Check out the video: Undercover at Smithfield Foods.

Oh, and it’s official, Paula Deen really *doesn’t* care what she eats.

On the plane ride home, the wheels immediately began turning as to how we could host the same type of event in Texas.  A few months ago, Michael Clampffer, from Mosefund Farm let me know that Chistoph and Isabell Wiesner, would be back in the U.S. from Austria in November of this year.  A few emails were exchanged between all parties, and the dates were nailed down.

Mangalitsa Shoulder

Christoph and Isabell teach a type of butchery that is lost in most American butchery camps.  Instead of hacking through cross-sections of muscles like we do with our traditional cuts like Boston Butts (which are actually from the shoulder, not the back end of the pig), the type of butchery  they teach meticulously takes the muscles apart according to their seams.  The result is less waste, and much more usable product—all of which is perfect for curing.

The Wiesners will be in the Houston area to teach two classes.  The first class, held on November 5-6, will be for avid home cooks that have always wanted to learn more about the lost craft of fine butchery, as well as charcuterie.  The second class will be Sunday and Monday, November 7-8, and will be geared for industry types: chefs, cooks, butchers, etc. I felt that it would be beneficial to separate the two classes so the classes themselves can move at similar paces.

Christoph, Chris Shepard

Day One Morning: The class will be all about the butchery. The morning will begin with a overview of the material that will be covered, followed by a demonstration by Christoph Wiesner, breaking down half of a Mangalitsa pig, using the seam butchery techniques—with detailed explanations of the process from both he and Isabell. Following Christoph’s demonstration, class participants will pair up with someone of their choosing, and begin work on their own half of a Mangalitsa pig. Christoph will be over-seeing, helping guide newbies through the process. It is a very hands-on experience—in my opinion, the only way to truly learn how to butcher.

Lunch will be provided: Mangalitsa of course.

Day One Afternoon/Evening: Offal Cookery. Isabell is a master of offal. What is beautiful about her recipes and techniques, is not that she just gets the job done, but she truly helps transform unpopular parts of the pig into some of the tastiest and most honest dishes I’ve ever eaten.

Isabell, Ryan

Day Two: Charcuterie!  The whole point of Seam Butchery is to get as much usable product out of the pig as possible. The by-product of this meticulous craft is that the whole beast becomes easily curable, from the loin to the neck (coppa!) and of course the shoulders and hams, bacon (!).  It’s all there and easily manageable. Christoph will teach techniques that have been used in Austria to make cured products for decades and even centuries. It will go far beyond many of the techniques that we’ve probably become familiar with in Michael Ruhlman’s ground-breaking book, Charcuterie.

In addition to whole-muscle cures, we will be making head cheese and blood sausage, as well as learning the best way to render lard—nothing goes to waste. In the evening of Day Two, dinner will also be provided.

The sad part is that we only have 12 seats available for each class, 24 total. Tuition for the class is $500. It will be a Mangalitsa-centric class and the pigs that we break down, will be available for advanced purchase. Each half will be $625, in addition to the class’s tuition. You can fully expect to leave the class with enough the best pork available, to keep your freezer full for a VERY long time.

If you are interested, please email me: morgan@revivalmeats.com

A down payment of $250 will be needed by October 1st, in order to hold your place at the class. The remainder will be due by October 25th.

Mangalitsa Neck for Coppa

I hope you’re all looking as forward to the event as I am. Christoph and Isabell are truly remarkable individuals with an unmatched passion for this subject that they so graciously teach.

It also seems well-timed now that delicious summer tomatoes are in full swing—I’m looking at you, Homemade BLT.

Mangalitsa Bacon courtesy Chris Shepherd of Catalan

Bacon can pretty much be made from any part of the pig.  More times than not, it comes from the belly, but we need not limit bacon’s abilities to just that part of the pig’s anatomy.  We can make bacon from the jowls, the shoulders, the neck—the whole pig can be cured, smoked, sliced up, and fried.  Why not?  Making bacon at home does not take advanced degrees in cookery.  Sure, good and even great bacon exists that the retail public can easily procure.  Benton’s is a country-wide favorite, as is Neuske’s, but nothing beats the satisfaction of making one’s own, slicing it off the slab as you see fit.  Of all the recipes I’ve tried, none come close to the off-the-shelf now-classic, that Ruhlman gives us in Charcuterie.

Adapted from Michael Ruhlman’s recipe in Charcuterie:

Maple-Cured, Smoked Bacon

2 oz/50 grams kosher salt (about a ¼ cup)
2 teaspoons/12 grams pink salt (I used Insta Cure #1)
¼ cup/50 grams maple sugar or packed dark brown sugar
¼ cup/60 milliliters maple syrup (I used Grade B because of the stronger maple flavor)

When curing meat, it is extremely important to be accurate with the measurements. I ended up throwing the first batch of cure in the trash because I started second guessing myself about how much pink salt I added. When in doubt, just start over. The nitrites in the pink salt keep the bad bacteria from finding a home and setting up shop while the meat is curing. I then combined all of the ingredients (EXCEPT THE MAPLE SYRUP) in a mixing bowl and stirred to combine, so they were evenly distributed. Then I added the maple syrup.

Next, the pork bellies got an even coating of the cure and were placed into a Ziploc bag, forcing as much air out as possible to ensure a snug fit around the meat. To keep the possibility of leakage down, I set the bags of pork bellies in a casserole dish. Into the refrigerator they went for a full seven days (turning the bellies every day to redistribute the juice that forms as a result of the curing process).

Cured and Ready to Smoke

Once cured, I fired up the smoker and hot-smoked the bellies at around 225 degrees Fahrenheit for three hours. At home, I typically use a mixture of oak and maple woods for smoking meat, but the more delicate and floral apple wood seems better suited for bacon, in my opinion (Benton’s uses Hickory and Nueske’s uses Applewood, FWIW). After they came off the smoker and had a chance to cool for a bit, it was easy to slide a hot knife under the rind for its removal.

Freshly-smoked Bellies

I wish I had more to add, you know, to make it sound like a bigger deal.  It really is that simple though.  At this point in the process, I chill down the bacon in the fridge.  Once cold, it is a lot easier to slice.  From there I vacuum-seal it in manageable portions.  All of the chunks and funky-looking pieces get saved for beans, stocks, sauces, etc.  DON’T THROW ANYTHING AWAY!

The Final Product

In Houston, Allied Kenco has EVERYTHING one could ever need for curing meats, especially for bacon-making. From pink salt to wood chips, they’re your local source. If you have questions, Cody can field just about anything you can throw at him.

Allied Kenco
26 Lyerly Street
Houston, TX 77022-3072
(713) 691-2935

Price List Summer 2010

Lindenau, Texas

Lindenau, Texas

Lindenau, Texas

Shiner, Texas

Cuero, Texas

Lindenau, Texas

Cuero, Texas

Cheapside, Texas

Cheapside, Texas

Cheapside, Texas

Lindenau, Texas

Cheapside, Texas

]]> http://www.revivalmeats.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=489 4 http://www.revivalmeats.com/blog/?p=460 http://www.revivalmeats.com/blog/?p=460#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:35:17 +0000 Morgan http://www.revivalmeats.com/blog/?p=460 On Wednesday,  Stacey and I will be heading to the Bay Area to spend a few days visiting friends and relaxing in beautiful San Francisco and the Northern California Wine Country.  The plan will obviously be to check out as many local joints as possible:  Dinner at Brett Emerson’s Contigo, breakfast at the Ferry Market (and more specifically Chilequiles from Primavera), some ice cream at the Bi-Rite Creamery and Market, charcuterie from Boccalone and Fatted Calf; the possibilities are endless.  One part of the trip to which I’m probably looking most forward is our planned visit to Hudson Ranch in Carneros.

Spring in Sonoma County

A few months ago, via Twitter, I began speaking to Scott Boggs, manager of Hudson Ranch.  In September 2007, Hudson Vineyards launched Hudson Ranch and began raising pigs, produce, and estate-grown olives to make an unbelievably complex blend of Olive Oil (this year’s bottling: Hudson Vineyards 2009 Titi’s Carneros Olive Oil).  Over the last few years they’ve developed quite the clientele list including Thomas Keller’s: Ad Hoc, Chris Cosentino’s Salumeria: Boccalone, and Taylor Boetticher’s: Fatted Calf Charcuterie just to name a few.

We initially began exchanging tweets regarding their olive oil and what all they’re growing to incorporate into the blend.  Revival Meats has plans in the works for our own olive trees along those lines, and I couldn’t help but inquire to Scott regarding Hudson Ranch’s.  From there it moved on to more porky subjects. And then, they sent THIS picture out via the Twitterverse:

Old Spots Cross Piglets. Photo courtesy of Hudson Ranch.

Yeeeeeeah.  Wouldja look at that?  Have you ever seen such a thing?  Accidentally*, one of Hudson Ranch’s domesticated wild boars made his way into their Gloucester Old Spots’ quarters and well, had his way with one of the ladies.  The result?  Dalmation pigs, of course.  Separate from this turning of events, I had been contemplating a cross between our Old Spots and a wild pig—desiring to introduce a little more flavor to the domesticated pork.  The last thing I wanted to do though was go through the process of trapping one of the many wild pigs that call our area home, then trying to domesticate it.  I had concerns of compromising the health of my own herd, by bringing a pig out of the woods and onto the ranch carrying who-knows-what in its system.After emails were exchanged with Scott, it sounds like they are open to the possibility of hooking us up with one of the boars from that litter.  My instinct is that once we breed the F1 boar to our Old Spots sows, the F2 cross containing 25% wild boar should add a good bit of flavor without compromising some of the other characteristics of the Old Spots that we really like, such as their long, fatty bodies.

So now, what was once a visit born out of curiosity to see how they run their ship, has now become somewhat of a pig shopping excursion.  If everything works out, hopefully we will be getting one of those little bad boys to Texas in the next few weeks.

*In an effort of full disclosure, Scott emailed me and said that the accident was more of an “accident”.  They were indeed planning on crossing the wild boar with the Old Spots…just not yet.  Sometimes nature takes its own course.

Cochon 555

Think of OSU like Texas A&M, only instead of focusing on agriculture in what has absurdly become known as the “conventional*” sense, they take a more sustainable, humane, outside-the-box approach.  For instance, the hospitality division of the university and the Rancher’s Club restaurant located on-campus, gets a lot of their protein (in whole form) from the campus’s slaughter facility, designed by none other than humane slaughter genius, Temple Grandin.  The cooks that work in the restaurant get hands-on experience not only in butchering whole carcasses, but also get to learn the ins-and-outs of humane slaughter by of course, participating in it.

Chris arrived a couple of days ahead of Ryan Pera and me—mostly to press the flesh and kiss some babies.  We touched ground at around 11:30 Friday night and made our way to Stillwater.  The following morning started early as there was a lot to prep to do.  After settling into our respective areas of the Rancher’s Club kitchen we, along with the other teams began getting everything ready for the meal that would start around 4:30 in the afternoon.

Chris Shepherd and Mangalitsa Loin

After a lot of planning, Chris decided to stick true to his style and forego fussy terrines (in their traditional sense) as well molecular gastronomical, gimmicky-type fare—figuring we’ll be seeing plenty of that.  Instead, he focused on flavor and total utilization of the animal.  The menu included whipped lard on crostini; Isabell Wiesner’s fantastic blood sausage with barley; the now-famous Catalan pork belly glazed in Steen’s cane syrup; some andouille sausage sammiches’ (with daikon pickles, creole mustard and slow dough pretzel buns made of course, with lard); fresh, bacon-fried sopes with Rocio’s family recipe for Chile Colorado; Mangalitsa neck, studded with loin, and cooked en sous vide until it was meltingly tender; a shot of posole made from the bones; and finally, pound cake made with Mangalitsa lard, mascerated Atkinson Farm strawberries and whipped cream also sweetened with Steen’s cane syrup—all in all, a very Chris-like menu.

Mangalitsa Chicharones

The goal was to stand out, and stand out we did.  While mingling with folks after the judging, many judges came up to congratulate Chris and exclaim how fantastic the meal was.  One of those judges from Oklahoma City, Chef Robert Black of the Good Egg Dining Group, sent out one of his only tweets of the day, “Chris Shepherd just blew my mind”—good enough for me.  As it turned out, Brady Lowe, creator of Cochon 555 stated just before announcing the winner that this was the closest match in Cochon 555 history. The title ultimately went to Scott Romano and his fantastic battalion of cooks from Charlie Palmer’s at The Joule, in Dallas.

Team Shepherd

As Chris Shepherd told me this morning, “We did the food that was best suited for our pig and the breed.  I am proud of our team and the effort, and the food we did.  We stuck to our guns and went down fighting.  I can live with that.”

OSU Roasted Baby Berk

Obviously, a big thanks goes out to Brady Lowe, the life-force behind and the creator of Cochon 555—he’s helping raise awareness for saving these fantastic, old heritage and rare breeds of pigs, he’s encouraging restaurants and chefs to seek out local farms and use their products, and finally to utilize the whole animal.  Events like these are beneficial for all involved and would not come together without a visionary like Mr. Lowe.



Chris shepherd, Executive Chef, Catalan. Photo by Steve Harris

And the excitement keeps on coming!  Tomorrow evening Ryan Pera and I will be heading north to Stillwater, Oklahoma to join Team Shepherd (Chris Shepherd, that is) for what could be the piggery-cooking-competition of all piggery-cooking-competitions, Cochon 555…well, except for the Grand Cochon finale held this summer at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado, of course.  To get to the Grand Cochon event, chefs from all over the country are invited to compete against other fine chefs in their respective regions.  The winners of the regional competitions score the rights to go head-to-head with one another, all to eventually claim the title:  Prince of Porc.

Revival Meats has been extremely flattered to provide one of our Mangalitsa pigs to Mr. Shepherd for the challenge.  The goal is to be creative in one’s approach towards a total utilization of the whole beast.  Monday afternoon, Ryan and I helped Chris break down the pig that I had dropped off at Catalan earlier that day.  Although I’m not 100% certain what will make it to the final menu, I’m sure some of the highlights will include braised belly with Steen’s Cane Syrup, Chris’s take on Isabell Wiesner’s delectable blood sausage, pig’s-face terrine (it’s exactly what it sounds like—pig’s face:  deboned, rolled into a terrine, cooked, chilled, and sliced, mommy), pound cake made with Mangalitsa lard, and maybe even a party favor:  li’l Mangalitsa lard soaps with which you can wash your grimy hands.  One thing is for certain, win or no win, we’ll without doubt have a fantastic time, and can hopefully bring one home for Houston!

Christoph Wiesner, Chris Shepherd and Ryan Pera

I was briefly scanning my Google Reader this morning when I noticed that Heath Putnam posted a fantastic link to Christoph Wiesner’s new (and FREE) Seam Butchery Tutorial.  It is ridiculously detailed with great pictures to help guide the curious through all of the steps.

A big thank you to the Wiesner’s for providing us with this.

Download the manual here

The Beast

To say we are excited today would be a complete understatement.  We are absolutely thrilled to announce that our first Mangalitsa pigs will be delivered tomorrow afternoon to what, in my little opinion are some of the finest restaurants in Houston–Catalan, The Grove, Feast, and Stella Sola.  Without having officially confirmed their intentions for the pigs, my assumption is that most, if not all of them will be used for various charcuterie-driven purposes.  Although Mangalitsa is absolutely delicious when eaten fresh, curing takes it to an entirely different level.