Posted by Erin Zimmer, May 12, 2008 at 3:00 PM
When shopping for a home, potential buyers should confirm that at least one neighbor owns a La Caja China Box. Mine thankfully do, and over the weekend we hosted a Cuban-style pig roast with their wooden, crib-sized box which recreates the tradition of charcoal-covered pits, first inspired by Chinese railroad workers in Cuba. Pre-ordered weeks in advance, our 65-pound oinker got strapped between two racks and for four hours, roasted under a total of 40 pounds of charcoal. Hour three is most climactic, when piggy gets flipped, before another final hour of skin crispification.
Like a reverse grill, the meat sits below a tray of burning charcoal. The temperature rests at about 325°F all four hours, so the meat never actually burns in a bad, charred way—it just stays moist and protected inside crispy skin. (Turkey, goat and lamb are also boxable, but Cubans really love their pig). Some roasters get complex with marinade-filled syringes and brines, but ours was dressed with a simple rub of salt, pepper and coriander. Without overdoing the flavors, the meat came out overwhelmingly pig-tasting. Definitely the most pig-tasting pig I've ever eaten.
Almost as exciting as the La Caja China Box and pig itself was the scene reenacted in fondant form atop a chocolate cake.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, May 6, 2008 at 11:45 AM
If your cooking lid doesn't have a pig face on it, it's too boring. Get a pig cooking lid from the MoMA Store's collection of Japanese products, available for a limited time. The steam comes up through the pig's nostrils! That's awesome!
Even if you don't use it as a cooking lid, it would make an interesting centerpiece on a table. I'd call it, "Melting Pig Head."
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Posted by Erin Zimmer, May 2, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Paula Deen may not be all giggles this weekend at a cooking demo show she's hosting in Atlanta. Protesters like Al Sharpton, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover are expected to show-up and chastise her affiliation with Smithfield, a North Carolina-based food plant notorious for brutal, inhumane working conditions. But hey ya'll, "I have no particular expertise in these [labor] matters. I only have expertise in how ham tastes, and how it is processed," Deen told Diane Rehm last year.
Expert or not, she's heard the nightmarish stories about Smithfield workers losing arms and legs in the pig-processing factory. But that hasn't stopped her ties with the company, including a special Mother's Day menu for next weekend, filled with caramelized bacon and other forms of Smithfield piggy. Dean has always defended Smithfield in the past, arguing that "we all have complaints about our work. It's called work for a reason." But when does work become torture?
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Posted by Robyn Lee, February 27, 2008 at 5:15 PM
I was immediately drawn to these adorable pig-shaped breads that Medena of Cafe Chocolada made for her kids. But why should kids get all the cute food? Adults deserve rotund peppercorn-eyed, animal-shaped baked goods too! [via TasteSpotting]
Posted by Melissa Hall, February 8, 2008 at 1:30 PM
Southern Foodways appears on Fridays as part of our collaboration with the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization based in Oxford, Mississippi, that "documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South." Dig in!
A few months ago, just as the weather was turning cold, I waxed nostalgic about hog killing. I included some pictures of the practice and an essay from Southern Food Alliance member Evan Hatch.
At The Old South Farm Museum and Agricultural Learning Center, they don’t just talk about, write about, or photograph hog killing—they actually do it. And, if you ask nicely, they’ll let you help.
The Woodland, Georgia museum traces Southern rural life from the 1800s to the 1960s. On the property you’ll find everything from wood burning stoves to steam tractors. With acres of buildings and displays, you can spend a couple of hours looking at items that were common just decades ago. Here you can pump water and see the type of equipment used to wash clothes as well as see a working smokehouse, grind grain, spin cotton and perhaps make sausage.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, February 8, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Rock the latest in pork-related fashion—our favorite Pig Butchering Guide is now available in the form of t-shirts, bags, and other wearables. Now it's up to you to spread the gospel of delicious pig parts. Thank you, Carl!
Posted by Emily Koh, January 23, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Move over, Berkshire pork: a new heritage pork is set to take center stage. The Mangalitsa, a breed of furry pigs raised in Central Europe recognized for their high-lard quality, are now available for the first time in the States at Seattle's U-District Farmers Market thanks to Wooly Pigs, the only importer and producer of these pigs.
Considered one of Europe's best-tasting pigs, these gigantic hairy beasts have twice the marbling than that of your average pork, and it's also more unsaturated, giving it a lighter taste and allows it to melt at lower temperatures (you can even whip Mangalitsa lard like cream!). The popularity of fatty pork doesn't seem to be dying out anytime soon, and the introduction of mangalitsa to the American market should be something to keep tabs on for all you fatty pork fans (just take a look at the cuts!).
Posted by Robyn Lee, December 5, 2007 at 6:00 PM
It will be bacon, dear little boy. Just give it time.
...And wash your mouth out.
Posted by Melissa Hall, October 12, 2007 at 2:30 PM
It's cold enough to kill hogs. OK, it's not. But, it should be. And, hopefully, it will be soon. For most of us, hog-killing isn't the family, social, community event it used to be. But then, most of us don't spend our spring worrying about the health and survival of our suckling pigs while eyeing the cold day in late fall (the cold day that heralds the coming of many more cold days) when those same pigs will provide sustenance for a long winter.
Ever wondered how it is Southerners took to the hog so devotedly? The answer lies in our relatively recent pioneer past. In his great book Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the South, Joe Gray Taylor explains, "A pig born in the spring was ready for slaughter in early winter, obviating the necessity for carrying anything other than breeding stock over the winter." Further, Taylor notes, "Compared to other animals, hogs were efficient in converting grain to meat. One estimate is that 24 percent of the energy of grain eaten by hogs is made available for human consumption as compared to 18 percent for milk products and only 3 1/2 percent for beef and mutton." [Squeamish readers beware: Graphic hog-butchering photos after the jump.]
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Posted by Alaina Browne, May 18, 2007 at 11:51 AM
Three Little Pigs, Busan by cfarivar on Flickr
I am fascinated by the blissed out expression on these pigs' faces, hopefully a reflection of the way they lived and died though that's probably wishful thinking on my part.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 11, 2007 at 12:00 PM
The Charlotte Observer's Kathleen Purvis visits 15-year-old Jonah Koeningsberg, who is raising a rare old-breed of pig called the Ossabaw on his farm in Union County. Ossabaws are said to be descendants of the Iberico pigs dropped off on an island in Georgia by Spanish conquistadors when they were exploring the New World over 400 years ago; they remained isolated for all that time and, while they've gotten smaller over the years due to insular dwarfism, Ossabaws also adapted to the food cycles of the island by storing tremendous amounts of body fat. Koenigsberg, his father Sammy, and other farmers like them are part of a move to start "getting pigs back onto small farms and keeping the genetic diversity of older lines." But why bother at all, when industrial pig farming can be so lucrative?
Don Schrider, communications director for the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy in Pittsboro, points to all kinds of benefits, from hardiness to increased Omega-3 fatty acids in the fat of animals raised on pasture.
Then there's the taste factor. Everybody agrees that old breeds, raised in the right setting, have it all over industrial pigs that produce lean meat known for its consistency.
"These breeds on our list, like Tamworth and Ossabaw, all these breeds are winning acclaim for their flavor," says Schrider. "It's a stark difference between what you can buy in a grocery store. It's not a subtle difference."
South Carolina's Caw Caw Creek Farm lets their Ossabaw pigs live free and forage, rotating them between woods and pasture; they provide their pork to chefs like Daniel Bouled and Thomas Keller. Owner Emile deFelice will send all kinds of delicious pork straight to your kitchen via FedEX or DHL overnight delivery.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 5, 2007 at 5:23 PM
Pim's just posted a great entry on Marthe Delon, the legendary truffle hunter and pig trainer, and her Kiki: "From what I gathered, Mme.Delon got her first pig the year she was married, and over sixty years later she is still hunting truffles and training generation after generation of pigs –one each year, and each one given the same name, Kiki. She said she couldn't be bothered remembering the names of them all, so she just called them Kiki. Easy enough, yes?"
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 2, 2007 at 3:04 PM
A full third of the Serious Eats staff* owns prints of this lovely painting by German artist Michael Sowa. You can get one for yourself for $19.99 at Art.com, or you can get the hardcover book Sowa's Ark and see the Diving Pig plus 54 more of his animal paintings for $24.95 from Amazon.
* Two people, but we carry big sticks.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 1, 2007 at 4:27 PM
Filipinos like to eat pork and so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the number one dish expected at any big party or holiday feast in the Philippines is lechon: an entire suckling pig stuffed with herbs, slow-roasted for hours over charcoal, and served whole, its skin turned golden-red and crispy but the meat inside still moist and delectable. Sidney Snoeck has a mouthwatering set of photos from the district of La Loma, the lechon capital of the Philippines, where much of the neighborhood lives and works in compounds dedicated to roasting pigs year-round.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 1, 2007 at 3:51 PM
At right is a piece titled Bubba by SF Bay Area artist Stuart L. Wagner, a pig made out of pork rinds and wood. Finally, a sculpture Homer Simpson can appreciate!
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 1, 2007 at 3:29 PM
Carolyn Jung of the Mercury News, on why 2007 is a good year for pork:
Foodies have long found today's conventionally raised pork too dry and flavorless to swallow. Many of them now seek out heritage breeds to deliver the full-on porky flavor they've been missing. Just as discriminating Americans learned to zero in on Kobe and Wagyu breeds for top-quality, ultra-marbled beef, so, too, are they now gravitating toward Berkshire and Duroc breeds for exceptional pork.
Although the National Pork Board has no firm figures on how large this niche pork market is, it is one that is definitely growing.
"The kind of short-lived trend of thinking leanness meant health and quality led to the pig being ostracized somewhat," says Patrick Martins, co-founder of New York's Heritage Foods USA, which sells artisanal products from small farms. "But the desire for taste, and the understanding that all things are good in moderation, has led to a renaissance of pork in the United States."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 1, 2007 at 2:48 PM
SF Gate's Jeff Yang and his wife are trying to have a second child, so they're thinking about fertility and reproduction all the time, but "nothing prepared us for what we've dealt with since the coming of Lunar New Year: a nonstop barrage of stories about the fact that giving birth to a child this year, the year of the so-called "Golden Pig," is like hitting the astrological Lotto. Golden Piglets are destined for fortune and prosperity, because pigs are a symbol of wealth, and the "golden" designation puts lipstick on this pig, or makes a silk purse out of a sow's ear, or, well, insert your preferred porcine pun here. And because of that promise, Chinese, Korean and other Asian women all over the world are doing their best to get little pork buns baking. In short, our quiet little march toward Babyville has intersected with the Boston Marathon."
Hong Kong has almost 7 million residents, a rapidly aging population and a very low birth rate, and yet is expecting over 70 thousand babies to be born this year!
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 1, 2007 at 2:15 PM
retroCRUSH says, "2007 is the Chinese Year of the Boar. It's a year of fertility that will be lucky for people giving birth during this time (unless you're in China and have a baby girl). What better way to honor this ancient and silly superstition than by paying tribute to the great pigs in pop culture history?" I have to confess I'd totally forgotten about both Gub Gub and Hen Wen, despite loving them when I was a kid.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 1, 2007 at 10:31 AM
"Pigs are very beautiful animals...There is no point of view from which a really corpulent pig is not full of sumptuous and satisfying curves."
- G.K. Chesterton
The pig is "an encyclopedic animal, a meal on legs."
- Grimod de La Reynière
"I've long said that if I were about to be executed and were given a choice of my last meal, it would be bacon and eggs. There are few sights that appeal to me more than the streaks of lean and fat in a good side of bacon, or the lovely round of pinkish meat framed in delicate white fat that is Canadian bacon. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing."
- James Beard
"But I will place this carefully fed pig
Within the crackling oven; and, I pray,
What nicer dish can e'er be given to man."
- Aeschylus
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 1, 2007 at 7:42 AM
If you've ever wondered which part of the pig your favorite cut of pork comes from, thank Wikipedia user GameKeeper for working up diagrams of both the British and American common cuts of pork, as described in Larousse Gastronomique. Personally, nothing comes close to the pork belly. Mmmm, delicious bacon.
Posted by Ed Levine, March 1, 2007 at 1:00 AM
Here at Serious Eats, we have decided to go whole hog on National Pig Day. National Pig Day, you ask? Sure enough. Serious Eats general manager Alaina Browne's pig-themed calendar, Pigs on Parade, tells us that today is a red letter day in the porcine world. So what better way to celebrate than to turn the whole site over to pigginess for a spell? Eventually our goal is to make National Pig Day an official national holiday through an act of Congress, but we realize that it’s probably a little too soon for that. So for now, we're going to elevate National Pig Day by instituting the Pig Heaven Honor Roll, something we hope is a precursor to being inducted into the Porcine Hall of Fame.
Though exhaustive, this honor roll is by no means complete. We couldn't possibly eat at every barbecue joint in the nation in search of the perfect rib or Chinese restaurant for the most succulent suckling pig. If you have a nomination for the list, we'd love to hear it!
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Posted by Nathalie Jordi, January 26, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Smithfield Foods, the nation's largest pork producer and processor, which alongside Tyson Foods, Swift & Co (46% owned by ConAgra), and Hormel Foods controls a whopping 64% of the American pork-packing market, has voluntarily decided to phase out sow crates by 2017. Yes, this applies only to farms they own, not the farms they also buy from (a large percentage), but it's a start. Imagine: 15.6 million hogs a year, AND they're waiting for government approval to acquire the nation's second-bigger producer, Premium Standard Farms. We're a porky, porky people.
Posted by Nathalie Jordi, January 25, 2007 at 4:21 PM
We've already waxed melodic about how much we enjoy farmers who write.
Here's an expressive gem of an essay from Andy Griffin about hunting feral pigs in Carmel Valley.
"One day Jimmy watched the host take a whiff of cocaine, mount a polo pony, and chase a boar with a lance."
Posted by Nathalie Jordi, January 19, 2007 at 1:35 PM
Why do we love pigs so much? wonders Sara Dickerman on Slate. My personal answer's one word long: bacon.
Posted by Nathalie Jordi, January 17, 2007 at 4:20 PM
Chinese researchers breed green pigs.
I think the writer puts it best when he notes: "Jokes about fluorescent green SPAM are probably apropos."
