Little Water Cantina

I went to Seattle's Little Water Cantina tonight with a customer and gourmand, Chris.

We got some gorditas - basically, pulled pork, fried in Mangalitsa lard, served on refried black beans (cooked partially in Mangalitsa lard).

The stuff tasted fantastic. Chris, a long-time Mangalitsa customer (nicknamed "The Natural") who cooks at home along the lines of Grant Achatz (molecular gastronomy FTW) said the stuff was so good he'd go back for it. That's a major compliment, considering that he's got a freezer at home filled with various Mangalitsa products, and the skill to make whatever he wants to make.

Neat Food Blog With Great Mangalitsa Photos

There are some neat photos over here of some Mangalitsa pigs and food made from Mangalitsa pigs.

They ate my Mangalitsa pork at a dinner in St. Louis, put on by one of my customers, loujack, and oddly enough, the customer is a brother of a Washington state customer:

... tasted the Mangalitza pig when we were in St Louis at the Clandestino dinner last year. The boys there were so passionate about the meat and the special qualities that I was intrigued. The more I have begun to read up on it the more interested I also have become, especially for the charcuterie properties (fat, in a word) that it has.

I'm not going to copy them here becuase I don't have the permission to duplicate them - but really, you should click here and check them out.

Mmmmmmangalitsa

There's an article in the Sacramento Bee, called "Culinary World High on This Hog". It talks a lot about Suisun Valley Farms (my customer) and their selling Mangalitsa pork to restaurants and retailers in and around Sacramento.

It is nice to see them get some press. They've been selling Mangalitsa pigs to Michelin-starred restaurants in California for two years.

Here's my favorite excerpts from the article:

For those craving a world-class version of "the other white meat," it might as well be pronounced "Mmmmmmangalitsa."...

"We purchase Mangalitsa pigs primarily due to their very high fat content," said Devin Knell, chef de cuisine for the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group. "The careful and selective diet these pigs are fed produces a highly unsaturated fat that has the texture and mouth feel of Wagyu. We use these pigs primarily for dry curing and aging. I feel that this form of utilization best showcases the attributes of both the pig and the efforts that Suisun Valley Farm puts into raising them."

Copper Hog Mangalitsa Menu

Copper Hog in Bellingham has our stuff on the menu!

International Boar Semen - Mangalitsa Genetics - Mangalitsa Breeding

I'm happy to announce that Steve Kerns of International Boar Semen just picked up a bunch of Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa breeding stock. We sold Steve a bunch of purebreds and crossbreds.

Call 641-939-3411 to order some semen!


Mangalitsa pigs have the best meat quality, and that's partly due to having the best marbling. Their fat also tastes much better than other pigs.

If you've got meat-type pigs and pork, and want it to look more like that loin above, you'll be able to improve things - easily and cheaply.

Selling IBS Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa genetics means that people who want to improve their meat and fat quality by producing Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa hybrid litters will be able to do so; they'll buy some semen and inseminate their meat-type sows.

It is a good thing they'll be selling crossbred semen; most people won't want a lot of Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa genetics in their pigs, because they don't want to be in the business of producing a lot of fat and very little meat.

Hans doing his best to improve America's pork quality.

It is a big deal to sell Steve Kerns these pigs. He's an established dealer of pig genetics. He's buying our pigs because they produce the highest quality of meat and fat.*

Now that Steve Kerns has the pigs, and will soon be collecting and selling semen from them, pretty much anyone that wants to buy Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa semen will be able to get what they want at a reasonable price.

This does even more to establish the Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa breed as America's super-premium pig breed.**


Mangalitsa Boars - Necessary?

A lot of people imagine that they can produce purebred Swallow-bellied Mangalitsa pigs by buying some gilts or sows and inseminating them.

It isn't clear to us if this will work or not. Mangalitsa sows don't show heat like regular sows. They don't stand like regular sows. Our breeders don't think they could artificially inseminate Mangalitsa sows with any reliability.

If people buy gilts or sows from me and try to AI them, and fail, they may get too fat to breed, become infertile (due to the pig equivalent of PCOS, which Managalitsa pigs seem to be prone to).


* Of course, they do that by consuming the most feed, and taking the longest time to reach maturity. There has to be a catch, right?

** My epitaph is definitely going to mention that I established the Swallow-Bellied Mangalitsa as America's super-premium pig, in addition to creating the Mangalitsa phenomenon. The whole thing sounds so odd.

Sous Vide Tip from Michael Clampffer

I was talking with Michael Clampffer, a CIA-trained chef and VP of Mosefund about sous vide.

He said that he has a friend who just got back from Italy from a sous vide class. He said that they cooked pretty much everything at 72C for 8 hours. That worked great for belly, jowl and a bunch of other tough cuts.

My only thought about doing Mangalitsa at 72C is that a bunch of fat would melt off. That's why I've done mine around 63C 19 hours.

Cochon 555 New Orleans

Stephanie Hua has a nice post on her blog about Cochon 555 New Orleans. You can see the food, people, etc.

Here's her description of Erick and what he served:

Representing the Besh Restaurant Group, Erick Loos blew us away with his creativity. He presented a mini four-course meal, showcasing a spectrum of techniques and thorough use of the animal. First up was the Pork Liver Parfait (a cool and savory concoction of liver and blood mousse, whipped lard, house-preserved peaches, and muscadine wine gelée). Admittedly, it was a little disorientating for my taste. Next came the Head to Toe Salad, composed of a terrine of the pig's head, tongue, skin, heart, tail, shanks, and trotters, topped with heirloom tomatoes and sugar cane vinaigrette. For our main, we had Slow Cooked Leg, Shoulder, and Loin served with porcini mushrooms over panisse, a chickpea fritter traditionally from the South of France. The real stunner, however, was dessert. The Porked Alaska, bacon pecan crunch ice cream and amaretto cream melting softly inside a crispy meringue, was my favorite bite of the entire evening.

Apparently he's been serving Mangalitsa bacon ice cream for the last few years at La Provence. People love it.

I'm thinking next year if he wants to compete, he might want to work it out with his slaughterhouse so that he could be the guy that stuns, sticks and guts the pig too. Then he'd really do it start-to-finish.

I talked with Erick. He said that they used the one pig and only the one pig (despite them having lots of other Mangalitsa around, they didn't cheat). So, for instance, the bacon ice cream was made with a quick-cured bacon. Also, he said they did a great job utilizing the one pig; when they were all done, they had a few pounds of lard (of course), but that was it.

Lincoln County Cookers Competes in Harrah’s High Steaks BBQ Bash with Our Stuff, Eric Loos wins, Sous Vide

Fatback Collective - victorious!

Lincoln County Cookers, a barbecue team, will be competing in the Harrah’s High Steaks BBQ Bash with some of our Mangalitsa.

A team member heard about the success of the Fatback Collective and contacted me to get some product.

It is very exciting that people who want to win choose our Mangalitsa.

This is coming on the heels of the Fatback Collective taking 3rd in Memphis.

Also, Erick Loos of La Provence just won Cochon 555 in New Orleans. He used a pig that we bred (and he fattened on his farm). To my knowledge, that's the first time a chef competed (and won!) with a pig he fattened. I was very happy that he won.

One neat thing about his victory: he cooked all the food in advance, using sous vide technology. At the event, they just had to heat the stuff and serve it - a bit like airport food. Sous vide cooking takes the stress and inconsistency out of the cooking process. Doing things using sous vide technology allowed them to relax and focus on getting the details right.

I am a big fan of sous vide technology - particularly the Sous Vide Supreme.

Sam Jones, Pitmaster, Fatback Collective Member

There's a nice article here about Sam Jones, Fatback Collective team member. I've chose to put some of the text in bold:

“It was the first time that breed of pig had been served in competition in America,” Jones said. “It's an heirloom pig originally from Austria that's only been in the United States for four or five years.”

Mangalitsa pigs, direct descendants of wild boars, have a hairy fleece and marbled, fatty flesh. It's a superior, fatty pork that is rarely served in restaurants, Jones said.

Once the team chose the pig, they needed to make a decision about sauce — and each team member had their own special sauce recipe, from South Carolina mustard and Memphis sweet to eastern North Carolina vinegar and hot pepper.

“Everyone on the team put together a sauce” Jones said, but in the end, the team decided to forgo the sauce altogether — a first for this cooking competition.

“My granddad said sauce covers up poor cooking,” Jones said. “After hours of cooking pigs with wood, you don't want to hide the taste of the pig with sauce. We decided to serve this pig without sauce, the way the Good Lord intended it to be.”

Jones said he stayed up all night during the competition, helping baste the pig with vinegar.

The judges awarded The Fatback Collective third place in the competition.

“I was a bit disappointed in third place,” Jones said, “but then some of the other teams said they had been participating in the contest for 20 years and had never scratched the top 10.

“I was honored to be a spoke in the wheel,” he added. “We had such a blast doing it as authentically as possible, with no gimmicks.”