Do you hunt? Or raise livestock for meat? Maybe you plan to at some point or have in the past. What do you do after the animal is ready to butcher? With our few attempts at farm animals, we called the local butcher, but with our hunting game, I process the meat myself right here in our kitchen. I’ve just kind of mucked through it, but it always turned out okay. So when Voyageur Press contacted me about reviewing a copy of their book The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making: How to Harvest Your Livestock & Wild Game by Philip Hasheider I was excited to see what it had to say.
This book begins with the basics on butchering–safety, the equipment, knives, etc. It then has chapters for each of a variety of different kinds of animals:
Beef, Bison, and Veal
Sheep, Lambs, and Goats
Pork
Poultry and other Fowl
Venison, Moose, Elk, and Big Game
Rabbits, Other Small Game, Fish
That pretty much covers every animal I’ve ever wanted to butcher or eat. The greatest thing about this book is the FULL COLOR photographs throughout the book illustrating the butchering process. This book is not for the squeamish–the photos are of actual butchering including animal carcasses in various states of cutting up, blood, etc. I won’t include any in this review, but you can catch a few on the “see inside this book” link at Amazon. But for those of us who like a picture to explain what all those words are saying, this book is absolutely fantastic.
Each section covers choosing an animal to butcher, best ways to quickly kill the animal, gutting techniques, and instructions for butchering including illustrations of the different cuts of meat and where on the animal they come from. And they’ve included some recipes at the end of each section for using your meat. Sweet.
Following the chapters on specific animals, there is a chapter on Meat Byproducts and Food Preservation that covers ways to use the “other” parts of the animal like the liver, stomach, blood, intestines, etc. Totally useful if you want to make the most of your animal. So far I haven’t been that hungry–we don’t usually keep the organs or other parts, just the meat. This chapter also covers canning and freezing meat as well as pickling (for pigs feet, pork hocks, corned beef, herring, northern pike, or other large game fish).
Another chapter covers Meat Curing and Smoking. This chapter has instructions for drying, or curing and smoking meats. It includes illustrations and ideas to build your own smoker either small out of a 55 gallon drum or as a bigger smoke house.
The next chapter covers sausage making either using the intestines or using commercial sausage wraps. Different varieties of sausage are discussed as well as how to select ingredients additives and spices for your sausage. There is some special equipment for sausage making and that is covered as well (yes, with photographs so you know what they’re talking about).
And the final chapter may not apply to most homesteading or preparedness types, but may well be handy to someone looking to do more butchering–“Building a Butchering Business”. Equipment and procedures to be able to butcher meat as a profession are all discussed.
Overall, this book is very well done. It is a very sturdy paperback–the cover is not floppy and the pages are good quality with full color photos from front to back. The writing is thorough and easy to read and seriously, the photographic content makes it so user-friendly. I’d definitely recommend picking this book up. If you’re in the long-term preparedness or survival mindset, this could be a super help down the road when you’re having to butcher whatever meat is available. But for sure if you do any hunting or raising of farm animals or plan to, this butchering book is a keeper.
Thanks to Voyageur Press for allowing me to review this book.
Keep preparing! Angela
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Heidi says
Wow, I am so impressed that you've butchered animals. This is one of those books that I would love to have "in case", but truthfully hope I will never have to use! It does sound helpful, though. It sounds like the only things missing are making jerky/salting the meat.