A video from UKULELE JAY BBQ.
Hope you enjoy and please SUBSCRIBE and make sure to follow more UKULELE JAY BBQ on INSTAGRAM @ukulelejaybbq. Another one for the SCINTILLATION STATE!
A video from UKULELE JAY BBQ.
Hope you enjoy and please SUBSCRIBE and make sure to follow more UKULELE JAY BBQ on INSTAGRAM @ukulelejaybbq. Another one for the SCINTILLATION STATE!
Food Republic’s column Ask Your Butcher seeks to answer FAQs in the world of butchery. Ethically minded butcher Bryan Mayer founded Philadelphia’s Kensington Quarters and helped develop a renowned butcher-training program at Brooklyn’s Fleisher’s. Today, he consults with farmers, chefs, butchers and anyone else who will listen. In each column, Mayer tackles a pressing issue facing both meat buyers and home cooks. Here, he explores three things that you probably aren’t cooking with now, but you should.
Peer over the counter at your local whole-animal butcher shop and you’re more than likely going to see a whole lot of bones, fat and — depending on the animal — skin. And while our more industrially focused brethren don’t have to take much of this into consideration (being that you can order up just about anything skinless, boneless, and pretty much denuded of any and all fat), we who preach whole-carcass utilization take this as a challenge!
Our detractors would say that the industrial model is nothing if not efficient when it comes to utilizing the whole carcass. And that’s somewhat true, if you exclude certain parts that are routinely discarded due to their lack of economic viability. While I’ve read more than my fair share of blog posts pointing out that we, the so-called whole-animal butchers who claim to use everything but the oink, often fall short of these claims, it does bear mentioning that we are severely limited in what we actually receive from our slaughterhouses.
The limitations of these by-products, both edible and inedible, are not totally based on legality, but rather on a significant revenue stream for slaughterhouses. And rightfully so. Up until very recently, very few people in the U.S. were looking to prepare a traditional Burns Supper, which, among other things, calls for stomach and lung, the latter being a by-product that is illegal in the U.S. But what of all those bones going into that bone broth, or, as I like to call it, stock? It’s as if they magically appeared, to cure all your ailments, from gut issues to hair loss to nonexistent love life.
In fact, the list of uses for animal by-products — again, both inedible and edible — is endless. Here’s a sample, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
Adhesives, ceramics, cosmetics, feed use, fertilizer, foam in fire extinguishers, insecticides, buttons and handles, capsules for medications, emulsions, gelatins, glues, hardening steel, candies, dairy products, ointments, paper, photographic films, refining sugar, textiles, candies, chewing gum, germicides, industrial oils, lubricants, soap, glycerin, shortenings, tires, athletic equipment, brushes, felt, insulation, rugs, upholstery.
Sorry, vegans.
I’m hoping now you can see why these things are hard to come by, and more importantly, why they have such value. To put it all into context for you, by-products account for roughly 30 percent of the live weight (weight before slaughter and evisceration) of hogs and roughly 44 percent of the live weight of cattle. To devalue these items would ultimately mean devaluing the work of our farmers. We don’t want to do that.
With the proliferation of whole-animal butcher shops, we are starting to see an increased interest in using more by-products, specifically bones, fat and skin. So here are a few cooking ideas:
Auguste Escoffier once said, “Indeed, stock is everything in cooking. Without it, nothing can be done.” And since my grandma used it as a cure-all, I’m not one to disagree. Stocks contain minerals in a form that the body can absorb easily — not just trace minerals, but sulfur, magnesium and calcium. Add to that the stuff in cartilage, like chondroitin and glucosamine, and you’re liable to put GNC out of business. And while it’s easy to poke fun of your local dispensary, pouring cups of $9 broth from stainless steel urns, there clearly is some merit to this craze — certainly more so than kale!
Feel free to use any types of bones you’d like: neck, knuckle (the ends of long bones) and marrow all work great. Go ahead and experiment. Step outside the comfort zones of beef and chicken! Try lamb, goat and pork, and add any spices you wish. After all, it’s about what tastes good to you. For my simple beef stock, I add a bit of salt, ginger, clove and turmeric. You can simply simmer bones and water, or go ahead and make a full-on stock by adding your standard mirepoix. Or, in my case, suppengruen, to honor my German side.
Basic Beef Stock
Ingredients
Roughly 4 pounds of neck, knuckle, and/or marrow bones
4 quarts water (or enough to cover bones)
3 each celery, carrots and onions, if desired
Directions:
It’s one of largest organs, if not the largest. You could say it’s one of the most important. It keeps the body safe from the extremes of temperatures, sunlight and chemicals. And if you’re a hog or a chicken, it also happens to be delicious. Roast a whole chicken in my house and someone’s picking off the crispy skin. Braise a picnic ham for pernil and that crispy skin is a great counterbalance to the tender meat. Skin alone, especially from pigs, has many uses. Aside from all the inedible examples mentioned above, it’s great to add skin to stocks. All that gelatin that it contains is a great thickener. It can make great noodles, and, of course, there’s the ol’ standby, chicharrónes.
Preparing pig skin for noodles is a bit of a process and removes something very dear to me and hopefully to you: pork fat. What you’re left with is something reminiscent of pasta, but with an obvious porkiness that is an excellent addition to any ramen. You’ll want to denude the skin of any fat and hair, add some salt and allow it to cure for a couple of hours. You can prepare a marinade, which is something that will help break down the skin over a 24-hour period. Once that’s done, you’ll want to cook for a couple more hours, cool for another 12 and you’re ready to add to your ramen. Yeah, that’s a lot of work.
Let’s stick to a chicharrón. I like my chicharrónes the way my mother-in-law does them: not the puffed, airy kind, but something with a bit more substance — some meat and some fat. The seasoning isn’t necessarily the important part here, but the process is, as you’ll want to follow it closely in order to get a crispy, crunchy chicharrón.
You’re still going to have to put in some time with this one, but you can make a few batches to sit up on your shelf (it’s right next to the granola on mine). I like to use pork belly for this as it has the best ratios of skin, meat and fat. I’ll use a little baking soda with my salt, as I cure the belly overnight. This will help with dehydration, which is important in order to achieve that crunchy skin. After your 24-hour cure, you’re ready to cook. Grab a large skillet and add some water for the wet-rendering method. This is much more forgiving than the dry method and the water will also help to braise the bit of meat and slowly render the fat over 3 to 4 hours. You’ll know when all the water has evaporated and you’re left with just rendered fat when you cease to see any bubbles rising. You’re all set to crank the heat to high and fry away, which should take about three to five minutes. Transfer to a paper towel–lined plate to cool a bit and then add some vinegar, preferably some Sukang Maanghang.
Chicharrón Baboy (Filipino Pork Rind Cracklings)
Ingredients
1 pound pork belly
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Water to cover
Vinegar
Directions:
Since we briefly mentioned fat above, why don’t we really talk about it for a moment here? Fat has been vilified for far too long. Whether it was Sinclair’s fictional account of the horrors of rendering plants, Procter and Gamble’s marketing campaign for Crisco and the newly invented process of hydrogenation in the early 20th century, or scientists in the 1950s all but singling out animal fat as the cause of heart disease, it seemed we had good reason to avoid animal fats at any cost.
Well, that cost is our health. Fats from animals — consumed in moderation, of course — provide a concentrated source of energy in our diet, a source that cannot be supplemented. They are the building blocks for cell membranes and hormones. As if that weren’t enough, they are also the carriers for the extremely important, fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Fat doesn’t only taste good — it is now recognized as the sixth taste — but it does good for you! And not just animal fats. We’re talking oils: extra-virgin olive oil, unrefined flaxseed oil, and coconut oil, for example. Keep on using all that butter, which is hopefully from grass-fed, fully pastured cows!
Good oils and butter are fairly easy to come by these days. As for rendered animal fat, that’s a bit tricky. Your whole-animal butcher shop should have some already rendered for you. If not, you can always purchase a hunk of fat from them and render it yourself. Pork fat is the best, as it’s the most neutral of fats, but feel free to use beef, chicken or whatever you’d like. You’ll need a skillet, some water and a little bit of time — that’s all. You’ll want to cube the fat or, if possible, coarsely grind it to speed the process up a bit. I like the wet-rendering method, as you’re less likely to scorch the fat. While scorching won’t necessarily ruin the fat, it will definitely bring out the flavors a bit more in your lard, which is something that you may not want in a flaky pie crust. A low flame, and once the bubbles stop rising, you’ve got pure fat ready to fry potatoes or make some chicharrónes.
Rendered Fat
This can be as easy as removing some of the visceral fat from the chicken you’re about to roast or going to your local whole-animal butcher to order some pasture-raised animal fats.
Directions:
Read the original post: http://www.foodrepublic.com/
Crispy pork trotters with Mission figs at Flour + Water, ca. July 2009.
Some of the most welcome offal to come out of the trend of head-to-tail cuisine are pork trotters, a.k.a. pigs’ feet, and we’re now seeing more of this humble pork product pop up on respectable menus in New York, L.A. and San Francisco. More often than not, the meat is braised, deboned, and formed into a crab cake-like portion, browned on both sides, and served with any number of sauces likely to win over even picky eaters — as they were last spring on the menu at the critically adored Frances, with a sauce gribiche. Semi-rustic preparations of trotters have made appearances in New York over the last few years at places like Craft and Baba, and last winter Northern Spy did a trotter cake with mustard greens — a play on collard greens and ham hocks — that caught the attention of the Times and became the lede for their review. (“Slice into it and the pork spills out, outrageously tender. There is nothing to tip off the squeamish that we’ve entered hoof territory.”)
But how did pigs’ feet — which many of us probably associate with the pale, puckered, and all-too-anatomically-intact versions we saw pickled in jars in the ethnic foods section of grocery stores as kids — become the stuff of haute cuisine?
San Francisco food writer Marcia Gagliardi (The Tablehopper) points back to the first wave of chefs embracing offal here in the last few years. “It started with the whole-animal guys — like Nate Appleman when he was at A16, Chris Cosentino at Incanto, and Mark Denham when he was at Laiola,” she says. “What you’re seeing now in S.F. is a second wave of restaurants doing rustic European dishes (Flour + Water, Frances, Contigo), and diners perhaps being a bit more adventurous.”
Below, a rough timeline of the trotters’ recent rise to prominence:
1999: Thomas Keller features Pig’s Feet with French Green Lentils in The French Laundry Cookbook.
2001: Tom Colicchio opens Craft in New York, later begins featuring pork trotters among his mix-and-match menu offerings.
2002: Chris Cosentino comes on board as executive chef at Incanto, bringing with him a passion for head-to-tail cooking, and using trotters in his pork ragu. Later launches the website OffalGood.com.
2004: The Bouchon Cookbook features pieds de cochon with a sauce gribiche.
2007: Fergus Henderson publishes Beyond Nose to Tail, which contains the recipe for Trotter Gear.
2007-2008: Trotters make their appearance on Nate Appleman’s menus at A16 and SPQR in San Francisco. He later wins the James Beard Award for Rising Star Chef, as well as a Food & Wine Best New Chef nod. They continue to make appearances on both menus under new chefs Liza Shaw and Matt Accarrino, in ragus, terrinas, and Shaw’s pork trotter zampone, which are deboned foreshanks stuffed with either sausage or a meatball mixture, then braised and finished off in a wood-fired oven.
Early 2008: Hakata Tonton opens in New York, with 33 of its 39 dishes containing pigs’ feet. The UK Telegraph declares them ‘the new superfood.’
June 2008: Animal opens in Los Angeles, and chefs Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook garner loads of attention for their bold use of offal, and they frequently work trotters into their menu.
June 2009: Bouchon opens in Beverly Hills, features trotters.
July 2009: Flour + Water opens to loads of press early in the year, and that summer begins featuring trotters breaded and fried and served with Mission figs and mustard greens.
December 2009: Josef Centeno’s Lazy Ox Canteen opens in L.A., and receives a bunch of attention for, among other things, pigs’ feet.
February 2010: The Times writes up Northern Spy and their trotter dish.
Spring 2010: Trotters appear on the menu at Frances, braised and seared in cakes, served with a sauce gribiche and pickled vegetables. Frances is nominated for a Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.
April 2010: Saveur spotlights the very rustic crispy pata (fried pigs’ feet) at Patio Filipino in San Bruno.
June 2010: Prospect opens in San Francisco, from the team behind the uber-successful Boulevard, featuring a dish that combines pork trotters with lobster. Critic Jonathan Kauffman later calls out the dish as a point where chef Ravi Kapur “hits a sweet spot” of edginess.
October 2010: Lowcountry opens in New York, offering “trotter tots” as a starter; Coi chef Daniel Patterson opens a casual offshoot in Oakland called Plum, featuring a pork trotter burger.
Original post: http://sanfrancisco.grubstreet.com
menu item, pig's feet, pork trottersINGREDIENTS
For the chicherones
For the guacamole
Preheat the oven to 230F/110C/Gas ¼. Cut the skin into thin strips about 10cm (4in) long, and then put them in the oven for an hour and a half to render the fat and soften the skin.
Remove the pork from the oven and transfer it to a clean roasting tray. Then turn the oven up to its hottest setting (about 550F/300C/Gas 10). While the oven is heating up, make the guacamole.
In a large pestle and mortar, crush one of the chillies with the onion and coriander leaves, and then the tomatoes, which you should bash up a little bit. Scoop the flesh out of the avocados and add this to the mixture, crush the mixture with the pestle, but keep it a little coarse.
Season with salt and squeeze over the lime; taste and adjust acidity with more lime and check the salt. Add more chilli if it needs it: the guacamole should taste punchy and full. Return the pork skin to the oven at 550F/300C/Gas 10 for 5 to 10 minutes to allow it to puff up and become really crispy.
The food world, like everything else, has its fads & fashions. Pork Belly may not the be the darling of star chefs that it was a year or two ago, but it’s always been a mainstay of rich, hearty ethnic cuisines. Pork is particularly esteemed in Eastern European cookery, and is a cornerstone of the cuisine of Hungary.
Lard is the cooking fat of choice for everyday Hungarian cooking (when cooking “light,” Hungarians use butter). Pork fat is such a big deal that the Mangalitsa pig, which has been getting a lot of press lately, was bred in Hungary especially for its abundant and luxurious fat.
This preparation is inspired by a traditional Hungarian dish, Abált szalonna (roughly translated as “boiled bacon”). While this version is made with fresh, uncured pork belly instead of the usual bacon or smoked hog jowl, the essential flavor and aromas of pungent garlic and rich, dusky Hungarian paprika ring true to the original version. And oh – the silken, tender texture of long-simmered pork belly with its layers of soft skin and tender streaks of meat, held together with delicate pork fat!
After cooking, the garlic-laden pork belly is liberally anointed with good Hungarian paprika, carefully wrapped and refrigerated until it is firm and completely chilled. The fully cooked pork is traditionally eaten cold, draped over a thick slice of warm, fresh bread with roasted peppers, sliced onions and lots and lots of homemade pickles. This is the quintessential Hungarian convenience food, something you’d take on a trip or offer to the guest who drops by for a visit.
While many Americans might be horrified at the thought of eating what amounts to pure, unadulterated fat, at the same time, they think nothing of consuming copious amounts of fried foods and snacks, all soaked with processed, hydrogenated fats.
But is pork fat bad? Recent research suggests that it’s not. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, medical doctor and well-known naturopath, the scientific analysis of 21 studies determined that there is no significant evidence that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease.
Pork fat has only about one-fourth the saturated fat and more than twice the monounsaturated fat as butter. It’s very high in Vitamin D and is also low in omega-6 fatty acids, known to promote inflammation; and if your pork comes from free-range pigs that eat greens, not grains, it will have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
The bottom line? Relax and enjoy this, and other traditional pork delicacies, in moderation. You’ll be glad you did.
Hungarian Style Pork Belly
Using the tip of a thin-bladed knife, deeply pierce the fat side (not the skin side) of the pork belly in 10 or 12 places, making sure not to go all the way through the skin on the other side.
Poke whole cloves of garlic (or halved cloves, if they’re especially large) into the slits.
Place the pork belly, bay leaves, peppercorns, salt and 2 – 3 sliced garlic cloves in a large, heavy pot filled with cold water. Over medium heat, bring to a low simmer. Reduce the heat to just barely simmering, cover and cook about 3 hours, or until the skin is very soft and tender.
Remove from the heat and take the pork out of the pot and drain, reserving the broth for other uses. Using paper towels, pat the pork completely dry and place on a large piece of wax paper, skin side down. Sprinkle the top of the pork belly very generously with the paprika. Wrap tightly with the wax paper and a layer of aluminum foil and refrigerate overnight or until thoroughly chilled.
Place thin, almost transparent slices of the pork belly on warm slices of rustic bread with a sprinkle of coarse salt – and maybe a little extra pinch of paprika. Serve with roasted peppers, sliced onions and homemade pickles.
Fresh Pork Belly
A thin slice of Hungarian-style pork belly pressed against a backlit translucent salt block. Note the slices of whole garlic cloves!
Pork Belly with traditional accompaniments
Read the original post: earthlydelightsblog.com
Dr. Andrew Weil, pork belly, pork fat