I like parts. Especially pig parts. So when Jennifer of Flying Pigs Farm offered me some pig tails, I didn't hesitate. For cooking advice, I looked to Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating: he gives them a slow braise, breads them and browns them in butter. (For those who don't have the book, an adaptation of the recipe is available on Gourmet's web site—although if you have access to pig tails, and a desire to eat them, you're the kind of Serious Eater who needs this book.)
These are not cute little cartoon-curly tails; good, because Fergus is quite specific about asking one's butcher for long tails.
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.
If you went to yesterday's Cinco de Mayo street fair in New York City's Harlem like Olia, you may have been face-to-face with this massive rotating tower of al pastor, or marinated rotisserie pork. Aside from feasting on tacos al pastor, Olia ate many otherdeliciousMexican foodstuffs that make me feel like a failure for having spent my whole Sunday doing laundry and catching up on work.
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?
Eating pork is becoming increasingly popular in Turkey, but perhaps not for the reason you think. The BBC reports that many are blaming Turkey's dwindling pork industry on an Islam-backed agenda by the government, which is now primarily made up of Muslims. Butchers like Lazari Kozmaoglu—who calls himself the last pork butcher in Istanbul—have been around for more than 40 years, slicing and dicing for the locals, are now finding themselves in a tight spot:
Lazari's being prevented from slaughtering pigs and the stock of meat in his freezer is running critically low.
He owns an abattoir but the Agriculture Ministry has refused him a licence to operate it, saying it does not meet strict new regulations.
Curiously, all the other slaughter houses that once dealt with pork have been closed too. Lazari's reluctant to say what he suspects is happening.
"There are only 2,000 Greeks left in Istanbul," he grumbled. "None of us dares speak out." Curiously, all the other slaughter houses that once dealt with pork have been closed too. Lazari's reluctant to say what he suspects is happening.
"There are only 2,000 Greeks left in Istanbul," he grumbled. "None of us dares speak out."
Could Turkey be looking at a pork-less (or at least significantly less pork-ish) future?
Here's something you don't see every day (I hope): buckets of fat in your home refrigerator. Not just run-of-the-mill fat, but "jowl fat" and "bacon jus." It's the fridge of your dreams!
"Wait, men love bacon and boobs, why not combine the two? That's a million dollar idea right there!" —bkusler
Still no confirmation if it's turkey or piggy bacon, but even the kosher chick might make an exception for a bra made of bacon (NSFW). Given the raw state, sunbathing seems like the ideal frying method. Victoria's Secret—nudge, nudge—you need to get on this, though it does seem pretty DIY-friendly. NSFW photographic evidence after the jump. [via Found Shit]
File this under, "Why Didn't I Think of That?": Maple Bacon Lollipops. And I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill Maple Bacon Lollipops, but ones made with sustainable, organic, cured bacon and organic Vermont maple syrup. You can buy four for $10 from lolliphile, but wouldn't you rather be more cost-effective and buy 36 for $52? Yes. [via Neatorama]
Today, March 1, is National Pig Day! Celebrate this joyous occasion by giving thanks to your favorite pig. Or delicious pig-based product.
Last year, we celebrated National Pig Day with our Pig Heaven Honor Roll, a list of our picks for top pork purveyors, pork dishes, pork-knowledgeable chefs, and pork-related media in the country. We also made it a point to saturate the week of last year's National Pig Day with more pig-related posts than usual.
After the jump are ten of our favorite bacon and pork-filled posts from the last year.
Posted by Melissa Hall, February 29, 2008 at 4:00 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!
Arguably one of the hottest tickets in town, if not in the country, the High Museum Atlanta Wine Auction celebrates its 16th year. Last year, the auction set records as the most successful live auction in its 15-year history, bringing in revenues of more than $1.8 million.
Friday night’s gala and Saturday’s live auction are already sold out. But, there is still space available at many of the events leading up to the big finale, one we think you’ll particularly enjoy because we planned it ourselves!
Carl Huber used his 110% accurate "Pig Butchering Guide" to help him create his baconpig, a somewhat pig-shaped mass made mostly out of bacon, ground pork, and a hot dog. Carl sums up the process as so: "I took the pork hot dog, encased it in ground pork, and wrapped it in bacon." Get ready to feast your eyes on the "turducken of pork."It kind of looks like Piglet!
I enjoy dessert pies more than savory pies, but cowfish's homemade pork pie is quite a looker if you're into fat, towering cylinders of meat-filled pastry. Which I am. Witness the transformation of a pile of flour into the finished porky beauty in his raised pork pie photo set.
What's better than swathing your head in a long strip of cushy fleece? Swathing your head in a long strip of cushy fleece made to look like a massive strip of bacon from a monstrously huge pig! This magic can be yours for $38 from Baconwrapt.
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, January 1, 2008 at 3:00 PM
I like to think I'm serious about food, but every so often, someone or something comes along to make me question the extent of my devotion. Like when a friend returned to the States from a trip home to Singapore, toting three pounds of bak kwa (Chinese barbeque pork). Stopped at customs and threatened with confiscation and destruction, he said, "I need a minute," before proceeding to eat his entire booty of pig.
Bacon + dark brown sugar + ground chiles = pig candy! Curt McAdams suggests serving this before Christmas dinner with "sliced pears and brie, or figs and cheddar, or all of the above," for a unique appetizer. Or you could just eat it own its own. [via tastespotting]
Pork, it's the meat of kings
It's made from pig
Try it with onion rings
Pork sure goes with everything
Cause it's made from swine
That's why it sure tastes fine
I never took much notice of supermarket meat counters until I saw this display of cured hams in all their fat-marbled glory at PAM, a major supermarket chain in Bologna. The meat shimmered like jewels. Pork-based jewels.
When I came back home from my vacation in Italy I went back to ignoring supermarket meat counters. They're not the same here. Not even close.
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.]
Pork floss: it's a strange name, but a fitting description for the light, fluffy, thread-like seasoned dried pork product that can be used to add porkiness to just about anything. Although it's easily found at Chinese grocery stores in large, clear plastic containers, you can also make a fresh batch in your own kitchen. Check out Chow Times' pork floss recipe with step-by-step photos next time you get a hankering for pork floss (or perhaps if you want to fill your home with sweet, porky fumes).
If you don't know what to use pork floss for, read Chow Times' earlier pork floss post for ideas. My favorite way of eating it is just to put it on rice. Boring and lacking in nutrition, but tasty and temporarily hunger-suppressing.
Posted by Mario Batali, October 9, 2007 at 2:45 PM
Ah, prosciutto di Parma,prosciutto di San Daniele, and prosciutto di Carpegna: three hams from three places, each with its distinct flavor and yet similar technique. In each locale, the hams are salted for 30 to 45 days and then hung in the vaulted rooms and halls to cure for as little as 400 days and as much as 3 years to achieve the delicate balance of pure porcine pleasure and the fragrance of the wind and the dew of the specific geography.
I have always found the sweetest hams to come from Friuli, (prosciutto di San Daniele), where I think that the cooler climate allows them the use of a little less salt (in fact, the only ingredient other than the pig's leg).
Parma (and its Langhirano hills) is the home of those eponymous hams that are perhaps the most famous in the world. Their specific flavors are a result of their exposure to winds blown down the valleys off the Tyrrhenian Sea from Liguria, and they help create a complex perfume unique to prosciutto di Parma.
Carpegna hams from the Pesaro Urbino region of Le Marche are perhaps the most rich and porky in flavor, a tad drier in younger ages (not a bad thing), and hard to find—legally—in the U.S.
Posted by Alaina Browne, September 20, 2007 at 5:30 PM
Photo by Jeremy M. Lange
The Independent Weekly on Franklin County's MAE Farm, home to 220 free-range hogs as well as cattle, goats and chicken. MAE Farm's owner and operator, Mike Jones, also works as an extension agent teaching other North Carolina farmers to operate small, low-impact hog farms. "By legal definition, a small-scale hog farmer is one with no more than 250 pigs. North Carolina has about 100 of these farmers, and Jones has helped almost half of them get into business since 2001, when he started working at N.C. A&T."
The biggest challenge for these farmers is marketing, as most are naturally more inclined to focus on raising their animals than seek out new sales channels. "Accessing new markets takes sales skills, and while selling directly to customers through farmers' markets and meat-buying clubs can pull in premium prices, it takes a lot of time."
If you live in the area, you might want to check out the The Second Annual Eastern Triangle Farm Tour happening this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 22-23, 1-5 p.m.
Seventeen farms in Durham, Franklin, Johnston and Wake counties will showcase sustainable practices in growing flowers, trees, herbs, fruits and vegetables, as well as raising pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits, heritage breeds of chickens and the world's smallest breed of cattle.
Download the full brochure, including maps and detailed descriptions of each site, at www.carolinafarmstewards.org. Tickets are also available online; they are $25 per car in advance for unlimited sites, or $10 per car per farm. Bring a cooler: Produce and meat will be available for purchase, fresh from the farm.
Posted by Alaina Browne, September 12, 2007 at 7:00 PM
If I were to ever get a tattoo, I'm pretty sure it would be a variation of the cuts of pork diagram like DaddyMC's featured above. More fabulous pork ink: Aaron and Matt.
I can almost feel the warm, fatty, pork-filled fumes wafting out of ulterior epicure's photo of a Chinese roasted ham hock. The nearly eight hours of roasting really paid off. Now excuse me as I gather my drool bucket.
Although I know that pigs do not gleefully step into the hands of a pit master to become part of my meal, I feel no qualms about eating tender, smoky barbecued pork. Even after seeing the sign for Johnny's BBQ taken by Shani's Stuff, I'm still down with barbecued pork. But I would question what was going on in the head of whoever thought that the depiction of Porky Pig's frightened doppelgänger roasting in a hellish fiery embrace was the best way to encapsulate the essence of the restaurant. That was the most appealing idea? Really? File this under Suicide Food.
In fact, according the article, "Currently, it might be easier to buy a fatty niche pork product, such as a pork belly, at a restaurant in New York or California than in the state with the most hogs in the country."
Sounds like the next Pixar food movie should be about a fatty pig in Iowa looking for work.
I don't know much about Filipino food, but after seeing Grace's radiant photo of roast pork from NYC's Krystal's Cafe, I suddenly crave crispy skin-encased chunks of lechon along with any other Filipino specialty with a 1:1 ratio of meat to fat .
As many of you know, we are rather fond of pork. In fact, we're pork freaks. So when a third-generation French butcher named Stéphane Reynaud came out with a fabulous cookbook called Pork & Sons, we knew we had to feature it on Cook the Book. Pork & Sons is a beautiful book, filled with stunning, mouthwatering photos of both familiar and unusual pork dishes. There are also terrific photos of Reynaud's friends and family in both black and white and color. I've cooked from the book half a dozen times, and every dish has been just yummy.
In a few minutes, I'll post the first recipe from this book. But first, thanks to the good folks at Phaidon, we are giving away five (5) copies of this sumptuous book. Just tell us here in the comments section of this entry what your favorite pork preparation is. Five winners will be chosen at random from among the commenters. The usual Serious Eats contest rules apply. Comments will be open until Friday, June 29, at 9 p.m. ET.
If you ever worried about what happens to bacon strips after they die, fear no more! (And if you didn't worry, then you're probably normal. Read on anyway.) According to Sappy Moose Tree, they take on cute facial expressions and sprout wings and halos made of pipe cleaners. The ones who get into heaven, at least. If you prefer bacon of the undead, magical magnetic bacon strips are also available. Check out more cute things, bacon or non-bacon related, at Sappy Moose Tree. [via plushyou]
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.
Robin Mather Jenkins of the Chicago Tribune, lamenting that people don't eat breakfast sausages anymore because they think of them as fatty, shares a recipe for maple-sage breakfast sausage, lean and made from scratch. She says, "It's simple to make, and impressive. It takes just a few minutes to prepare, and it is many times better than store-bought, especially if you mix it up a day or two ahead of the time you plan to cook it, so the flavors can blend." Freeze the patties, and you can have breakfast sausages anytime you want!
I've never had white truffle honey, and have never really given trying it much thought, but after Manhattan Users Guide pointed out in today's newsletter that it goes well with roast pork, I felt I had no choice but to put it on my to-do list. How could I possibly say no to something that goes well with both bacon and ice cream? $15 for a 30g (1.05oz) jar at Urbani Truffles.
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.
The delicious decisions made by the happy global confrérie of extreme pig lovers preaching the gospel of nose-to-tail pork—Fergus Henderson, Mario Batali, Tony Bourdain, and Chris Cosentino come to mind—have gotten an awful lot of us paying sublime prices for cuts of meat that butchers couldn’t give away even a few years ago. Co-conspirator Martin Picard, the brotherhood’s Canadian affiliate, has been singing offal’s praises for nigh on six years since opening Montreal’s iconoclastic Au Pied de Cochon. After cyclone stints in some of France and Canada’s most impressive, highfalutin' kitchens, Picard threw caution (never a strong suit) to the wind, and began serving up the bouffe that most turns him on—deer tongues preserved in vinegar, brain omelets, and stomachs stuffed with whelks, ground pork, lobster, whatever—to critical acclaim. Everything he makes tastes as good as it sounds disgusting.
After three days in Barcelona, my family thinks I am going to turn into a ham. Not just any ham, but a jamón de bellota, made from the famous acorn-fed black-footed (pata negra) Spanish pigs.
In three days here, I have bought five different kinds of ham and ordered it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner in some form. Every morning, I go to the Boqueria and inspect the wares of the many ham vendors found at this wondrous market, which is every bit as great as advertised. I ask everyone I meet there where they buy their ham. Not many people speak English, and my Spanish and Catalan are nonexistent, so I don't really glean very much useful information from my queries.
So I'm forced to try the ham at every one that looks serious, which turns out to be every ham vendor at the market. There are at least 15 ham vendors at the Boqueria. That is why my family thinks I am going to turn into a jamón de bellota by the time I leave here. Of course if I do turn into one of these hams, I will not be allowed back into the U.S. But I might not care.
Veronica of the eponymous Veronica's Test Kitchen recently made the pork belly confit from Michael Rulhman and Brian Polycn's Charcuterie, and boy does it sounds like something I want in my belly RIGHT NOW: " The confit was crispy on the outside, the meat falling apart but it was the fat that held the concentration of flavors derived from all the spices -- a perfect alchemy of complex tastes that explodes with flavor with each bite."
"chinese BBQ roast pork is one of my favorite foods because it’s delicious and so easily accessible in chinatown, as nearly every block will have a shop that has fresh roast meats in the window. i love anything made with it : roast pork buns, roast pork flaky pastry called “char siu so”, roast pork rice crepe, and scrumptous barbeque roast pork on its own, but i have never seen a flat roast pork cookie before." Jo Jo of Eat 2 Love discovered what sounds like may potentially be my new favorite savoury pastry treat.
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.
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!
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."
The post-impressionist still life of a ham at right "pays homage to Cezanne and Manet while equaling both in its rigor and sensuousness," and was one of the painter Paul Gauguin's first real masterpieces, painted in 1889 before his famous move to Tahiti.
"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
"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
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.
Amanda Kelso was a 12-year veteran of vegetarianism when she went AWOL. She blames pork. "Bacon was a temptress to me," she says in her 30 Days of Pork series on photo-sharing site Flickr.
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!
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 28, 2007 at 3:32 PM
The Denver Post's Ellen Sweets reviews Race Day Grub: Recipes From the NASCAR Family: "Replete with race-related catchphrases - "Speedy Starters," "Raceworthy Main Courses" and "Sweet Victories" - the 140-page cookbook gives entertaining insight into the lives of those who drive the circuit and how they eat on the road. The anecdotal material is engaging, and the recipes ain't half bad. Not all are off the beaten track ("What's Left in the Cabinet?" grilled chicken, sauerkraut pizza, "Conch and Jimmy Chowder") or made with prepared/ canned/packaged ingredients, either."
Three recipes to check out; the Crabmeat au Gratin and Shrimp and Vegetable Risotto look pretty good, but the Spicy Beer-Brined Pork Loin is practically calling my name.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 27, 2007 at 3:17 PM
"Making your own bacon at home is not difficult. You will need pork belly and a brine of some sort. The most important ingredients are salt and TIME." Well, most important after the pork belly.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 21, 2007 at 9:12 AM
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Hsiao-Ching Chou dissects the increasing popularity of what's always been my favorite cut of pork: "Forget oysters. If you want to get a chef all hot and bothered, whisper "pork belly" in her ear. "It's such an amazing textural experience," said Maria Hines, chef and owner of Tilth restaurant. "You have a nice layer of meat, a nice layer of fat, another nice layer of meat, another nice layer of fat, and when you cook it properly, you have a thin crispy layer on top that's crackly when you bite down into it -- which you should never do in less than three seconds."
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 Alaina Browne, December 22, 2006 at 9:45 AM
Offalgood.com is the website and blog of Chris Consentino, Executive Chef at San Francisco's Incanto, where he documents the handling and cooking techniques of offal. For example, Porchetta di Testa:
Let them eat cake, what the hell did marie antoinette know, they cut off her head. My thought is let them eat pigs head in as many ways as possible. Just recently I was trying to put some new cooked meats on the antipasto platter and came up with this one.
Its royal name is: Porchetta Di Testa - Translation a pigs head that is boned out then marinated for 2 days with rosemary and garlic rolled and tied then braised for 14 hours in a sous vide bag at 200 degrees to keep it all together.
Keep reading for Chris' description of the preparation with photos.
All right, everyone. It’s time to give up the ghost of holiday gift giving and concentrate on feeding yourself and your loved ones. What all of us like to eat at Serious Eats is swine in all its glorious forms. These great purveyors will satisfy anyone’s desire for a serious pork fix any time of the day or night.
BACONfrom Allen Benton Allen Benton makes some of the greatest bacon you’ve ever tasted. It’s meaty, smoky, and has the perfect fat-to-meat ratio. Phone: 423-442-5003. $18 plus shipping.
SOPPRESSATA from Paul Bertolli Paul Bertolli was the chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, for many years before opening his own Oliveto’s in Oakland. Now he’s given up the restaurant business to make sublime fresh and dried sausage. Nine pounds of his spectacular soppressata is $210, but that includes shipping. Now I know that nine pounds of soppressata is an awful lot of swine for any one family, so form a pig-eating cooperative, order the sausage, and divvy it up however you want. framani.com.
JAMON IBERICA BELLOTTA from Tienda.com Jamon Iberica bellotta is the prized Spanish black-footed ham that is fed only acorns (bellota is Spanish for "acorn"). Finally, after years of keeping this serious pig out of the country, the feds are allowing us to eat this ham in the States. Tienda.com is now taking orders for bone-in Iberico bellota hams for winter 2008 delivery. At $79 a pound and with an average weight of 15 pounds, an order will set you back about $1,200 (price is determined on final weighing). If you have the means, you won't regret it. This is ham as God would make it—sweet, just marbled enough, and fantastically porky. tienda.com, $199 deposit on $1,200 approximate total, plus shipping.
PORK ROASTS from Flying Pigs Farm There are the everyday pork roasts you buy at your local supermarket or butcher and then there are the amazing pork roasts you can buy from Flying Pigs Farm. Two college administrators in their spare time (sic) humanely raise heritage-breed pork that tastes fabulous. A pork roast from Flying Pigs Farm is a revelation. The meat has a wonderful rich flavor and a satiny, buttery texture. flyingpigsfarm.com, center cut loin roast, $15 a pound plus shipping.
Paula Deen may 
Eating pork is becoming increasingly popular in Turkey, but perhaps not for the reason you think. The BBC reports that many are blaming 
As many of you know, we are rather fond of pork. In fact, we're pork freaks. So when a third-generation French butcher named Stéphane Reynaud came out with a fabulous cookbook called 
, we knew we had to feature it on Cook the Book. Pork & Sons is a beautiful book, filled with stunning, mouthwatering photos of both familiar and unusual pork dishes. There are also terrific photos of Reynaud's friends and family in both black and white and color. I've cooked from the book half a dozen times, and every dish has been just yummy. 
Apparently 
The delicious decisions made by the happy global confrérie of extreme pig lovers preaching the gospel of nose-to-tail pork—Fergus Henderson, Mario Batali, Tony Bourdain, and Chris Cosentino come to mind—have gotten an awful lot of us paying sublime prices for cuts of meat that butchers couldn’t give away even a few years ago. Co-conspirator Martin Picard, the brotherhood’s Canadian affiliate, has been singing offal’s praises for nigh on six years since opening Montreal’s iconoclastic 
The post-impressionist still life of a ham at right "pays homage to Cezanne and Manet 
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, 
Allen Benton makes some of the greatest bacon you’ve ever tasted. It’s meaty, smoky, and has the perfect fat-to-meat ratio. Phone: 423-442-5003. $18 plus shipping.
