Description

About the Author

MARISSA GUGGIANA is the author of Off the Menu: Staff Meals from America's Best Restaurants, which profiles the country's top restaurants and shares the behind-the-scenes recipes savored by the chefs and their crew. In 2011, she co-founded The Butcher's Guild, a national organization promoting and supporting artisanal butchery. Marissa is an editor and contributor to Meatpaper magazine and a board member of Ag Innovations Network. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Praise for Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers, Revised & Updated Edition…

Praise for the Revised Edition


"A meaty celebration of the resurgence of American butchers. Guggiana takes a broad interpretation of the term "butcher" with recipes and profiles of manly butchers, farmers, and chefs, along with a few "female meat mavens." Josh Applestone's Horseradish-Crusted Roast Beef is simple and simply delicious. If you're into pig trotters and beef heart, there's offal, too. GIVE THIS TO: People who love to cook or eat the whole beast."
—Julianna Grimes, "The Best Single-Subject Cookbooks," Cooking Light, July 2012
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Praise for the First Edition

"Just because Marissa's book is important doesn't make it any less fun than taking a break at the family BBQ, tying up your cousin to the nearest ant hill, and basting him with honey. This tome is a collection of superb stories about the men and women who make the meat world go round, with recipes and buckets of undiluted butcher worship thrown in for good measure."
— Andrew Zimmern, host of Bizarre Foods

"A great book for people who want to know where their meat comes from."
— Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make Us Human

"Anyone who laments the disappearance of the craft of butchery as a casualty of the industrial meat system will take heart in the very hopeful message of this book—that a new generation of butchers are restoring time-honored traditions in all corners of the country".
— Paul Bertolli, chef, author of Cooking by Hand

"Marissa's ode to pork, lamb, beef, goat, duck and chicken is a can't-look-away book filled with well-worn recipes, illustrations and unfliching images of raw meat and white-coated butchers. A primal look at the food that fuels us, and a story of where that food comes from in all its carnivorous glory."
— BiteClubEats.com

"[Marissa Guggiana] has delivered the definitive guide to the country's carvers... At 287 pages and roughly as weighty as a rack of lamb, housed in a butcher-paper jacket, the book is full of butcher profiles, recipes, tips, philosophies and information along with hundreds of incredible photos."
— North Bay Bohemian

"Primal Cuts is a book that celebrates butchers...full of straightforward, meat-focused dishes, each accompanied by a story about a member of the new, unexpected generation of American butchers — young, focused on quality and unwilling to compromise."
— Richmond Magazine

"[Primal Cuts] is a can't-look-away book filled with well-worn recipes, illustrations, and unflinching images of raw meat and white-coated butchers, a primal look at the food that fuels us."
—Santa Rosa Press Democrat

"This oversize paean to the many joys of dismembering whole beasts features nose-to-tail recipes from many of the country's new butcher-block rock stars."
— Time Out New York

"Primal Cuts is a celebration of the art of the butcher...While the book covers many common cuts and options, it also explores — and gives recipes for — some lesser-known cuts and under-used animals. You'll learn the primal cuts for lamb, goat and venison in addition to understanding the different "personalities" of steaks (what distinguishes a filet from a strip steak, a rib-eye from flank). The recipes are both informative, and fun."
— Los Angeles Times

"highly recommended...

"Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers offers a focus on locally sourced meats with a survey of techniques and recipes from butchers across America, in effect creating a modern 'bible' packed with the latest meat insights.

Each step is illustrated in a visual cookbook that describes 100 recipes and covers everything from hot dogs to roasted goose and braised rabbit. The butchers themselves receive high profile in this unique presentation, highly recommended for any culinary collection."
— California Book Watch/Midwest Book Review