Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

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.