Straight from the Backyard: Cooking the Whole Hog

Pernil Style Pork Shoulder

Back in my cooking school days, I never shied away from breaking down large pieces of meat.  Today, as I do not work in a restaurant kitchen, I make do like most people and have the butcher do the hard work for me.

But I miss it.  I dare say that working with the whole animal, whether its pig, cow, or chicken, gives me more respect for the food I eat.  It is not just filet medallions from the meat case- it is a cut from a tubular piece of beef, part of the tenderloin that runs along both sides of the cow’s spine.  Understanding where the filet comes from on the cow it is easy for me to see how the meat is so tender and so valuable- it is the part of the cow does not get much of a workout.

Lard rendering in crockpot

It was great fun for me last week then to work with some parts of a pig I don’t get much time with- like pig skin and back fat. About 18 months ago, some friends in rural Massachusetts bought two piglets to raise on their mini farm- Sir Hamsalot and YouBaconMeCrazy.  Over the next few months those piglets became full grown swine, and those swine became a freezer full of pig parts the couple has been slowly making their way through ever since.

Good lard is a treat.  Sir Hamsalot, raised on a diet of pumpkins and corn, has some really tasty fat.  To render the lard I removed the skin, cut the fat into chunks and then added them a few at a time to a hot crockpot.  Over the next couple of hours, the pile dissolved into a luscious amber liquid.  Strained and poured off into glass jars, my friends and I will have lard to work with for months to come.

Still warm rendered lard

Working the pig skin was more difficult than I imagined, but as long as it was there, I had to give pork rinds a try.  Using a few recipes as reference, I tried to cut down the three-day process recommended by the blogs into a one-day marathon.  The skin was boiled in a pot, cooled in a freezer, and scraped clean off the remaining fat.  After letting it dry out for a couple hours I cut the skin into squares and heated up some oil for frying.  The result? Crunchy, slightly chewy pig snack.  Not really my cup of tea but hey, not everyday uncooked pig skin comes my way.

A partial rack of spareribs got the appetizer treatment one night.  Slipped into a shallow pan with a spicy-sweet Asian inspired sauce and some water, they came out tender and intensely flavorful.

Pig Skin getting ready to fry

The highlight of the great pig experiment was roasting the pork shoulder on my last night with the friends at their home.  Twenty-four hours before cooking time, I covered the shoulder with a marinade comprised of things I scavenged from their refrigerator: onion, garlic, orange juice, lime juice, honey, and pickled jalapenos.  About four and a half hours before dinnertime, I transferred the shoulder to a roasting pan fat side up along with the marinade and enough water to come about an inch up the side of the meat.  A sort of cheaters pernil, the Puerto Rican classic pork dish, the beast emerged from the oven dark, pink, fat oozing, and so tender it could be eaten with a fork.

Sir Hamsalot’s shoulder was the best pork I’ve ever had.  From where he lived happy days eating pumpkins and playing in the mud to the table on which he was eventually served, there lies a distance of no more than 100 feet. A happy ending to a very piggy tale. 

Pernil-Style Pork Shoulder

Time: 24 hours

Yield: 6 servings

5 lb pork shoulder

1 ½ cup orange juice

½ cup lime juice

1 medium onion

4 cloves garlic

¼ cup honey

3 T. chopped pickled jalapenos

1 tsp. ground black pepper

Salt

Pepper

Place pork shoulder in a dish or bowl that is a snug fit with just a bit of space on all sides for the marinade.  In a separate bowl, mix orange and lime juice with the honey.  Thinly slice onion and chop garlic.  Mix in with juice mixture, jalapenos, and black pepper.  Pour the marinade over the pork.  Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate over night.  About 4.5 hours before dinnertime, remove the pork from the refrigerator and let it rest at room temperature for half an hour.  Preheat oven to 400°F. Transfer pork to a slightly larger roasting pan, preferably one where it will fit with a lid on (like a Dutch oven).  Season the pork with salt and pepper on all sides.  Add the marinade to the roasting dish along with enough water to so the liquid comes about 1 inch up the side.  Place pork in the hot oven uncovered for 20 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350°F, place a lid (or foil) on the roasting pan and cook for about 3 hours.  After 3 hours, remove the lid or foil.  Increase heat to 400°F and cook for another 20 minutes.  Top of the pork should have a nice dark crust and the fat should be unctuous at this point.  Remove pork to a cutting board and let rest for 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

Bar Food: Weirdly Good and Just Weird

There has been a trend lately toward restaurants elevating the sort of food one would eat only when high or drunk to something of an art form. In Los Angeles the restaurant Animal is making fancy poutine (fries covered in gravy and cheese) and pork rinds grace bar tops from Publican’s spicy version in Chicago to Maialino’s in New York, served with a tangy vinegar dipping sauce.

With all the high-end places venturing into lowbrow food, it is no wonder that certain restaurants known more for their happy hour than haute cuisine are trying to up the ante when it comes to booze friendly snacks. Some of these creations are minor revelations, others are just weird and should go back to the hazy high from whence they came.

Among the more interesting ideas comes the novel use of wonton wrappers. Nine, a minor figure on the Hell’s Kitchen drinking and dining scene in New York, scores points for its “Buffalo” Chicken Dumplings- the lovechild of Buffalo wings and fried dumplings. Wonton wrappers are filled with a traditional mix of ground chicken and spices then skewered on a popsicle stick before hitting the deep fryer. The resulting crispy impaled dumplings are drizzled in tangy sauce hot sauce and a thinned out ranch dressing. The result is a happy marriage of east-west snack food.

In other creative-use-of-wonton-wrapper news, The New York Times reported this week on the men behind Torrisi Italian Specialties serving up Chinese Nachos at their San Gennaro Festival stand in New York City. These fried wonton nachos come drizzled in duck sauce and hot mustard. Ligaya Mishan reports that “Nothing but mustard registers.” Maybe so but I like the idea. Perhaps for the full on restaurant version they could try covering the fried wontons in shredded duck confit and duck sauce, easy on the mustard. That’s a crazy upscale bar food idea I could get behind.

Finally, in ideas that should never have been, at PBR Bar and Grill in Las Vegas trailer park favorites like corn dogs and fried pickles can be had with a side of Fire Cracker Cole Slaw. Coleslaw is hard enough to get right in its most simple form, too often degrading into a tasteless pile of soggy shredded cabbage drowning in mayonnaise. PBR decided to take a bad thing and make it worse by topping the already terrible rendition of this cabbage salad with Pop Rocks, those neon colored candies that sizzle and pop when they come in contact with liquid e.g. one’s mouth or the soppy coleslaw. The effect this offensive side salad elicits cannot be underestimated- even after pushing the slaw as far away from me as I lost my appetite for everything else on the table as the Pop Rocks continued to snap, crackle and pop in a chorus of talking food.

Call it fancy stoner food or simply the next phase in scaling up comfort food, but I think pork rinds with $18 glasses of Bordeaux are probably here to stay. As for those bars who used to think fried bar snacks were their exclusive domain, I fully support creative explorations in the use of wonton wrappers. But when a gimmick, like Pop Rock covered coleslaw, is disgusting then it is just that, a gimmick, and no amount of Jagermeister is going to make that taste good.