Like I mentioned in the previous post, when I purchased a butchered pig last month, I asked for the extra fat, the liver, the heart and the head to be delivered with my meat. When you buy meat directly from a farmer, you pay for the whole animal, even though you only get the nice bits of meat that the butcher wants you to have. I figured since I already paid for the weird parts, I should get them home and figure out what to do with them. I had a few plans - I had long wanted to try making liverwurst, and as for the head - I was interested in getting the jowls so I could smoke them or make Guanciale. When smoked, it's similar to bacon and guanciale is apparently kind of similar to pancetta.
Well, the idea of using up all the spare parts was a noble one. I didn't take any pictures of the liverwurst making process for some reason - I guess it was so intense and engrossing that I didn't pick up the camera. I ended up making two large liverwursts and about 10 small loaves of liver pate with bourbon. Pretty yummy stuff. I ended up giving the heart to my brother Carl, who always called dibs on the chicken hearts and gizzards any time Mom would roast a chicken when we were kids.
But the head.... Oh my God, the head nearly did me in. I don't think I was quite prepared to handle the huge hog's head that came wrapped in butcher paper. First of all, it was skinned. Do you know how gross a skinned pig's head is?
I'll show you how gross it is:
Not only was it gross, but the way that it was cut left very little meat in the jowl area, so I couldn't even make my hog jowls. Now what was I supposed to do? Make head cheese? Even I have my limits.
I found my way over to El Izalco that particular weekend, and the lovely Salvadorean woman who runs the place (and who I constantly forget the name of) suggested that I roast the head, make stock, and cook up some pozole. Pozole is a Mexican/Central American soup made with pork and hominy corn. Apparently it is served on special occasions because of the time it takes to prepare and it is a pretty big treat. I picked up a few pounds of dried hominy and lots of dried guajillo and chipotle chiles and went home with renewed excitement for my pig's head.
I have some pretty large stockpots, but nothing really worked with this damn head. I had hoped to skip the roasting part of the stock making, but the skull just wouldn't fit in the pot in one piece. After it had roasted for an hour or so, it was easier to break up into parts.Long story short -
I was victorious in my goal of not wasting the pig's head. It made a delicious, rich soup that tasted extra yummy with all the hominy corn and chiles. And triple yummy with a garnish of chopped up avocados, cilantro and lime juice.
8 comments:
do i ever have a picture for you. one fine lovely afternoon in rankin, i step out the back porch to find my neighbour skinning the seals he had caught. seal head with big eyeballs is pretty sick. i'll see if i can send it on over. there was also some intestine- cleaning and eating going on. i think you would have liked it.
OMG...
That is seriously disgusting...good thing I hadn't eaten breakfast yet;)
I have no idea how you did that I would have been barfing. You are a seriously hard core carnivore!
ugh, i was grossed right out. kudos to you for actually handling it!
now i'll make one of those pictures the desktop background to gross out my partner later...
Lisa, I already have that picture of the skinned seal head! You e-mailed it to me when you took the picture a year or two ago. I remember that was when Mike Wachs, sensitive vegetarian was working for me and he was really disturbed by it. Ha.
Anyway, the worst thing about handling it is that there was no good way to pick it up. You needed to use both hands because it was really heavy, but because it was skinned, it just seemed so gross to grab it properly. Plus it seemed that my fingers gravitated towards the eye sockets. Yikes!
Finally, I had to take the eyes out when I really had to handle it. Those freaky blue eyes staring at me were seriously disturbing. More disturbing is how hard they were to cut out of the skull.... I thought they'd pop right out. Apparently not.
Hi there, I like your post because I've been doing a lot of googleing on thyroid health and suddenly it occurred to me that in order to be truly healthy we really ought to eat the WHOLE animal. Isn't that what our dear furry friends do and are healthy? Since the glands are those parts that we usually discard is what would give us that needed nutrition I thought by making soup out of these parts is what would give us the needed nutrients. I remember that the Italian guest workers we had in my home country would come to our farm and ask for our old hens and they then would boil up the heads and legs to make soup. I know it sounds kind of gross but it's only because we are not used to eating such things. Anyway, our parents would actually use the pig's heads and use every bit of it. I didn't like to see those parts as a child but I happily ate the cooked bits and pieces. Brined snouts, trotters, ears and tails. Yummy. Good on you, keep up the good work. I'm going to make some fish head soup today.
Cheers, Liz
Interesting that you mention the glands... I got another pig this year, with another head and this time I did manage to make guanciale. Most of the recipes I found were specific to mention that the glands (salivary glands) needed to be cut away before curing.
I wonder if there are health benefits to eating these parts.
The neighbors next door were pulling the hairs out of a pigs head this afternoon. I couldn't believe my eyes...a whole pigs head, snout, skin and floppy ears. "That looks like a pigs head!", I gasped. "What are you going to do with it?" "Eat it" "Are you pulling my leg?" "No, it makes really good soup" "Oh, lord, that's so unAmerican!"
I was googling thyroid and pigs head or something and came across your blog, I think this post and picture have permanently made me into a near vegetarian. No more pig for me! (I do have to take the dried pig thyroid though, damn, if there was a way I didn't have to.. I sure would go back to synthetic thyroid, but for some of us the synthetic stuff quits working or never worked)
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