After going many years without tasting pork at all (I refuse to eat factory-farmed pork for ethical reasons), its been nice to have some wild pig meat to experiment with. We're gradually eating our way through a pig that my father-in-law, Bob Smith, killed on a recent hunt in Georgia. I didn't bag a pig of my own on that trip with Kiera Butler of Mother Jones magazine, but I did get to butcher Bob's pig. Call me crazy, but I really enjoy the butchering process and learning about the anatomy of different animals while taking some pride in doing the best job I can of turning them into food.Our latest wild pork experiment has been with ravioli. It turned out really well. We used this recipe for the dough. The béchamel sauce was based on this recipe, but we nixed the clove and added half a cup of white wine.
The filling that we came up with contained:
1/2 lb of minced wild pork
2 tablespoons of fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3/4 cup of freshly grated ricotta
1/2 cup of freshly grated parmesan
The pig that I butchered for this was on the younger side. It weighed probably around 70 pounds, making it much smaller than most pigs at the time of slaughter in commercial pig production. The meat is all very tender. Though it was a male, there was no trace of 'boar taint' in an animal that was probably between four and six months of age. It was unfortunately too small and lean to get any bacon out of. I approached the butchering in a fashion almost identical to how I butcher a deer, with the exception of having sawed out the ribs for barbeque.
2 comments:
Wow, I guess we're very lucky to have a farmer who raises pigs on pasture in our area - I love wild pig, but dang, I really love bacon too. (And how appropriate that my captcha word below is "grapa" - just what you need after epic self-indulgence on pork products.)
Okay, knowing absolutely nothing (and I mean nothing) about deer meat/hunting, why couldn't you hack out deer ribs to make bbq?
Is it just not good? Not enough meat? Some other use or problem?
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