Take your new hobby to the next level with more advanced recipes and beverage pairings

Whether you’re a total beginner or coming in with some previous knowledge, Charcuterie for Dummies will unleash your culinary creativity!

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About The Author

Mark LaFay is a tenured entrepreneur. He started two successful businesses in the music industry, and he is the co-founder of Lectio and Roust. Mark is also the author of Chromebook for Dummies.

Sample Chapters

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charcuterie for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Are you passionate about making food? Do you like to see how things are made? Are you interested in becoming a master meat artisan in your home kitchen? Or are you just a serious lover of charcuterie but want to stick to eating it as best as you can? If so, then this Cheat Sheet is for you. Following, are some quick tips that will help set you up for success, whether you’re making the meats or simply eating them!
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This list of meats includes ten that are really good and should be tried at some point either on their own or as part of a charcuterie board presentation. Everything in this list is delicious, and if you are able to, you should track some of them down to try for yourself. Keep in mind that this list is in no particular order.
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Are you passionate about making food? Do you like to see how things are made? Are you interested in becoming a master meat artisan in your home kitchen? Or are you just a serious lover of charcuterie but want to stick to eating it as best as you can? If so, then this Cheat Sheet is for you. Following, are some quick tips that will help set you up for success, whether you’re making the meats or simply eating them!
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If you want to get connected to your food, there is no better way than to purchase directly from a farm. There are many options today for doing this, whether through a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program, online grocery delivery services like MarketWagon.com, or your local farmers market.One of the many benefits to purchasing protein for your charcuterie directly from a farmer is that you can get all sorts of information on how the animals were raised, including the following: You can find out where the animals were raised, whether the critters lived inside or outside, if they had space to move and root around or were confined, and so on.
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In the wild world of sausage, you have two options for finishing your product. You can either leave your sausage mixture loose (an option really reserved for ground, not emulsified sausages), or you can stuff your sausage into a casing. Casings are the tubes that form and hold your sausage mixture together. They come in a lot of different shapes, sizes, and materials, and they all have different applications.
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The Old-World technique of dry curing meats was once used out of necessity to preserve the various parts of an animal that couldn’t be consumed before they spoiled. However, today dry curing is done because this technique produces absolutely wonderful meats with incredible flavors and textures. If you’ve never had guanciale that has been dry cured and aged for six months, you haven’t lived!
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To put it simply, fresh bacon is pork belly that is rubbed down with a mixture of salt, sugar, and sodium nitrite (pink salt). The pork belly is then refrigerated for one to two weeks, after which it is hot smoked until its internal temperature is 145 degrees Fahrenheit. The mixture of salt, sugar, and pink salt is the “cure,” and the bacon is considered to be “fresh” because it must be stored at refrigeration and has a finite shelf life.
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Meat grinders are machines designed specifically to break pieces of meat and fat into smaller pieces by forcing them through a metal plate with several small holes. Sausage in its most basic iteration is simply ground meat with seasoning; in USDA terms, it’s a non-intact meat product. You can choose from several different types of meat grinders.
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Proper procedures for hygiene and workspace sanitation, if done correctly, will prevent you from contaminating the meats that you are working with when creating charcuterie. However, you also need to be aware of pathogens that are commonly found in the different animal species with which you may be working.Over the last several decades, the U.
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True to their name, sausage stuffers are specialized pieces of equipment intended primarily for stuffing sausages. They come in all sizes and shapes. When I launched into the sausage-making business, I started off with an 11-pound-capacity manual stuffer. We upgraded to a No. 30–capacity stuffer and used it for a couple of years.
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What originally got me interested in meat processing, sausage making, charcuterie, and the like was hunting. I started hunting squirrels with my father when I was 12 years old, and I shot my first deer when I was 14. As an adult in my late twenties, I found my interest starting to turn into more of a passion. I love putting venison in the freezer.
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Spices are the spice of life. You can find a lot of localized flavors in the charcuterie of an area, which can make this craft very fun for those who are adventurous. The rule of thumb, quality in equals quality out, applies very much to spices and other auxiliary ingredients for your recipes. M.studio / Adobe StockFollowing are some tips for finding and using the best ingredients: Spices and ingredients produced locally to your recipe are a great starting point.
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Successfully making sausages, bacon, cured meats, or any other type of charcuterie, requires very specific tools and equipment. Meat grinders are specialized machines designed for the sole purpose of breaking pieces of meat and fat into smaller pieces by forcing them through a metal plate containing several small holes.
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Before you can even think about working with food meant for human consumption, and that includes aged meats like charcuterie, you need to be thinking about cleanliness and sanitation, and that starts with you. Hand washing is the first thing that you should do.According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you should wash your hands with warm water and lather up with antibacterial soap for at least 12 seconds before rinsing and drying your hands with a single-use towel.
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