Oh good heavens Ten Speed. How could you think of publishing this? "We eat it and we're ok" is not a set of safety instructions for preparations of raw wild pork or ground meat. People need to know how to avoid brucellosis, tularemia, botulism, listeria, clostridium, E coli, enterococcus, salmonella, staph, liver and lung flukes, intestinal worms and other things that might kill you if you eat poorly-processed meat.

Beyond the obvious invitation to a lawsuit, the text is a ridiculous mishmash in which some things that aren't jerky are called jerky (Moo dat dio most assuredly is not jerky) and some things that clearly are jerky are relegated to a chapter called "jerky kin" (which fits my brother, but not biltong which is jerky by any definition). The authors ignore many delicious dried meat preparations including many jerky recipes from different areas of the USA, sin hang from Thailand and sin sawang ("heaven meat") from Laos which are similar to but not the same as thit bo kho which is included. The "cooking with jerky" section is anaemic.

And it irritates me to no end that narrow, yet still rectangular, strips of meat are said to have diameter.

I received a review copy of "Jerky: The Fatted Calf's Guide to Preserving and Cooking Dried Meaty Goods" by Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller (Ten Speed) through NetGalley.com. ( )