Pork Butt 2 ways: Carnitas and Sausages (Photos)

I had a beautiful NR pork butt leftover from a recent BBQ marathon:



Morteau Sausages
One of the tastiest of all sausages on the planet, this delicacy from France contains only a few ingredients and brings out the best flavor of high-quality pork. After grinding and stuffing, it is briefly air-dried and cold-smoked:







These are so good, so many ways. Julia Child has a recipe in which the sausage is baked inside of brioche dough. I hope to cook that up this week.

Carnitas

The legendary "Los Panchos" in Mexico City makes them this way: rubbed with chicken stock powder and garlic and pepper, fried in fresh lard (what a difference in the taste of lard made with good pork!) and simmered in Coca Cola and orange juice:







Bill/SFNM

That is one fine looking butt.

But did you simmer the carnitas in OJ and cola in your cast iron pot? Just wondering if the acidity would be bad for cast iron.

And how long did you simmer it for?

OK, here comes the "dumb" question (yeah, yeah, I know, no question is a dumb question. . .)

What makes this a "fine looking butt"? On a person, I got it down, but on a piece of pork? No clue.

On the same vein, which stores tend to have better butts? I was going to buy one in the next week or so - to make some fresh breakfast sausage and some Italian sausage. I've done it before, but I had no clue as to why I was picking the butt I picked, nor where to shop for it. My MIL makes sausage regularly and she likes meat based on how fatty it is and how many veins and things she finds. . .but that's after she's cutting it up. How do you pick on that will be good?

G Wiv has some excellent advice for selecting fine butts in the 5th dinner on Wiviott.com.

Basically, you want a butt with a nice, centered bone (for even heat distribution) and when the meat is cold it should be firm, not floppy, which indicates there's a good amount of fat/marbling in it.

My "fine butt" comment was mostly directed at the pretty color and visible marbling. You certainly won't get anything that pretty at Peoria Packing, but that's where I just bought a few.

crrush wrote:That is one fine looking butt.

But did you simmer the carnitas in OJ and cola in your cast iron pot? Just wondering if the acidity would be bad for cast iron.

And how long did you simmer it for?

Thanks, crrush. Yes,a single cast iron pot was used for everything. This small pot is mostly used for deep frying small batches of chicken, fries etc., so the seasoning layer is very well-established.

I simmered this batch for about an hour after deep frying.

Bill/SFNM

ViewsAskew wrote:OK, here comes the "dumb" question (yeah, yeah, I know, no question is a dumb question. . .)

What makes this a "fine looking butt"?

Perhaps it is more meaningful to talk about "fine tasting" pork. The amount of fat is important in the flavor of the final product, but the breed and diet of the hog can be more important. An interesting test I did recently proved the point: I rendered up a big chunk of fat from a butt from Costco and did the same thing in a separate pan with some fat from a NR butt. The Costco fat had little, if any, flavor. The NR fat had a rich, clean, porky flavor - a little tangy and salty. Not that I'm going to be eating pure lard, but in something like sausage with a fairly high portion of fat, this can make a big difference.

Bill/SFNM

Crrush, thanks for the visual notes. That will help.

Ah, interesting about the taste in the fat, Bill. I would think it would be important as fat is a very integral component in sausage. I haven't even seen butts at the Costco I go to. I've seen them at Peoria (got one there - my MIL didn't like it much), at some independent Polish grocery stores, and a few other places. My MIL got one at one of the grocers who took over some Cub locations - Farm Fresh, I think. She LOVED it.

Bill, what is NR?

And, more to the point, how can you tell pork is good tasting?

I borowed my MIL's grinder last night. . .I just need to by the pork now.

NR = Niemen Ranch,.....Correct?

ViewsAskew wrote:Bill, what is NR?

And, more to the point, how can you tell pork is good tasting?

NR = Niman Ranch
Pretty pricey stuff at retail. My catering company buys in bulk.

How can you tell if anything is good tasting? It's a very subjective matter, but if you grew up before the adipophobia that started in the 70's drove much of the flavor out of most of the commercial hog production (and then had what little flavor was left corrupted by pumping of chemicals into the meat), you remember what real pork used to taste like. And it was a good thing!

Bill/SFNM

I guess, I meant how can you tell BEFORE you buy it, lol? I mean, do some places have better items that tend to taste better. Obviously, NR does.

ViewsAskew wrote:I guess, I meant how can you tell BEFORE you buy it, lol? I mean, do some places have better items that tend to taste better. Obviously, NR does.

Frankly, if you are buying commercial pork you are buying a meat that is like a canvas waiting for the artist to paint.

There are a few places you can buy the old fashioned pork, but they are generally rare, and expensive. The taste difference between commercial pork and good old fashioned pork is the difference between a select grade ribeye from Wal-Mart and a dry-aged prime ribeye at Smith & Wollensky's or Prime House.

I guess the obvious question is -- Where, if at all, does the impulsive dilittante get "old-fasioned" pork locally?

For all my addled brain knows, I may have found this link here on LTH. I haven't ever ordered, but just maybe it tastes more like the old-fashioned pork. It's not local, but it's only Iowa. Road trip? Oh, yes, it was on here, I just remembered.

Speaking of all that madness that changed how pork tastes, tonight I took part of a pork loin, cut it into a flat rectangle, slathered it with a tapenade, rolled it up with some bacon on the outside, and told my partner - you either make the sides or handle the grilling. He chose to grill duty. And thank the food goddess that I heard him say something about, "170 is the right temp for pork" as he set the remote thermometer thingee.

NOOOOOOOOOO I was screaming. But, I didn't really scream. I carefully reminded him that we've had this discussion before. Remember? This is the "new" pork. There have been almost no cases of illness reported from it in many years. The ones that have been reported are from wild meat or from pigs on private farms.

Then, I calmly, but quickly, went to CI where I searched on the article that says 145, take it off, let it rest.

Phew. Emergency averted. The loin was moist and juice (well, I did brine it first). But, I digress.

While I would love some better tasting pork at some point, for now I'll settle for a butt/shoulder that is local, reasonably inexpensive and makes decent breakfast and Italian sausage. If I want to splurge, I could always buy some fatback from NR. That should add some of that better flavor.

For now, I'll use the criteria above - firm rather than floppy, good color, and if I'm lucky, some visible marbling. Oh, if I am not grilling/smoking/slow cooking it, do I care if the bone is well placed?

I am a little confused about the centered bone theory. There is no doubt that the bone affects even cooking. However, if the bone conducts heat and radiates it into the meat, then shouldn't the meat nearest the bone be better done? In my experience, at least with baking or grilling, that is not the case. The meat near the bone always seems to be the least well done, which would indicate the opposite effect. The bone is actually conducting the heat and radiating it away from the meat. Is it possible that the bone effect works differently in a low temperature smoking envoronment than under higher temperature grilling or baking?

d4v3 wrote:Is it possible that the bone effect works differently in a low temperature smoking envoronment than under higher temperature grilling or baking?

Dave,

Sounds like a case for Harold McGee, Alton Brown or Myth Busters.

In my experience a centered pork butt bone helps to distribute heat evenly, not unlike the practice of putting a nail in a baked potato to radiate heat outward.

Back in May of '02 I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon at the 59th Street Lem's, my go-to BBQ joint for many a year.

Lem's 59th and State [RIP]


Lem's cooked hot and fast with wood and lump charcoal, 60-minutes or less as outlined in Smokestack Lightning by Lolis Eric Elie, the last 10-minutes they stood the spare ribs on end so heat radiated up through the bone.

Lems 59th State [RIP]


Another reason for a centered butt bone is if the bone is way off center at least one of the pockets of meat will be small in comparison to the others which often results in that section being dried out/overcooked.


Gary, Sherry Lemons, Mary Lisa (May 2002)


Enjoy,
Gary

There must be something wrong with that picture. . .those aprons are WAY too white

ViewsAskew wrote:There must be something wrong with that picture. . .those aprons are WAY too white

Views,

That was right when we got there, you should have seen them later.

I still have mine and, no, I didn't steal it, Sherry kindly gave them to us.

Enjoy,
Gary

I've got a good friend, ag prof emeritus out of U. MO-Columbia. Really really smart guy, been everywhere--Cambridge, Gallacia, NZ, etc--done everything. Still runs about a hundred head of angus, and plays around with every type of fruit tree plausible for central MO. "Billy" I said to him a couple of years ago, "What did they do to pork?" "Ruint it" was his short answer. In more detail, "The did some very heavy selection out of the genome, played with the diet seriously, and took most of the fat and color out of the meat", he said.

"Can that be fixed?" I asked. "Oh sure" he said, "some of the traditional varieties can still be found, and they'll raise up just like they used to. But they're getting harder and harder to find."

Then, of course, I hit him with the bottom line question: "Billy, could you raise me and some of my friends some ol'-fashioned pork?" "Sure," he said, "but I'm not going to do it, even for you. I hate raising hogs."

:^(

It ain't over. I'm still blandishing him something fierce. And he owes me: I sent him to La Tienda when he was complaining that he'd never had anything like the jamon he'd gotten during his semester in Spain. He immediately bought a whole damn ham from La Tienda, and the slicer, too. So maybe, in the fullness of time, I can get Billy to raise me and some friends a natural-born hog. Stay tuned.

Geo

Geo wrote:
So maybe, in the fullness of time, I can get Billy to raise me and some friends a natural-born hog. Stay tuned.

Count me in!

Your friend,
Bill/SFNM

Pork changed forever on the day it became "the other white meat".

Geo wrote: "What did they do to pork?" "Ruint it" was his short answer. In more detail, "The did some very heavy selection out of the genome, played with the diet seriously, and took most of the fat and color out of the meat", he said.

Geo

Having spent a few years in Smithfield/Gwaltney country in VA, the major complaint about the "old pork" was the high fat content and relative low yield of the meat. Many people would avoid pork.

Of course, the pork has gotten a lot leaner and the chicken a lot fatter.