Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork by Bruce Aidells

Aidells’s Sausages are a staple at our house. You can grill them right out of the freezer, eat them like hot dogs (ridiculous amounts of sauerkraut essential), cut them up and throw them in spaghetti sauce, slice them and broil them, and, if you have 45 eggs left over from a brunch party, chop them up and throw them into a quiche. (I just discovered that quiche is made entirely of eggs and heavy cream! Not to mention the butter in the crust. Oh my lord.)

In 2005, Mr. Aidells himself was at the NCIBA trade show signing ARCs of his cookbook, Bruce Aidells’s Complete Book of Pork. I wasn’t sure how useful the book would be, but I did not want to miss the opportunity to meet the man who makes me look so good in the kitchen, so I got a signed copy just to gloat. For the rest of the day, I told anyone who would listen, “I met Bruce Aidells!”

I don’t use this cookbook very often, but I did learn two extremely important things, which makes book worth its inch of shelf space. The first is a recipe for brining pork that makes any cut much juicier and more flavorful than straight cooking. Because pork tends to dry out, this step is invaluable for impressing the guests (or E).

The second, life-changing piece of information I learned is that pork does NOT need to be cooked to “just short of incinerated” to be safe to eat. According to Aidells,

“American pork fifty years or so ago… was occasionally infected with a parasitic worm called trichina, which was the result of pigs being fed table scraps or refuse already infected with trichina. Pork produced in this country today is from pigs no longer fed garbage but a scientifically designed diet of grains, protein, and fat. Essentially, modern methods of pork husbandry have all but eliminated trichina from pork.”

And that means dry, chewy pucks of meat have also been eliminated from my diet.

Now that I’ve been looking through this book, I’m getting hungry. Off to make dinner—E has given his notice at work and his last day is February 2! We’ll do something a little special tonight, I should think.

Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork by Bruce Aidells

Tags: cookbooks cooking pork brining Bruce Aidells