Charcutepalooza 2011 - Mangalitsa Offer

Sausage Debauchery's Cured Mangalitsa Neck.

I've been watching Charcutepalooza, wondering how I can help it to be even more of a success.

I love seeing people do stuff like this or this or this or this with Mangalitsa pork. It was the incredible quality of cured Mangalitsa products that convinced me to import Mangalitsa pigs to this hemisphere and establish the first modern lard-type pork company.

People may not know, but we've done a lot already to make it possible for chefs to make great cured products:

• If you want to know how to fatten a pig to make great cured products, we tell you. Even if you aren't raising Mangalitsa pigs, we want you to produce the best raw material possible. If we didn't tell you, you'd probably have to foreign-language materials to learn how to fatten your pigs properly.

• E.g. we spent money to make this tutorial freely available. And we put these videos up to show you how to do it. If you want to turn a pig into cuts for cured products, there's no better guide. Why'd we do this? Because if you are going to produce great pigs, we don't want you to waste a scrap.

• We also make it easy for chefs to buy raw material for cured products. We sell a bunch of cuts that are idea for curing. E.g. fatback for lardo, boneless loin, neck, paletilla-style shoulders, jowls, etc. You can see the cuts here. Nobody else in the USA can get you hundreds of pounds of super-premium necks or neck fat, or paletillas.

• We trained an American slaughterhouse to kill pigs and cut them up the Austrian way. There's only one place like this in the whole USA - and its because we did what it took to make it happen.
  

So getting people curing great meat is something we've been trying to encourage for years.

She's essential.

Also, I was just talking with Brian Polcyn today, and he mentioned that the Mangalitsa fat he used produced the best lardo and salami he'd ever made. He's already on record saying:

"Mangalitsas are a must for certain types of charcuterie. A necessity..."

So I've got Polcyn on the brain today.

The obvious thing that occurred to me was to have some sort of contest, with the winner getting some feeder pigs. They could fatten the feeder pigs for 18-24 months, then kill them and make charcuterie from it.

But then it occurred to me that that's not practical for most people.

So here's my offer for the 2011 Charcutepalooza:

• If you do a Charcutepalooza blog post that uses Mangalitsa pork, email me about it. I will look at it. You don't need need to use meat from Heath Putnam Farms. If you buy Mangalitsa pork from other Mangalitsa producers, it's going to be from pigs that we bred. When you buy from our customers, you help us and the Mangalitsa breed.
  

• If your Charcutepalooza blog post doesn't use Mangalitsa pork, please don't email me about it. If you are curing non-Mangalitsa pigs, you are wasting your time on inferior raw material. Mangalitsa is superior.

• When this year's event is all over, I'll pick my favorite Charcutepalooza blog post. That person is the winner, and I'll blog about it. I'll judge based on the skill used to craft the product and the photos you take of it. E.g. cut your meat nicely. Tie up your stuff well. Make really great photos. You don't need to gush about how wonderful Mangalitsa tastes compared to meat-type pork; others do that plenty.
  

What's the winner get? I'm thinking one of two things (chosen at my discretion):

• A Mangalitsa ham from Johnston County Hams. These are the best hams made in the USA. Per Se, a New York City restaurant with 3 Michelin stars buys them.
  

• A half a Mangalitsa pig, cut up into parts ready for curing (see this document). We'll ship the parts to you.
  

Of course, if you'd rather take feeder pigs, we could give you those instead. But you'll need to pick them up, in the Midwest.