Meat Eater is a book that explores humanity's oldest pursuit - hunting - and its relevance today through the lens of ten adventures with writer Steven Rinella. As the host of the television show MeatEater on the Sportsman Channel and the former host of the Travel Channel's James Beard Award-nominated show The Wild Within, Rinella has had the rare opportunity to hunt around the world for most days of the year. The upshot of is extensive travel, coupled with thirty-plus years of hunting and fishing with his father and brothers, is an intimate knowledge of animals - how they move and how you should move around them, what sounds and smells they react to, how, after you kill them, they are best broken down and taken back to camp, and even why their fat tastes the way it does. Rinella shares his hard-won insights in his stories and after each chapter, presents "Tasting Notes" on how to prepare, cook and eat wild game, both at home and over a campfire. (Spiegel & Grau Hardcover, On Sale September 4, 2012)
“TV host and outdoorsman Rinella contemplates the hunter’s place in modern society while reliving his favorite hunting trips. Before committing to the writing life, the author made a serious attempt at carving out a career as a fur trapper like his frontier hero Daniel Boone. Even though that endeavor fell through, the kid who grew up bagging squirrels, muskrats and beavers would not abandon the hunt. Instead, he found other ways to devote much of his life to stalking bighorn sheep, black bears, mountain lions and the like. At one point, he even managed to successfully split his time between college and subsistence hunting. While Rinella has taken more than a few trophies along the way, his excursions into the great outdoors have mainly been about feasting on wild game at the conclusion of each hunt—and he’s eager to share. Relentlessly descriptive and endlessly evocative “tasting guides” at the close of each chapter help armchair hunters get a sense of what it might be like digging into their own heaping plate of camp meat, deer hearts or sun-dried jerky. Depending on the palate, readers will find these gamey recipes either mouthwatering or gut-wrenching, but the writing is steadfastly satisfying and clear. A passage on the purported edibility of roasted beaver tail is especially entertaining. The author wisely allows philosophical questions pertaining to the validity of hunting and the efficacy of state-enforced regulations to simmer in the background, and he effectively shows nature in all its glory. An insider’s look at hunting that devotees and nonparticipants alike should find fascinating.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Chances are, Steven Rinella's life is
very different than yours or mine. He does not source his food at the local
supermarket. Meat Eater is
a unique and valuable alternate view of where our food comes from—and what can
be involved. It's a look both backward, at the way things used to be—and
forward—to a time when every diner truly understands what's on the end of the
fork.” —Anthony Bourdain
About the Author:
Steven Rinella is
the author of American
Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, which
was the winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and The
Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine. He
is the host of the television show MeatEater on the
Sportsman Channel, and was the host of the Travel Channel’s The Wild
Within, which
was nominated for a James Beard Award. He has a MFA in creative writing from
the University of Montana and his writing has appeared in publications as Outside,
Field and Stream, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, Men’s Journal, and
Salon. Born and raised in Michigan, he currently lives with his family in
Brooklyn, New York.
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