Bill Morris and his Monster Berkshire

Slices of hog jowls from one of our pigs.

Bill Morris has some nice photos (like the one above) on his blog of a pig he processed from us. He says he used every scrap.

We've had people coming up to our booth at the farmers markets, saying what a great multi-course pig dinner he did. It sounds like pretty much every dish had pork in it. What's great about those people don't go to farmers markets, and only came out to buy our pork.

Other Uses For Mangalitsa Pigs

Some prize-winning Germans have a bunch of exotic animals, including some trained Mangalitsa pigs. They've got a ridiculous collection of animals.

Pigs will do just about anything for a snack. I get the feeling the pig is patiently waiting for her to get off him so he can get his pig treat.

Feeding Pigs

I continue to be fascinated by The Herb and Pig Farm's pigs. The Mangalitsa-Berkshire piglets are visibly bigger. They are starting to look less like cute piglets and more like pigs.

As shown in the video, Zuzi tried to favor the small pigs and give them a treat, but both of them get shoved aside very quickly by a much older Mangalitsa barrow who barged in to get the treat.

The older pig reminded me a lot of an alligator or some other voracious prehistoric creature. It is simply amazing to see how it works its nose.

Old pastry recipe book

There's a nice book from 1907 with old recipes using lard. Here is chapter 2 - "pastry and pie making, pastes and fillings ..."

With the changeover to margarine, it is difficult to find recipes that use lard. Also, given that the lard sold in stores now is partially hydrogenated, it is probably safer to use old recipes with the kind of old-style lard that you produce at home.

Iberian Ham Cocktail

I read about an interesting Iberian ham cocktail here.

Here is the original recipe.

It is astounding what people come up with.

I talked today with a chef who got one of our pigs. He said they took the fat and used a pacojet on it to make a spread, which was very popular with people. I understand that Keith Luce (of the Herb and Pig Farm) likewise served our pigs' fat as a spread.

I think it is great that our fat quality is so high that people utilize it that way. It has taken about a century, but finally, lard is making a comeback in fancy restaurants.

Foodies Sing about Mangalitsa (and the Price)

We never expected Americans would be singing about Mangalitsa so soon, but it has already happened. Journalists are literally singing about Mangalitsa.

The Mangalitsa they tried was at Monsoon - the Seattle-area restaurant that has served the most Mangalitsa to date.

One interesting point - we haven't heard people complain about the price of the fatty Mangalitsa cuts. People who buy and eat the Mangalitsa belly or jowls at $25/lb have yet to complain.
Nancy Leson ate the belly, so it didn't surprise us that she liked it.

This month there's a page about Mangalitsa belly in "Seattle Metropolitan" (June issue, p. 131) by Jess Thompson. There's a description of the pig and a recipe. Jess and her friends absolutely loved the fatty cuts.

Pig Visit

Zuzi and I visited the Herbfarm's Mangalitsa pigs today. Before we could reach the pigs, we saw the sign above. We didn't want to trespass, so before going any further, we found Bill Vingelen, The Herbfarm's Head Gardener, and arranged for an official tour.

Bill escorted us to the pigs, explaining that anyone who wants to visit with the pigs is advised to show up late Saturday morning or early Saturday afternoon - he wants to structure visits and reduce his workload. He's usually reachable at 425-485-5300 x124.

Bill Vingelen shows Zuzana Putnam The Herbfarm's Mangalitsa pigs.

Bill loves the pigs. Although he's very busy with the garden, he spends enough time with the pigs that they are very attached to him, and very relaxed around him. When he scratches one pig, the others want attention:



Since we last visited, Bill's put in a pole, so that they can scratch themselves. We got to watch some pigs use it, which was fun. Pigs don't have hands, so they can't easily scratch themselves. They like to scratch on things like trees and boulders. The pole is visible in front of the pigs' hut, in the picture below.


The Herbfarm's pigs are becoming very at home in their new surroundings. Even the little pigs are getting less skittsh. They looked bigger. They spent nearly all our visit rooting, which they are good at:


The pigs have so much food! Besides their feeder, they've got grass, herbs and beets. They were barely interested in our pig treats. Some of them were very curious about us. We petted and scratched the ones that came close to us.

I scratched one Mangalitsa, but another one (apparently jealous) came over and flopped on his side, demanding I scratch his belly. As I scratched him, one of the little pigs came over to see what was going on:


It was a ridiculously pleasant visit. The pigs seem happier than they were last week. They are giving so much personal attention to these 6 market hogs. Our breeding stock doesn't even get this much personal time.

It was great to meet Bill and see how much the pigs love to be around him, and how much he loves the pigs.

Kylan Hoover's Bay Area Acorn-fattened Mangalitsas

Kylan Hoover's Mangalitsa Pigs in the Diablo Range

Kylan Hoover (of Livermore, California's Red Mountain Farm) - aka Mr. Oak - bought Mangalitsa pigs from us and is finishing them on acorns. He's got some photos of his pigs and ranch on flickr. You can see them here.

His pigs are foraging and eating supplemental barley, as our pigs do. The difference is the quality of the forage - his oaks produce ideal pig fodder. Due to the breed, feed and how he's raising his pigs, Kylan's will be most like the iberico produced in Spain, which are used to make jamon iberico.

I've read a lot of hype and disinformation about Jamon Iberico. With the importation of iberico hams, journalists and others have been repeating falsehoods about the pigs (e.g. all iberico are finished on acorns). I wish more people understood what we (and Kylan Hoover) are doing and why, and that there are a lot of different ways to raise pigs, which produce better or worse results.

Here is some informative material that gets into the details of the fattening process - and it hints at why what Kylan Hoover is doing is so extraordinary and outstanding:

I started at the source, with the pigs, and I visited them during the montanera, the six-month period when they roam the woods, gorging on acorns. By the time they commence this final feast, the pigs are about two years old. At Joselito and the other best brands (notably, Sánchez Romero Carvajal of Jabugo), the breed of pig is pure ibérico; however, less-traditional companies have begun interbreeding the old race with modern varieties that fatten up faster and produce more piglets. Government regulations allow manufacturers to call any pig an ibérico if its parentage is at least three fourths from the ibérico breed...

There are indeed lesser forms of jamón ibérico, made from pigs that haven't consumed so many acorns. The highest category—jamón ibérico de bellota, "bellota" being Spanish for acorn—comes from animals that have put on at least one third of their weight by eating nothing but foraged acorns and grass (and the occasional snake) during the montanera. Ibérico pigs with a diet less heavy in acorns are classified as recebo; if they have eaten solely cereals, pienso. In an average year, there will be 4.5 million ibérico hams, but only one tenth of them are bellota. Even among the bellota hams, Joselito separates the largest and best shaped, distinguishing them as Reserva hams. Because the acorn crop varies each year depending on rainfall, ibérico ham is as vintage-dependent as wine. "The worst acorn crop of my life was in 2000," José Gómez says. "Forty percent of Joselito hams were put out under the second label, C. Jota."

The acorn-rich diet transforms the fat of jamón ibérico de bellota. Studies from the University of Extremadura indicate that more than half the ham's fat content is monounsaturated (the type that is in olive oil) rather than the artery-clogging saturated kind usually found in animals. Significantly, at room temperature the ham's fat virtually melts, like a vegetable oil. "When the pig is slaughtered, an analysis of the fat is done," Real Ibérico's Ullibarri explains. "You can see the correlation between the amount of acorns eaten and the percentage of oleic acid—which melts at room temperature—in the fat of the animal."

Kylan Hoover's Mangalitsa Pigs

If Kylan kills his oldest pigs this Fall, they'll be 15-months when they go to slaughter. I've read that the hogs killed for iberico products are as young as 15 months old, so he's in that zone. The older pigs he'll market this Fall are purebred, so they've got the best possible genetics. We are all hoping that he'll have a great acorn crop, so that the pigs he kills will be fattened entirely on forage.

Based on meat science, those 15-month pigs will be the best available in America in 2008. Although older would be better, there can't be any better stuff available in 2008, because nobody has older Mangalisa (or Iberico) pigs to slaughter.

If Kylan keeps some of his oldest pigs and kills them in Fall 2009, after fattening them on next year's acorns, they'll be like the Joselito pigs described in the article -- more than 2 years-old. Based on meat science, those pigs will be just as good as the best of Spain - because Mangalitsa and Iberico pork taste the same (the former sometimes being passed off as the latter), and for fattening pigs, the Diablo Range might as well be Extremadura.

It doesn't matter that Kylan Hoover doesn't come from an old-world family that's fattened hogs for generations: if he just follows the system, he will get the results.

As much as we are committed to raising the best pigs we can, it boggles my mind that Kylan Hoover is doing this, because he's going to have so much invested in his pigs by the time they finally go to slaughter.

Kylan Hoover has already sold several of his 15-month pigs - two of them to The French Laundry. Come November/December, people in the Bay Area will be eating absolutely fantastic Mangalitsa pork, processed and served by The French Laundry. Starting in November/December (depending on when they kill them), we'll see Bay Area foodies raving about Mangalitsa.

We feel we've done a good job exposing people to Mangalitsa with our marketing of the pork in the Seattle area - but it is folks like Kylan Hoover, The Herbfarm's Keith Luce and Devin Knell and The French Laundry's staff who are going to really help carry things forward.

Woodinville Pigs

Zuzi and I went and visited the Mangalitsa pigs in Woodinville recently. As expected, they've wiped out the grass. It looks like The herdsman put some straw in there to make it less muddy and a bit more attractive:


The picture at the top shows a Mangalitsa eating a carrot. Pigs like carrots a lot. They are good pig treats because pigs like them and can't eat them very fast (unlike cookies). Even though the pigs are clearly being fed all they can eat (I saw some uneaten beets in their pen), they mustered some interest in the carrots.

The pigs have dug a wallow near their feeder. That allows them to cool down, but increases the smell. It smells a lot stronger than it did a week ago. I wish there was some way to capture that in writing.

The Mangalitsa-Berkshire piglets liked the carrots too:




I'm very curious about how they'll taste.

EDIT: I was looking at the comments and I saw that Snakeman took a fabulous photo of a Woodinville Mangalitsa pig. I'm putting it here so that more people will see how cute these pigs are - even when 9-months old:

Photo by Snakeman (Mark Silver)

Snakeman - if for some reason you want me to stop using your photo, please just say and I'll stop.