I bought a pig's head today (not for the sensitive readers)

If you are sensitive and don't like graphic animal parts, then close this window now. I am not going to entertain complaints when you had fair warning.






Hi,

Yesterday I was tooling down the expressway wondering how I could keep myself cheerfully occupied today and warm. A simmering pot on the stove is welcome on a zero degree day and deadly on a 90 degree day.

My initial thoughts was to make some kind of long simmering pork stew. Smoking pork shoulder for pulled pork did pass my thoughts, but checking a smoker outside does not offer the side benefits of a simmering pot: heat and homey odors. I also wanted something a bit challenging, a new experience to talk about here. It occured to me a batch of head cheese might hit the spot. I usually make these with trotters, but why not do the head as the name implies. It would interesting, perhaps a challenge and certainly worthy of discussion here.

When I arrived at Peoria Packing House, I looked through the bins of pig parts hoping to find half a head. I inquired with the butcher where the pig heads may be. He pointed to the 2nd of the last table before you walk into the regular grocery area. There was a family in the pig head aisle with little children screaming and pointing with their Daddy laughing. My gut feeling they were all excited by the pig heads, which was indeed true.

Whole pig heads are a mere 59 cents a pound. There were two heads available, so I picked the more picture worthy at 11 pounds or roughly $6.60. I had a passing thought to bring the pig head to the butcher to have it cut in half. Deferring to pictures, I brought the pig head home intact. I showed it to my family, then packed it up as a Show and Tell at a dinner party. They were quite taken aback and relieved when I put it on the balcony to keep cold. I almost lost my head due to the weather change. The sliding door froze shut. It took a hair dryer to melt the ice to allow me to rescue my pig head.

This morning recalling all sorts of old movie dialogue that may never been uttered, "I'll serve his head on a platter." I mounted the pig head on a platter for pictures.



The skin surrounding the pigs eyes were neatly cut on both sides. Not knowing precisely the lure here, I can only hope some upcale restaurant will cure and process it for a $20 small plate somewhere.

I then consulted Jane Grigson's The Art of Charcuterie from 1967. Jane Grigson and Elizabeth David are one of my all time favorite cookbook authors who happened to be friends strongly influencing each other. It took just a scant check of the index to find Fromage de Tete with the major ingredient a pig head instead of the less gruesome trotters.

First things first, Jane suggests acquiring the whole brain for a separate dish. I flipped the pig over to easily find the channel leading to the brain surrounded by heavy bone. Accessing the brain also brought the demise of my French knife from the 1970's. I used the knife and a rubber mallet to cut a wedge to access the brain. This was not easy and merely had a small crevice to dig in and remove the brain. I finally used some water to float out the bits. No brain bit was intact enough to prepare the scrambled eggs and brains that were already dancing in my imagination. Of course, I do have a find photo, which makes up for something.

I then read further into Jane's recipe narrative to learn brining the pig head for 24 to 72 hours. If you brine for 48 to 72 hours, then she suggests boiling the pig head and draining to remove excess salt, then proceed with the recipe. I made a brine of:

3 cups sugar
2 cups salt
Juniper berries, crushed
Black peppercorns, crushed
Allspice, crushed
Several bay leaves
Nutmeg, leftover nub from grating.
Several cloves.
1 tablespoon dried thyme
(garlic - my addition)

Jane also suggested 4 heaped tablespoons of saltpeter. I do have curing salts, not saltpeter, but I didn't add any. If I can locate my Ruhlman Charcuterie book and he offers a similar suggestion, then I will consider adding it.

If I follow through on her recipe, then I wil be simmering the head for 5 hours in a stockpot with:

2 onions (stuck with cloves)
2 carrots
2 leeks
2 cloves garlic (plan to add more)
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
8 peppercorns

I will also be adding 1-2 pig trotters for the natural gelatin they will contribute.

I am quite fond of a German variation called Suelze, which has a nice vinegar tang. My thought it is make half regular head cheese and half vinegar laced. Of course, I have several days to research or entertain ideas from everyone here.

Presently it is down time for the pig head as the brine does its trick. Fortunately I did buy a few corned beef tips for dinner tonight, so the homey scent and heat can still waft through the house.

Stay warm!

Regards,

Here are some good head shots and some ideas as to how to prepare it.

http://www.rollybrook.com/tamales.htm

http://www.rollybrook.com/pozole.htm

C2: thanks for the introduction to something I'm not likely to undertake myself but will eagerly follow.

jlawrence01: what a wonderful website you've linked to! Thanks for the heads-up (bad pun intended).

Following Pepin's recipes, I bone out a pig head make a 'head cheese' out of it.-Dick

budrichard wrote:Following Pepin's recipes, I bone out a pig head make a 'head cheese' out of it.-Dick

I saw several recipes for stuffed pig head. Tete de Porc Farcie, whose narrative begins with, "If you feel like boning the head before you start cooking (or you can persuade your butcher to do so), try this recipe." The stuffing consists of the pig's tongue, homemade sausage, veal and parsley. The instructions have you stuff the head cavity, sew up the neck. Wrap in cheesecloth and submerge into court boullion for a 5 hour simmer.

Another amusing request of the butcher, "Ask the butcher to cut off the jaw as for a Bath chap." Later you are advised to, "Mold the jaw into a nice Bath-chap shape." Trying to identify what Bath-chap mold may look like, I found this marvelous interaction with Fergus Henderson by Jonathan Ray of The Spectator:

I told him that he was making me nostalgic for that great
English delicacy, the Bath chap - a breadcrumbed piece of
fatty pig's cheek combined with a sliver of tongue - which I
had barely seen since my childhood. 'You should have said!'
exclaimed Fergus. 'We've got Bath chap on the menu at St
John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields.' A hurried phone call
to his other establishment confirmed that there was one Bath
chap left, whereupon I was hustled out of the restaurant and
into a cab. What finer reason to dash across town than in
quest of a Bath chap?

As we sped through the City, we reminisced about our
favourite dishes and memorable meals with the same hushed
reverence used by fortysomething soccer nerds to discuss FA
Cup-winning teams of the 1970s. I recalled some wild boar
that I had eaten in France as a youngster, on which occasion
the chef, tickled by my delighted enjoyment, had presented
me solemnly with the animal's tusks, while Fergus eulogised
about a birthday breakfast of devilled kidneys and black
velvet that he had once had in Scotland.

It was a crushing blow to discover that some rotter had
nabbed my Bath chap from behind the waiter's back just as he
was confirming its existence on the phone, and Fergus looked
utterly bereft on my behalf. 'Never mind,' he consoled me,
'you must come back again and I'll make sure that the finest
of all Bath chaps awaits you. Done well, when the cheek has
done enough exercise and the fat's all creamy and the tongue
is tender, a Bath chap is like the oyster of a bird, a real
hidden treasure.'

Gypsy Boy wrote:jlawrence01: what a wonderful website you've linked to! Thanks for the heads-up (bad pun intended).

When you have a couple of hours, review the house building portion of the rollyb's website. It will give you a great education on life in Mexico.

C2--

I did this oncet, the year I starved in Paris.¶ The wholesale butcher, down at the end of the rue, rather liked me, but also liked to egg me on. I showed up one Feb day when he and his buddies were having a glass or two of côtes, just to keep warm. "Ah, Mon. Cuhbouey§, I have something for you" he said, as his pals laughed, "and it's only 5 francs." "I'll take it!" I responded, since I knew this was going to be fun. At which point he reaches under the counter and pulls up exactly what your pic shows: a full head o' pig. "Do you want that??" he asked. (His pals were obviously disappointed at my gleeful acceptance of the situation.) "Maze wee!" I responded, "but you have to cut it in half first". At which point he pulled out this enormous cleaver and cleft that head right down its bilateral symmetry axis.

Took that sucker home and made the most wonderful stuff. Obviously, I could get at the brains, whereas you couldn't. Which made for some most excellent scrambled egges. I slashed and parried and cut and dug, and ended up with souse and soup and Brazilian black bean stew and etc etc.

One of the most interesting culinary adventures of my life. Plus, I will never forget how disappointed his pals looked when I so enthusiastically latched onto that head. [OK, I'll admit that, to start, I hadn't a clew what to do with the damn thing. But I was sure that Pellaprat could straighten me out. Which he did. :^) ]

Geo

¶It was my very first sabbatical: half pay for a whole year; but the Paris prices were twicet those of KC; so, basically, I was living on one fourth my usual. But what the hey! I was living in the 5° in Paris.

§Being from Kansas and all, and it being the coldest Paris Winter since '43, I wore my sheepskin coat and cowboy hat everywhere I went in Paris. Musta had a dozen offers to buy that hat, truth to tell!

Reminds me of wandering through Melbourne's Victoria Market with a friend, when she stopped at one booth and admired a group of pigs heads for sale. I thought they were just to demonstrate the freshness of the pork, but she said, "Hmmm. Lots of good meat there. Maybe I should get one." We didn't, but it was only because we were in town for the day (she lived on a ranch out of town), and it would have been difficult to haul around with us. But it made me sorry we couldn't have taken it home, to see what she'd do with it.

So finally, thanks to Cathy2, I'll get to find out what might have happened had we gotten it.

I'd never seen a vacuum packed pig head before so when I came across this beauty at Economy Meats in Los Angeles's Grand Central Market I had to take its picture. Your pig head is far more handsome, of course, and I'll follow its progress with much interest.

As long as we're flaunting our pig head pix here's one I shot at the market in Grenada, Nicaragua last month.

Man, I now wish more than ever I'd bought the roasted piglet head at City Fresh Market!

Looks good, C2! Be curious how it comes out!

I saw my first pig head about 25 years ago. I was leading my aunt, cousins, mother and a few other people on a tour through Byward Market in Ottawa. A meat delivery man had a whole pig carcass on the back of his truck. He pulled it out to the edge of teh truck and with one stroke of a knife, removed the head.

Everyone ELSE freaked out. I thought it was really cool - how quichly it all happened.

HI,

After three days of brining the pigs head in a solution of:

3 cups sugar
2 cups salt
Juniper berries, crushed
Black peppercorns, crushed
Allspice, crushed
Several bay leaves
Nutmeg, leftover nub from grating.
Several cloves.
1 tablespoon dried thyme
(garlic - my addition)

I rinsed the head, then arranged it with the simmering ingredients for its class picture:



Pig head with:
2 onions (stuck with cloves)
2 carrots
2 leeks
2 cloves garlic (plan to add more)
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
8 peppercorns
(ingredients doubled because recipe was for a half-head)

Following Jane Grigson's advice, I brought the pigs head to a boil and dispensed with the water to reduce the salt from the brine. I then added the simmering spices and vegetables for a slow 11 hour simmer, which was far longer than Jane's 5-6 hour simmer. My head weighed just over 11 pounds, which Jane offered no head weight for reference. When the pig was at 5-6 hour mark, the meat wasn't tender all the way through. I then had meetings that prevented me to return until much later, hence the 11 hour simmer.

I went to Garden Fresh to buy a pound of pig trotters for the steep price of $1.29 per pound. These were added to increase the stock's gelatinous qualities.

Another challenge was keeping the pigs head submerged while cooking. No matter how I positioned the head, the pigs snout kept coming to the top. I finally took a medium size pot and used it to weight the pigs head down. If necessary, I was prepared to add water to the pot for additional weight, though it wasn't necessary.

Once cooked, perhaps overcooked, the meat and skin slipped off the skeleton like a glove. I weighed the skeleton to learn it weighed 3.5 pounds.

Skeleton on the left. Meat and skin on the right.


It was maybe midnight when the pigs head was pulled from the pot. I am not too keen to fiddle with this too much at this hour. I made a small error that wasn't apparent then. I lumped the skin and meat together into a bowl until I had time to deal with it. The next morning, it was a conjealed mass that needed gentle heating to separate the components. I then realized I had no need for the skin and dispensed with it, which would have been far easier at midnight. I weighed the skin, too, to learn it was about 3.5 pounds. So far there are 7 pounds of waste in my pig's head adventure.

One of the side benefits from this adventure has been a quantity of very good gelatinous pork stock. For the headcheese, I needed only a quart of stock. I added three cups of wine to the stock, then reduced the wine-stock to one quart. Meanwhile I took the meat chopped it up into small chunks, then seasoned it with quatre epice. In retrospect, I might have not chopped the meat and pig ears further, since the meat was tettering on overcooked, if not already there. Once the stock was reduced, then the meat was returned for a 20 minute gentle simmer. I also added whatever fat I had leftover since it would make a nice fat cap. Whatever body the meat had left dissolved into fragments in this last step.

I poured the meat and aspic into three mini-loaf pans and a small ceramic dish. Into one of the mini-loaf pans, I added the pig's tongue in the center. If I did this again, then I would have purchased extra pig tongues for chopping as well as centerpiece in each loaf pan.




In my mind's eye, I was dreaming of a mosaic of pig's head meat suspended in aspic. Instead it is tattered pig meat suspended in aspic. However the taste was reasonably on target. I complained to a friend, a food scientist, about the tattered appearance. She began to explain in commercial headcheese production the meat is texturized. I interupted her to clarify, "Do you mean pink salts?" "Yes, it firms up the meat. gives a nice rosey color and ..." "Damn, they did recommend 4 tablespoons saltpeter for the brine. I thought it was too much, then never got around to investigating how much pink salt would have been acceptable." Next time I will be on top of the meat curing salts issue.

The economics of headcheese:

~11 pound pig head at $0.59 per pound: $6.60
~1 pound pig trotters at $1.29 per pound: $1.29

Total gross weight: 12 pounds, total cost: $7.89 (not including simmering and brining spices and vegetables or cooking gas)
Gross weight 12 pounds less ~7 pounds waste (skeleton & skin), for net weight: 5 pounds.
Net expense: $1.58 per pound ($7.89/5 pounds)

When I do make headcheese next time, I will separate the lower jaw to make Bath chop. I will have the remainder of the head split in half to get easier access to the brain. I will buy extra tongues.

I froze the loaf pictured, to allow comparisons with future batches.

Regards,

Impressive looking results, even if you do think the meat looks tattered. I actually think your headcheese looks splendid. Good work.

Agree totally. That looks much better and more wholesome than what I've seen for public purchase. Can you fry slices like SPAM, scrapple, polenta, etc., or does that change the texture / flavor too much?

I'd love to see a slice, when it comes to that point - and also, I'm guessing it tastes a good bit better than storebought headcheese. Looks gorgeous, and looking forward to further reporting.

Cathy2 you are a woman after my own heart. I love the adventurer in you. I'd cook up a pigs head next to you in a heartbeat, but then I would be left with large amounts of head cheese that only I would consume. Not to say that I'm not worth the effort, but I'd get sick of the stuff long before I finished it. I bet you make your own saurkraut as well. You are my hero!

razbry wrote:Cathy2 you are a woman after my own heart. I love the adventurer in you. I'd cook up a pigs head next to you in a heartbeat, but then I would be left with large amounts of head cheese that only I would consume. Not to say that I'm not worth the effort, but I'd get sick of the stuff long before I finished it. I bet you make your own saurkraut as well. You are my hero!

Did you say sauerkraut?

Six pounds of headcheese was a challenge for us to get through, too.

Thanks for the kind thoughts.

Regards,

Cathy2 you are too much! Between the headcheese and the sauerkraut, do I detect a bit of German ancestry? When I was a kid my grandmother had a huge jar of kraut in her root cellar (the real deal). My job was to go down and dig through the layer of salt and bring up the kraut for her to cook. I loved eating it raw on the trip up. Both my parents grew up on farms where they did their own butchering, smoking and drying of meats, had their own chickens and eggs...made their own headcheese and kraut. I can understand it was a lot of work, and both of my parents gladly left the farming life behind them when they met and married. I find it so odd that I am attracted to the self sustaining lifestyle of my grandparents. As I get closer to retirement it is becoming something I really want to do. Heck, I'm even looking into windmill electric generators! Anyway Cathy2, thanks for all the fun and really interesting cooking adventures!

Hi,

I am of German-Irish ancestry, though nobody in my family made their own kraut or headcheese.

A friend develops wind farms in the Dixon area. When I first knew them, it was easy to find their farmette from the solar panels on the roof and small windmill constantly spinning on a tower. Now they are involved in wind generators 40 stories tall.

It is rather surprising how you keep coming up with stuff I have some interest in.

Regards,

C2--

Not to change the subject very much, I wonder if your piggie head-meat could also be used to make scrapple, one of my PA-VA favorites? I searched for a recipe, but found none on the board, only a few mentions in the fabuluous Antonius-Tony Scottish Poetry exchange.

No scrapple in Montreal...

Geo

Hi,

I learned Sun Wah BBQ roasts their pigs with the head on. These fully roasted pig heads can be purchased for a mere $3. each. A friend beat me to the punch and purchased a fully roasted pig head. She had them chop it up for her convenience. She sent me the following report on her pig head encounter.

I have to tell you my story of my pigs head. I brought it home put it on my counter and thought i will start the soup a little later. WElllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll I opened the package I saw the teeth and the eye ball. Well I got so sick to my stomach and was going a little green. That I ran as fast as I could to throw it out. If I thought I would be so touchy I would have given it to you. I still see those teeth in my head.

I'll bet a purchase of a pig head simply for the snout might a worthy purchase.

Regards,

"I will have the remainder of the head split in half "

when googled, only ONE item is found... this thread... well done!

I don't know what they do with the heads (or the teeth), but they apparently cook whole, head-on pigs at Uni-Mart, too. There was one in the hot-food case at the Niles store when I was there a couple of weeks ago.

I tried some of their crispy pata. Crunchy, porky, dreamy stuff.

Uni-Mart One Stop Shopping

5845 N. Clark St., Chicago
(773) 271-8676

7315 Dempster St., Niles
(847) 663-8388

1038 Golf Road, Hoffman Estates
(847) 755-1082

Woodridge Plaza, 2457 W. 75th St., Woodridge
(630) 910-6386

http://www.unimartonestop.com

LAZ wrote:I don't know what they do with the heads (or the teeth), but they apparently cook whole, head-on pigs at Uni-Mart, too.

Speaking of cooked animal heads, Sabas Vega sells split Cabecitas de Chivo (steamed goat head) for $3.50 on the weekends, though they typically sell out by 9am.

Enjoy,
Gary

Sabas Vega
1808 S. Ashland Ave
Chicago, IL
312-666-5180

G Wiv wrote: Cabecitas de Chivo

Funny! Does calling it "headlet" make it more appealing? (though I've certainly no room to talk, considering how almost all offal in our houshold is labeled with its Spanish name)

Pepin does not use Saltpeter in his preperations for a head cheese. Boning out before cooking ala Pepin yields pieces that stay intact and after rough chopping and putting in a mold, will give the type of mosaic you are after. The recipes(procedures really) are in the 'Art of Cooking'. His second preperation will yeild what you are looking for.
-Dick

OK, so I've got the head from last season's pig still in my freezer. Why still there? Because (I must admit) I'm daunted by the prospect of facing (so to say) that particular part of pig. Last time I did something with head of piggy, it was a disaster which I still shudder to remember—and that was thirty-four years ago.

If it were in *your* freezer, what would YOU do with it?

Gold Star to the LTHer with the best suggestion (i.e., where "best" = nicest ratio between ease of doing/great-tasting result).

I know you won't let me down!

Geo

I would go buy yourself a delicious sandwich for lunch at Butcher & Larder, and ask Rob his advice while you're there. He makes great testa from face and ear bits, and does magic with all parts!

annak wrote:I would go buy yourself a delicious sandwich for lunch at Butcher & Larder, and ask Rob his advice while you're there. He makes great testa from face and ear bits, and does magic with all parts!

If Geo was able to do that, I'd gladly show up to shake his hand and buy him a sandwich.