In the summer of 2012 I spent a lot of time thinking about meatballs. Mostly I thought about them as I was making them, which took several hours every other week.
They are a labour of love for certain.
Once you’ve mixed up the meat and the eggs and the milk and bread crumbs and whatever else you like, you could just press it into a loaf pan, call it meatloaf, and be done with it. But you won’t do that, because you want meatballs. Even though they’re awkward, and they roll around on your plate, and don’t quite fit into a submarine sandwich, you want them, because they’re fun.
Pork tenderloin quickly roasted, sliced into blushing medallions, and served as a meal for two: this may be as intimate and elegant as fresh pork gets.
Every pig has two tenderloins that run under either side of the lower backbone. Each tenderloin has a blunt end tucked into the pelvis, a roughly cylindrical cross-section through most of its length, and then a tapered end at the forward end of the pig. (See this post on pork-cutting for more details and photos.)
As the name tells us, this cut is very tender. It is also very lean – almost perfectly lean – so it doesn’t have much distinct pork flavour.
There is a band of silverskin on the tenderloin which … Continue reading.
I think that no cut of pork is as mistreated as ribs. In kitchens across the country, in homes and restaurants alike, folks are boiling, stewing, steaming, and baking pork ribs into mushy oblivion.
A shame, as there is nothing quite like a properly smoke-roasted pork rib glazed with zingy barbecue sauce.
There was a time when this was considered a poorman’s dish. Perhaps it still is, but smoked pork ribs are a delicacy in my home. We buy our pork by the side, and currently one side of pork lasts us about one year. This means that we get at most one full slab of side ribs and one full slab of back ribs for every 365 days. As … Continue reading.
Tourtière is made differently in every home, and can incite intense feelings of loyalty to ones mother. I will proceed cautiously with a definition, but I warn you: there are lots of qualifiers in this post.
Tourtière is meat pie. It is often based on pork, though veal and game are also common. If anyone tells you that it was traditionally made with pigeon, you can politely dismiss their story as folklore. A false etymology has developed because of the similarity between the words for the pie tourtière and the Quebecois word for the now-extinct passenger pigeon, tourte. Certainly many a pigeon has been baked into pie, but the similarity between the two words is entirely coincidental. Tourte also … Continue reading.
Pâté is fancy French meatloaf: it’s ground meat, bound with dairy, eggs, and bread. The only difference is that pâté usually contains some liver, and it’s usually eaten cold. If it’s baked in a special ceramic dish, it can be called a terrine.
Within that definition, there is a spectrum of pâtés that runs from rustic to refined. The two qualities that decide a pâté’s place on the spectrum are texture and ingredients. Rustic pâtés are coarser in texture and made with cheaper, heartier ingredients, like liver. They are often described by words like campagne (“country”), grandmère (“grandma”), and maison (“house”). Refined pâtés have a finer, creamier texture and feature meat more prominently than liver. … Continue reading.
This happened ages ago, back in September, and Kevin has long since posted a fantastic video about it, but I want to write about a pork butchery workshop that took place out in Sangudo, Alberta. The workshop was put together by Kevin Kossowan, and hosted by Jeff Senger of Sangudo Custom Meats. The day started with the killing and processing of one of Jeff’s own pigs. Since it was Saturday and there were no inspectors present, the kill took place on Jeff’s farm, then the pig was processed at Sangudo Meats. The day continued with a hands-on meat-cutting class, and finally some demonstrations of sausage-making and other charcuterie preparations. … Continue reading.
While the most famous incarnation of this cut of pork is bacon, fresh pork belly has become very popular over the last few years. In the butcher shop it is also called pork side, or side meat. Before I started buying pigs by the side, I ordered slabs of belly from Irvings Farm Fresh, a 5 lb slab costing somewhere around $25.
A Quick Tour of the Pork Belly
Below is a slab of pork belly. You’re looking at the inside of the pig; the opposite side is covered with skin. The right side of this slab would have connected to the front shoulder of the hog. The left side would have connected to the hind leg. The top … Continue reading.
The tongue is one of those cuts that sounds way, way weirder than it really is.
The tongue has two sections. There’s the part that we usually think of when we consider an animal’s tongue: the part at the front that can move freely around the mouth. Then there’s the base, at the back of the mouth. The meat from these two sections is different.
The tip meat has a very close, dense texture, and is lean. The base meat has a coarser texture, and is a bit fatty.
The meat from both sections is very tough in its raw state. As you can imagine, the tongue is a highly exercised muscle, and requires extensive cooking at low temperatures, usually … Continue reading.
It’s always confused me that Americans call back bacon “Canadian bacon,” when it’s much more associated with Britain than Canada. To my knowledge the only uniquely Canadian form of bacon is peameal bacon: cured pork loin rolled in ground split peas, which keeps the surface of the meat dry and inhibits microbial growth. Sometime over the past century cornmeal has taken the place of peameal, but the name hasn’t changed.
This week I made two forms of peameal bacon: the contemporary favourite – lean, centre-cut pork loin, fat trimmed down, brined and rolled in cornmeal – and a rustic recontruction, inspired by the fantastic book The Art of Living According to Joe Beef. I left an inch or two … Continue reading.
This is hands down my favourite preparation of pork loin: brine-cured, smoked, and sliced into thick ham chops.
While the eye of loin is a very lean, mild-tasting muscle, it is surrounded by large slabs of fat: fatback on top, and the streaky side meat that becomes bacon. Grilling or pan-frying a large pork chop with all this fat usually results in either overcooked meat or under-rendered fat. By slowly bringing this roast up to temperature over several hours in a smoker, we render all that fat without overcooking the meat. The final dish is somewhere between bacon and ham.
In Germany this preparation goes by the name Kassler Rippchen, which literally means “little ribs from Kassel”.
In the summer of 2012 I spent a lot of time thinking about meatballs. Mostly I thought about them as I was making them, which took several hours every other week.
The tongue is one of those cuts that sounds way, way weirder than it really is.
