Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Mangalitsa in Seattle




We recently delivered some Mangalitsa to two Seattle establishments -- Monsoon and the Washington Athletic Club.

Executive Chef Will McNamara of the Washington Athletic Club sent in his photo of some of the Mangalitsa. His pig was a 7-month gilt (female). There's not much meat on her, but it is very good. And Mangalitsa fat simply tastes fantastic.

If you want to eat Mangalitsa right now, you'd best get over to Monsoon or the Washington Athletic Club before it all gets eaten. A 7-month pig only has a carcass around 90 lbs.

6 comments:

bob mcgee said...

Beautiful pic of a beautiful pig!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful meat. What do they do with layer of fat?
-Sean Kelly

Heath Putnam said...

Mangalitsa fat has a different composition from typical pork fat. The bite is different, as is the fatty acid composition - so people really like it. Just check this out to see what I mean.

Hence, it isn't uncommon to see the fat left on the meat.Here's how they cut similar pork in Japan. Wagyu beef gets cut similarly.

Anonymous said...

I was intrigued to read this as I do research on pork and have performed nutritional and compositional analysis on many different samples from many different breeds fed many different diets. The taste and fatty acid composition is not the breed, Mangalitza in your case, that makes the difference, but rather what you feed it especially in the final month of growth. Other breeds show the same effects when fed high pasture diets instead of corn. In science it is important to understand the real cause, diet in this case, rather than the marketing of the particular breed.

The degree of marbling on the other hand is more genetic and thus breed related as is the small muscle growth and fattiness of the hog.

Dana
Brussels

Heath Putnam said...

Anonymous -- please check out this study:

http://bsas.org.uk/Publications/Animal_Science/2003/Volume_77_Part_2/215/AS.pdf

That's "Body fat content, composition and distribution in Landrace and Iberian finishing pigs given ad libitum maize- and acorn-sorghummaize-based diets"

That shouldn't surprise anyone - genetics are a substantial determinant of meat quality.

Of course, the finishing diet is crucial too. But if you raise different breeds of pigs identically, you don't wind up with indistinguishable meat.

That's why chefs will tell you that the lard-type animals have better fat than meat-type hogs.

It is the same with cows. Wagyu have different lipogenesis than normal cows.

pmondo said...

if i didn't take the time to learn about your pigs and some one handed me a chop with that much fat on it i wont not be a happy camper going to have to save up and order some of your chops and find out for myself