We recently submitted some Mangalitsa samples to a national magazine. I heard that the chef in charge of the photo shoot grilled the sample Mangalitsa ham steaks, and reported that it was tough.
Mangalitsa isn't like normal pork. Our Austrian friends warned us that every Mangalitsa producer has the problem that some customers buy the meat, prepare it like normal pork, and then complain that it is too tough. The standard Austrian advice is that people should cook it slowly, at a low temperature.
We got the hams cut into roughly 1lb steaks because one problem we've had is that farmers market customers don't want large packages of meat. One downside of such small cuts is that some people really want to grill them.
I would brine it first for a few days, then slowly roast or smoke under 200deg to internal temp of 165 or so, pork fat seems to break up and become oily and mealy of roasted at/to higher temps. You could then finish on the grill for final flavor and eye appeal.
Adam Stevenson and his staff prepare fantastic food. His prosciutto is the best I've had in Seattle, as is his Jadgrohwurst. Of course, I'm hoping that my customers, who got their Berkshire hogs in November, can equal or beat his prosciutto (based on our meat and fat quality) - but we'll have to wait and find out.
If you live in Seattle, I suggest you go get Adam's ham and cheese sandwich, made with his prosciutto (Cascade cured ham). My wife and I ordered one, and then immediately ordered another. It is an expensive sandwich, but in America, flavor is in very short supply.
This is the first time that American restaurants (other than The French Laundry) have received Mangalitsa pigs.
As The Herbfarm was our last stop, we got to spend some time with Executive Chef Keith Luce and his staff, and watch as they unpacked and inspected our Mangalitsa pigs. It was intimidating to watch them all take turns bending over and sniffing the meat. Some of the chefs just stood stiffly, poker faced, watching everything We'd never experienced that before. We had no reason to think they'd be disappointed, but we got nervous nevertheless.
A bit later Keith showed us a ham that he's curing, along with many other traditional products. He and his staff made the ham from the 400+ lb Berkshire that we delivered to him in November. He said that the lardo was already cured and gone, which really surprised us - they must have been using it a lot.
He gave us a sample of some cured loin from our Berkshire hog, which was some of the finest cured meat we'd eaten in America. He offered us a few pieces on a plate, and we had to resist the urge to eat it all very quickly, like pigs.
When I went to the butcher recently, I picked up two Mangalitsa heads. I took them home to make stock and get the head meat. The meat in the plastic container is meat from the two heads. The meat is darker than typical pork, and it has a stronger flavor. The jaw muscle is a real treat - very lean, flavorful meat, but very tough.
The bottom teeth of the pigs don't look very sharp, but pigs can easily break skin when they use them. If a pig, even a piglet, bites you with those back teeth, it really hurts.
I have some rough photos of the Mangalitsa cuts we'll be selling starting on January 19th, at the national debut of Mangalitsa at Seattle's U-District Farmers Market. Please excuse the photos looking washed out - I took them under the processor's fluorescent lights.
The pigs were around 5.5 months, so by Mangalitsa standards, they are young and small. Although some modern pigs would be "market weight" at 5.5 months, lard-type pigs grow very slowly. So there isn't much meat on them at that age.
Normally you'd roast such pigs (as we expect Lark, Le Gourmand, Sitka & Spruce, Stumbling Goat and The Herbfarm will), but seeing as we want to introduce American consumers to Mangalitsa, we need to give them things like chops and steaks so they can try it out easily.
A lot of people will probably find the fat on the cuts to be "excessive" - but if you go to Japan and see how they cut Iberico (an unimproved lard-type breed very similar to Mangalitsa), you'll see that it also has a lot of fat: A lot of Americans have trouble understanding why you'd eat that fat - but once you've eaten it, you'll understand. Mangalitsa fat is particularly special!
Also, you can't see how the meat tastes from the photos - but if you could eat it, you'd agree that it has a very pleasant, meaty flavor. I just ate some cheek (I took the heads from my pigs), so it is fresh in my mind.
At the very top of the post, there's a photo of a chop. Here are some other chops:
Here's a fresh ham (behind it a chop):
And here's a shoulder roast:
And two pieces, each with a few tiny spareribs and a strip of belly (behind them some leaf lard and other cuts):
I'd never seen that last cut, which is basically some rib segments with some belly attached. The butcher, Larry Ellestad, says it is his favorite cut on a hog. You shouldn't use young hog bellies for bacon, so this seemed like a reasonable way to go.
Anyway, I hope I don't get attacked for not having them trim the fat. In countries that have pork like Mangalitsa, that's how it gets served.
Unlike normal pig breeds, Mangalitsa can farrow in winter with minimal assistance. One doesn't need to attend the birth, provide heat lamps or much else, assuming the sow can find some shelter and build a nest. The biggest danger is other pigs, who will, if given a chance, eat the piglets.
We "coddle" our Mangalitsa, providing them a small Port-a-Hut (we are the local dealers of this equipment) and straw or hay, which they pull into the hut to build a nest. We saw folks in Austria who just provide the pigs with old trailers and other junk to take shelter under. Humans providing animals warm, dry, clean shelter is a modern phenomenon without precedent - humans just didn't have the resources.
Some of our sows recently farrowed, so we've got photos.
In the beginning a Mangalitsa sow is especially protective of her piglets, and gets upset if someone visits the hut. She'll stand up and start barking. The piglet will typically run and hid behind his mother. It is astounding how they know to put a big pig between them and the potential threat. You can see that in these two photos - the first being a closeup of the second:
If you reach into the hut, the sow will bite. Most sows won't leave the hut when a human is around and the piglets so young. One way to grab a piglet (for instance, to castrate it) is to have someone distract the sow at the front of the hut, while someone else reaches in through the back window to grab the piglet, which will have run to the back to hide. All that bothers the sow a lot, so both people are taking their chances of getting bit. Most Mangalitsa breeders figure it just isn't worth the grief - you are better off handling the piglets when they are older, and the sow isn't so protective. Of course, late castration gets you in trouble with some people - but there aren't alternatives unless you confine the animals.
Mangalitsa breeders tolerate sows that are protective of their young because they generally wean the most piglets without human intervention. The sow that bites perceived threats also doesn't crush or savage her young. The sow that lets you pick up her squealing piglets without biting somebody is usually a bad mother.
This is the other view of the piglet that you see: a piglet's butt as he runs away behind the bulk of his mother.
When the piglets get a bit older, the sow mellows out a bit. Then it is possible to approach the hut and take some photos, and perhaps not get bit. When I took these photos, the sow was standing by my shoulder, and making agitated noises. Had the piglets squealed, I would have jumped up, to avoid getting bit in the face.
Finally, when the piglets get a bit older, they'll look like these guys, who aren't piglets or adults, but are still very cute:
One natural question is why the Mangalitsa is so different from normal pigs. The answer has to do with the history of pig breeds - essentially the Mangalitsa is a somewhat domesticated European Wild Boar. That explains the tremendous ability to fatten up, the special taste and fat quality and nearly everything else that makes the meat and fat superior to modern pork.
If you want to taste Mangalitsa, you can head to the U-District Farmers Market in Seattle on January 19, or you can head to a few Seattle-area restaurants (Lark, Le Gourmand, Sitka and Spruce, Stumbling Goat and The Herbfarm) after this Friday, when we deliver our first batch. When you are there, you might as well ask if you can try the very special Berkshire pork they got from Wooly Pigs.
Mangalitsa pigs are for sale for the first time ever in the USA.
Wooly Pigs, the only importer and only producer of these very different hogs in the New World, delivered one of these a few months ago to The French Laundry - but now we've got about 60 of them that are ready to be killed and eaten. They are about 6 months (~120 lbs), so they should be used for fresh meat.
Most agree that Mangalitsa is incomparable with normal pork. Even when fed and raised properly, popular modern hogs (including Berkshire, Duroc, etc) aren't as succulent - just as a chicken, no matter how its fed or kept, can't taste like goose.
Some of our Seattle-area customers will get their first Mangalitsa later this month. Wooly Pigs will sell Mangalitsa cuts at Seattle's U-District Farmers Market starting January 19th.
If you'd like to buy some of these amazing pigs, please give me a call at (509) 536-4083.
Delivered to the Seattle area, a whole pig costs $500. We can also arrange delivery to the Bay Area or Portland, at a different price. If you want to fatten your own Mangalitsa, we'll sell you a live pig. We'll have Mangalitsa-Berkshire crosses for sale to farmers in Spring.
There's an ominous looking news story involving some Mangalitsa pigs right here.
I'm not quite sure what the story is, and would appreciate if someone could supply a rough translation from Hungarian to English. From what I gather, the pig owner died and his Mangalitsa pigs ate him a bit. The cops are trying to figure out exactly what happened, but it is hard, because the pigs destroyed a lot of evidence.
As I mentioned before, Austrian meat scientists are generally pro-nitrite and nitrate to a degree that Americans find shocking. Language barriers can prevent us from communicating - but sometimes a guy like Gerhard Feiner comes along, who writes in English.
Consumers can't tell there's nitrates in the product - because the "celery juice" and "cane juice" listed on the label don't scream "nitrates".
Nitrites form in the product - but the consumer doesn't suspect that, as they don't appear on the label. Were nitrites added directly, they'd have to be listed on the label as preservatives, which would turn off consumers. So having nitrites form in the product pays off two ways.
You can get nitrosamines forming in the no-nitrite, no-nitrate product, just as in stuff with nitrites directly added. Hence, there isn't necessarily a health benefit to the no-nitrite, no-nitrate product.
Although the amount of nitrites that form in the no-nitrate, no-nitrite product are lower than in the ones where nitrite is added directly, when the consumer reads "no-nitrite", he figures there are no nitrites, not just fewer.
One point Feiner doesn't bring up is does the amount of nitrite in the product vary from batch to batch? One good thing about directly adding nitrites is that you have some handle on how much is going in. Is producing nitrites in a roundabout way from celery juice and cane juice just as regular and predictable?
I'd be happier if my products said "naturally cured", "no nitrite, no nitrate", as I'd make more money. And if I knew that there were lots of "natural" nitrites in the product, safeguarding the health of my customers, I'd sleep easier. Yet it seems terribly dishonest to produce meat products labeled "no nitrite, no nitrate" when the whole point of the processing is to get nitrites in there without any clues on the label.
Yet, based on prices we observe in the market, and feedback from customers - e.g. getting attacked for not having a "no-nitrite" bacon), people very much want meats cured with nitrites - they just don't want any clues to it on the label.
There's a new pig book out that includes hard to find info on raising pigs outdoors: "Dirt Hog", by Kelly Klober.
For a historical perspective on raising pigs, "Harris on the Pig" is the best. Harris's first edition appeared in 1870. He was an incredible biologist. One of my favorite parts read:
Of the desirable qualities in a pig, therefore, a vigorous appetite is of the first importance. A hog that will not eat, is of no more use than a mill that will not grind. And it is undoubtedly true that the more a pig will eat in proportion to its size, provided he can digest and assimilate it, the more profitable he will prove.
Our Mangalitsa is available in Seattle at Chef Shop: 1425 Elliot Ave W, Seattle, WA. Call 206-286-9988.
Our Mangalitsa is available in Hong Kong via Waves Pacific.
Our Mangalitsa is available in Boston, MA via Cambridge Packing. Call 617-269-6700 and ask for John to order. In Seattle and San Francisco, Heath Putnam Farms distributes its own product. Please look here for purchasing information.
