Learning the Basics in The River Cottage Meat Book
By Ian MacAllen on Friday, October 29th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
The oversized book contains pictures and charts and all the important meat information you wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Few books combine sublime beauty and knowledge like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s book.
It’s a comprehensive look at land-based proteins, but also one that offers a lot of important fundamentals. I felt this was instrumental in my early years teaching myself how to cook, and it’s why I have long-recommended it a must-read book. Even if you don’t end up cooking much of the recipes, its a reference book worth reading.
The first portion of the book goes into the lexicon of meat explaining things like marbling, the threads of fat running through the muscle, and why it’s important. Same for hanging and cutting.
It’s written from a British perspective, but a lot of what is contained about buying meat holds true in the United States as well. Fearnley-Whittingstall goes into details about what to look for in a good piece of meat, even when you’re buying for a butcher. He does recognize most people buy from supermarkets, so there’s practical information too.
But what I loved about this book was is the fact that there are good visual s explaining where meat cuts come from. You can probably google something similar, but these are also paired with big, bright photographs.
The format repeats for lamb, pork, and poultry. For butchering chickens and other birds, there are good picture-by-picture guides.
Because its a British meat book, there’s also a good bit on wild game with photos depicting the birds and small animals that one my get on a hunt.
Where things really get interesting is when Fearnley-Whittingstall starts talking about offal. Truthfully, I’m not likely to cook much of this, but I did find the text interesting. Have you considered making pig’s ears? Better slow cook them.
After going through the different meats and their cuts, we finally move onto cooking styles from roasting to barbecuing. Here we start to some recipes. Most of these are heart, cold weather dishes, but long roasts meant to impress your friends. There is something indulgent about the recipes, and like this book, big, fat and full of colorful prints.
