Hard to see sow

I found this picture on wikipedia.

My first thought: awwwwww cute!

Second thought: that sow is really hard to see.

Third thought: if that sow is only weaning one pig this turn, she's probably heading to the slaughterhouse pretty soon.

Best of San Francisco 2010: Eat + Drink

According to 7x7, Mangalitsa is the best reason to "lard out" in San Francisco.

I'm grateful that restaurants like Michael Mina recognize how special our product is.

Mangalitsa vs Iberico

While in New York helping to kick off the lard-type pork revolution, I ate an Iberico bellota sirloin chop for breakfast one morning, fried up in a pan.

Basically, it tasted like a Mangalitsa sirloin chop, with a slightly weaker flavor. Had I not known it was Iberico, I would have thought it was Mangalitsa.

This is entirely in keeping with various things I've seen about Mangalitsa vs Iberico.

The fat was a bit soft and breaking apart. I attribute that to the feed. It didn't not have a particularly nutty flavor - but perhaps if we'd cured that piece of sirloin, it would have developed.

I think that at approximately half the price of Iberico (and tasting very similar), we ought to be able to sell a lot of Mangalitsa in NYC.

Having eaten that stuff, I feel a lot more confident about our product; there's nothing cheaper yet still comparable to our stuff.

Chefs on Pork Fat Chemical Composition and Aninal Importation

While reading about Cochon 555 in SF, I saw this:

Morgan Maki, Bi-Rite Market

Pig: Mangalitsa from Suisun Valley Farm

QK: Tell me about the Mangalitsa.

...MM: The texture would be different, and the proportion of fat to meat would be different. The reason why Mangalista is a cool pig is because they store a lot of back-fat, two to three inches. It's poly-unsaturated fat, which has a lower melting point and creamier consistency.

Actually, the pig tends to store unsaturated fat (typically monounsaturated). If you want a pig to have lots of polyunsaturated fat, you can do that to pretty much any pig, by feeding it things like corn oil, corn or rapeseed oil. That will make the pig fat rancid.

QK: Now, Mangalitsa is hard-to-find. Why?

MM: It's a specialty product and more expensive because there's not a lot of them being grown in this country. Only one or two people have breeding stock. There's a fellow in Washington state who breeds the pig, but he'll castrate the piglet before he sells it to you.

QK: Because he doesn't want you to breed it?

MM: Yeah, you can't import a live pig into the country anymore but he had his pig before the USDA made the rule.

To date, nobody has offered much money for breeding stock. People prefer to buy relatively cheaper feeder pigs (neutered) - so that's what the company sells them.

It is inaccurate to say that you can't import a live pig into the USA.

Why do I bother making these corrections?

I mention this because news media are in the habit of asking chefs questions and repeating their answers as if the chefs are authoritative.

Chefs are generally not authoritative about pig lipid chemical composition and animal importation. Unless a chef raises pigs to make cured products that rival those of Europe's best, or has experience importing animals, he probably doesn't know much about this stuff.

I've got no beef with Chef Maki. Maybe he's a nice guy. I'd like to sell him a bunch of pork, or a bunch of pigs. But let's get real here: I know a lot more about availability of Mangalitsa breeding stock, how to import pigs into the USA and the chemical composition of pig fat.

I wish journalists would stop repeating what chefs say about things outside their purview as gospel - because too many readers are incapable of critical thinking.

New York Photos - Lard-type Pork Revolution

Cia Bernales and lardo.

Here's some photos from my trip to New York. I had some very positive and productive interactions with people.

Tom Colicchio and Heath Putnam

That photo is from DeBragga's dinner - the New York debut of our Mangalitsa pork. The Wall St. Journal wrote about it here, and issued this correction here. As I said at the dinner:

"This is the beginning of a lard-type pork revolution..."

Tom Colicchio is a famous New York chef. A lot of people know him as the head judge on the show Top Chef. He's also the owner of Craft, a group of restaurants focused on top-quality ingredients.

Tom Colicchio's finger, Wooly Pigs logo.

Next is a photo of me with Paul Liebrandt, Chef at Corton.


I was happy to find out that Chef Liebrandt has been using our product for weeks. He likes it. He offered some constructive criticism of our product, in a very nice way. He's the sort of customer I love to have; he's the guy that helps us to improve things.

According to the Michelin guide, Corton is one of the top 11 restaurants in the NYC area. Corton has two Michelin stars, making it our highest Michelin-rated regular customer.

April Bloomfield, of The Breslin and The Spotted Pig was there, but I didn't get any photos of us. I talked with her at length about our product. She's used it a little bit, as mentioned in this important New York Times article.

Finally, here's a picture of Cia Bernales, food blogger, happy to receive some complimentary lardo:


I had a lot of fun talking to her. She's traveled a lot and eaten a lot of good food. It is great to meet people who are enthusiastic about good food. Without them, this whole project would be demoralizing day after day.

She's holding stuff from the first batch. I also sampled some of that batch to Kavin Du, a serious chef (non-professional) and Mangalitsa fan.

Kavin (and George Faison at DeBragga) provided some useful feedback, which we'll use to modify our process, hopefully making our lardo a better product. When you've got smart people who notice thing about food making the same criticisms, you ignore them at your own peril.

As previously mentioned, based on what I saw last week, top chefs all over New York will be making their lardo from our pigs, starting this week. That means it will hit the tables in 4 weeks or so.

I'm guessing it will take another 2 months for the press to notice and start writing about how amazing Mangalitsa lardo is, making it a food trend, like real pretzels.

It is going to be very fun watching this whole process unfold.

Mangalitsa In Fine Dining - Orlando, Florida

Todd English's Bluezoo in Orlando Florida is probably the restaurant in the USA that uses Mangalitsa pork in the most experimental ways. I hear they use at least one Mangalitsa a week - which is a lot.

Those guys really like buying, processing and serving Mangalitsa pork. Looking at Chef Chris Windus's blog, I see they've done some really fancy hot dogs. B Baxter works for Chris, and has his own blog.

The hotdog reminds me of Chef Manfred Stockner, formerly of Zum Weissen Rauchfangkehrer, who had a simple little smoked Manglaitsa sausage. The point was, you looked at it and it looked like nothing special - the sort of thing you might pick up at the train station from a food cart.

Of course, it tasted incredible.

I was talking with a Mangalitsa producer recently. I suggested that if he wants to get some ideas about what's possible, he might want to make a trip to Orlando and see what they are doing.

The pigs they use in Florida are fattened by Pasture Prime Wagyu.

Suisun Valley Farm

There's a post here about Suisun Valley Farm. You can see they raise pigs, cure them, make their own beer and cook the pork (sous vide!) for their guests.

Quite impressive! It reminds me a lot of Mosefund, but with beer.

Suisun Valley Farm will have a pig processing class there later this year, taught by Christoph Wiesner. It will be something like this one.

Hopefully Corti Brothers in Sacramento will keep buying Suisun Valley Farm's pigs.

Eric Rivera Cooks & Mangalitsa Jowl Bacon

Eric Rivera Cooks

Eric Rivera, Seattle chef (Seastar in Bellevue, WA) and customer has a blog.

Eric and I are in agreement on the superiority of Mangalitsa jowl bacon.

He recently wrote about Mangalitsa jowl bacon, in relation to a BLT. I've written on the same topic - arguing that there is no better BLT, and (arguing a bit cheekily) that Michael Ruhlman ought to change his contest from a BLT Challenge to a Mangalitsa jowl bacon BLT challenge.

He's also got a page on some tapas, at least one dish of which used some Wooly Pigs brand Mangalitsa jowl bacon.

Mangalitsa Pork for Sale in Supermarket

This is the first time I've seen Mangalitsa pork for sale in a retail supermarket. Suisun Valley Farm produced the pork.

It is great to see the pork getting sold in a venue like that.

I wish they wouldn't call Mangalitsa "wooly pig" - for reasons I've stated.