gdenby

I'm not quite certain what parts I was cutting, but I think the jowls disappear in about 3 minutes. Sorry

Hi, all, I posted here a few days ago, seeking pointers on how to cook a whole pig's head. Thanks for the tips. It turned out wonderful. As far as I could tell, leaving the eyes in is a matter of preference. I decided to try removing them, for whatever slight aesthetic improvement that might make. It was harder than I had supposed. I used a very sharp, pointed wood carving knife to slice around the sockets. When they were loose, I used wire cuters to sever the optic nerve, which was much tougher than I might have expected. I scrubbed the head with a scouring pad. (I didn't feel any hairs left. At the end of the cook, I could see some stubble around the snout, and shaved those off easily with a paring knife.) I rubbed it all over w. salt, and let it sit in the fridge for about 36 hours. The morning of the cook, I rinsed it again, and put some rub on the exposed meat. I lightly brushed the skin w. some oil. While it seemed to me that the head should easily fit into my medium Big Green Egg, I had to try several different set ups. In the end, I placed the grill on the fire ring, and laid 2 firebrick splits flat on the grill, one at each side. I put the head into a pan that fit quite snugly, w. only a bit of the jowls flopping over the edge. I placed the pan across the gap, with its bottom just a few inches away from the coals. It was a very unusual cooking session. I suppose the bricks and the mass of the head impeded the air flow. Vent settings that would normally produce a dome temperature of 250F would only give 200F. After several adjustments over a period of several hours, I eventually had a dome reading of 275F. To my surprise, at 4 hours, the Thermopen was reading well into the 170S most places I was probing. I needed to spoon fat from the pan frequently. Eventually, I removed more than a pint. I dropped the temperature, but by that time, the bricks were sizzling hot, and the head was braising in its own simmering fat. At 7 hours, the internal temperature was 200-210 everywhere I tested. The results. Unbelievable. It was like a giant confit, only held up by the bone, and together by the skin. As my son dug into his 4th helping, he commented that it was what steak aspired to be. My wife said the meat was more tender than any pulled pork. I slurped some up just like ramen noodles. While there were bites here and there flavored w. the rub, the meat itself had the most delicious flavor. We didn't bother w. sauce, or extra salt, or anything. Really, it was intoxicating. The preparation was not the most economical use of the head. I have many pounds of fat to throw away, and I doubt the smoked skull bones would produce a good stock (altho' I may give it a try.) In the end, there might have been about 4 pounds of meat from the initial 14 pound head. Altho I had to fuss some, and the time was longer, the cook overall was about as difficult as doing a goose, but far and away more tasty.

Thanks for the info. I may try to remove the eyes, just to see what needs to be done if I ever make this for people who might be squeamish (like maybe my wife.) I have a Green Egg ceramic cooker, which can easily hold a low temperature for at least 20 hours. The recommendation from the shop owner was 8 hours. he head is about 14 pounds. I plan on cooking longer. 6 -7 hours at 250, and then, if the internal temp in the cheeck is not 180, cook at 350 for an hour or two more. Will try to post on the results.

Thanks for the links. I see you asked pretty much the same question. And there was no post that mentioned much, if anything, about trimming parts out of the head. Eyes in, eyes out, doesn't seem to be a major issue.

Hello all, Looking for some pointers. I found a place that sells whole hogs head. They asked how I was going to prepare it, and said I planned on just putting it in my BGE, and doing it as BBQ. They said that would work just fine, and to give it about 8 hours. I had thought from an earlier visit that the eyes were removed, but the head I got still has the eyes. I've found different recommendations about cooking with the eyes in or out. Any one have any experience with this? I suppose it might be a really trivial thing. One thing I read said to remove them, as they pop at a certain temperature, and make a mess. But then I see pics that appear to show the head cooked w. the eyes in. Is it just a matter of style? Thanks.

I've got 2 Eggs. My housewarming gift to my daughter and son-in-law who both love BBQ is an Egg. I'd be delighted if they were a bit less expensive, because I would get another. 16 hours and the temperature never wavers... I've had a couple of sessions like that. 2/3 of the lump left, no, more like 1/4. My expectation is that I may have to adjust the vent setting during the first hour of a low and slow. Then a tweak at 4 hours. After that, more often than not, the temperature just sits in one spot for about 8 hours. It does require some practice. As HungryC said, its not idiot proof. And, the stock felt gasket will most certainly burn away at some point. However, the versatiity really is wonderful. A few days ago, with my home airconditioning laboring under the summer heat, I made some flatbread on a 670F pizza stone in the Egg. I've made burgers in 3 feet of snow, and a wind chill of -27. I've had pork butts cooking during hour long summer downpours without the temperature changing more than 5 degrees. I've had good warranty service. My older Egg's firebox cracked into 5 pieces. I contacted the dealer, sent in a photo, and had a replacemnet at my door in about 7 days. The firebox had a slightly different design, with a thin slit from top to bottom to allow less stressful expansion during high heat cooks. I think you'll like it.

The pork probably wasn't quite out of the "stall/plateau." While its been shown in the last year that the plateau is not the result of collagen absorbing heat while turning to gel, but just evaporative cooling, it still seems that the meat will not be shreddable until the temperature is rising reletively rapidly again. If you don't have a probe with a graphing function, so as to see when the temperature begins rising sharply at the end of the plateau, just give the meat a poke. It will wobble almost like gelatine.

After making a few too many not very tender pieces of pork butt, my family has come to accept that that when I reply "Not ready yet," its worth the wait. Once above 180, if I need to serve, I increase the temperature to 275 or 300. I wait for 195, and 200 is better.

I got one a few months ago. Most of what I have made was straight out of the cookbook. Making soups that are pre-cooked just be mechanical energy is freaky. The number one use so far has been nut butters. My wife and remaining kid at home eat huge amounts of them on sandwiches. For example, to make crunchy peanut butter. Reserve a few tablespoons of dry roasted peanuts. Crush those in a pestle. Pour the rest of the jar into the ordinary Blendtec container. Run at speed 3 until the peanuts are crushed. Stop. Push down. Much will be too fine already for crunch bits. Run at speed 5 for about the same time, and stop. Different brands of roasted peanuts give different results. Most likely, add a tablespoon of peanut oil. If the peanuts are not sweet, add a tablespoon of honey. Run 2 full cycles at speed 5, pushing down if necessary between cyles. Spoon into container, and mix in pestle crushed bits. Have fun. I don't think of it so much as a blender as a puree machine. Next up for me, meat emulsification.

It will depend on how the farm raised the beef. The farm I buy beef from lets that animals wander around the pastures. They can eat grain if they want. The meat flavor is rich and complex, but steaks are a little tough compared to most market steaks. They also have less fat. I have not SV'd steaks, but have done short ribs and shank sections. The flavor remained, and the tenderness was close. There were often thicker strips of connective tissue that remained chewy.

Just a note on celery, which has long been an ingredient in mirepoix. It may be that the celery commonly available in the US now is not what was used 100 yrs. ago. Look up Kalamazoo celery, and note that the celery grown there was paler, and blanched during cultivation, producing a much less bitter celery than the now common Pascal. My summer experiment is to grow a row of old fashioned blanched celery, and find out if it is indeed more delectable than the current standard.

Peanut butter is something I have been considering for some time, and have not yet come to a conclusion. It is important to me because my wife, and the last kid in the house eat it on a daily basis. Together, they go thru more than a pound a week. My wife doesn't really care, but my opinion of most of the store brands is that she might as well be having ice cream for breakfast, but she couldn't spread that on toast. From what I can find, purely organic Valencia peanut butter costs about $11/lb. High quality natural is locally about $5. The $5 is something I can manage. (For $6, we could have lean organic ground beef.) On the other hand, the mainline brands test for the smallest amounts of aflatoxins, and evidently have miniscule pesticide residues. The peanut butter she and the kid like best is above $6. It is ground at the store, but has no organic assurance. I'm inclined to buy organic raw, and roast and grind my own. Organic beef, yes, about 50% of the beef we eat. The flavor is so much better, that the organic consideration does not even need to be added to the decision. The farm we buy from has expanded to provide some produce. The potatoes are not much more than the cost of good quality from the market, and the quality is there. Unfortunately, they don't seem to produce a lot. I clean out half the bin whenever I buy. So most of the potatoes I eat are "conventional." Apples, as above, only need to be peeled. I can get eggs (and chicken) that are not organic, but are not raised with antibiotics or growth hormones. The eggs I buy in part out of habit, because the farm has had a stall at the market for as long as I can remember. And they have duck eggs briefly in the spring, and I'm glad to support that. I find most market strawberries to be so flavorless that I rarely bother. My strawberry intake is mostly from wild. My wife and I, along with the kids, have spent many hours happily hunting wild. That, unfortunately, is something I suppose few could do. Popcorn is done is a brown bag. Try to eat non-farmed fish, but am a sucker for farmed trout. We don't use much milk anymore, but I would have been much more concerned when the kids were little. Each one drank about 48 oz. a day when they were little, and I wonder what problems this might have caused them, because I'm certain that hormones were being widely used for at least some of the period. As far as feeding 6 billion goes, that deserves its own thread. But it appears that industrial or organic, meat will be a luxury item. Got to toss one last thing in. Speaking of meat and luxury. As I mentioned above, organic beef can be had for less than organic peanuts. As I pointed out to my son the other day, even the "white foam" bread at the market can cost more per pound than the refrigerated chicken. And if buying high quality mass produced bread, or artisanal bread, a lot of beef and pork is cheaper per pound. I find this a strange inversion. Meat should be the outside of a sandwich, with a deli thin slice of bread in the center.

To reference the OP, how about looking not at what you must eat, but must not? From Fox: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/12/01/7-foods-should-never-eat/

I really don't thinks so. His family has been farming in the area for about 160 years at this point, and are quite prosperous. When my friend pointed out the infertile land, it was in direct contrast to his own in an adjacent field, that was not showing the same problems. One of his cousins, who was getting the best corn yields in the family at that time, did say that he would not be able to do it without fertilizers. I haven't spoken with one of the large organic farmers near me. They do grow some corn. I don't know what their yield is. I did speak with his father, a PhD in biochemitry, with postdoc work at MIT, some time ago. He was pretty dismissive of using petrochemical fertilizers.

To start with, I found the article very shallow. Did not even have an explanation of why those 8. Would eating those organic reduce hazards associated with non-organic by more than 50%? I found the article "The dirty dozen." which appears about 2 years ago, to be much more helpful. As was pointed out there, it isn't just the pesticides on apples that makes them problematic, but the paraffin that seals them onto the skin. Or the mention that peaches are even more heavily dosed, and no one washes or peels them. As far as organic pesticides go, the ones that I know of are not persistent in the soil, and are easily washed off the produce. I wouldn't want to eat lettuce freshly doused with tobacco juice, or tomatoes covered with pyrethrum dust, but I have grown them, and had them table ready with just a rinse in a bucket of water. The issue with organic certainly is, in part, about nutrional value, and absence of poisons in foods. The crucial part is in maintaining and nurturing soil. A friend, whose 4-H awards were in soil development, pointed out to me 20 years ago soil that had been so heavily saturated with pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides that it was pretty much sterile, and no longer retained moisture. In times of drought, weeds hardly grew in it. This, on ground that once could support communities with little more than hoes, scythes, and manure.

I saw an episode of America's Test Kitchen where they managed to get a smoke flavor to the oven ribs by putting a tray of Lapsang Soochong tea, and let the smoke on the tea give flavor to the meat. Seems like a rather expensive smoke source. I have tried rub mixes w. hickory smoke powder. They gave a mild smoke flavor, which I found much preferable to liquid smoke. Sorry to hear of you lack of BBQ. Talk about food deserts, that's the worst.

Not the most prestigious source but: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116097/Taste-testing-pink-slime-burgers-confirms-dont-know-eating-retailers-dont-either.html this one columnist reports that the addition of the "lean fine textured beef" just made the burger dry and rather flavorless. No problem with binding.

I have a friend who will eat fish, but no meats. He admits that the smell of bacon is still mightily attractive. Does a BLT sound good? How 'bout a Croque Monsieur? I was a vegetarian for several years, in part for financial reasons. I started with meals that I had made vegetarian, and could add meats. Spaghetti, chili, re-fried rice, burritos, ragouts, etc. For some of those, long simmers made everything better (chili needs at least 3 hours.) In terms of nutrition, learn to make a good stock. If you have a pressure cooker, it makes it easier/faster. If you start buying poultry, save the carcasses. Some markets sell beef and pork neck bones. A good stock not only has so much flavor, but the gel that is melted out of the scraps is a good protein by itself. Be really economical. Give chicken bones a second boiling, and use the stock to make rice.

I'm sorry. I'm a despicable person. BUT, I have to point out yet another source of protein for a hungry planet. http://io9.com/5813229/scientist-claims-to-have-made-an-edible-steak-out-of-human-feces-huh

From what I've read, at least some of things developed to serve the huge number of troops such as pre-made cake mixes developed out of military necessity, and found their way into civilian use. There were more conveniences than ever on the shelves. I suspect the Depression was also partly to blame. Most of my relatives were dirt poor, and even the ones still on the farm were happy to have any food. Not much fancy cooking going on. I don't believe I ever heard my parents, or any of my aunts and uncles reminisce about the food of their childhoods. My mother only ever mentioned 2 things. Fresh lard sandwiches, and egg's cooked in a hole in a piece of bread, which she called "Buck Rogers' Eggs.

Just a complete anecdote here, but I think its relevant to the discussion. A couple of years ago, I was behind schedule, and was passing through a smallish town. There was a local BBQ that had really good food, but was often slow. I opted for a burger from a chain. I had not had a burger from that chain for at least 4 years, mostly because I was trying to avoid the large fries, which are a personal weakness. After 1 bite, I almost spit the stuff out. I remember thinking "What the H did they do to this?" Sliders I'd eaten at 3 a.m. were significantly better. It wasn't grease. It was just "ick." A few weeks later I read the first article I've seen about the "pink slime,"and how it was being used at the chain I visited. Couldn't help connecting that ingredient with the nasty, nasty stuff I had put in my mouth. It may have been perfectly safe, but "Eeeeuww!"

would that be ground grandmother, freeze dried grandmother, or made into stock? With horseradish sauce

Speaking of grandmothers, here's a couple of phrases I've been toying with: "Hunger is the best spice. Good companionship the best flavoring." Grandmas of all kind have a tendency to make the best flavorings. Certainly, any group will have people who are better or worse at doing something. However, there is the aphorism "Practice makes perfect." Thos. Keller said something similar. He said it takes doing something 5000 times to get it right. Up until recently, the only people in the family who had done something that many times were probably grannies. My MIL was really a very indifferent cook. My wife tells me that she made very good fried chicken and BBQ ribs, probably learned from a maid. I never had them, but there was thing she made, oven crisped potatoes, that were always excellent. I put up with the Miracle Whip on the salads just to get to the potatoes.

Yeah. I remember when my parents took me on a trip around Lake Michigan, probably '63 or '64. Most of the diner food was not so good. I remember my mother saying that it was worth stopping "at the place with golden arches." As I recall, she said something like the food was not very good, but not very bad either. There was one place. tho', up at St. Ignace that had a great burger. Wish we had found a place serving pasties, or some smoked fish. I imagine that finding a good or decent independent restaurant is about 30%. With so few left, there are lots of small towns where odds are, the local cafe and the convenience store only compete on comfortable, not tasty. Too bad. While I expect a good pork tenderloin sandwich, I'm often disappointed. Think I'll have a McRib.

When I first read about the review, I was bemused. Why would anyone review a chain restaurant? But I recalled that when my elder daughter had worked at an OG, she had mentioned that it was a big favorite with elders. An OG opening would be newsworthy for a place that did not have one. After thinking about it more, the article just makes me sad. For several years I spent a lot more time than I liked driving thru rural Indiana. Most of the county seats I passed thru were less than half the size of Grand Forks. When I would do a search for places I might eat on the way, 4 out of 5 would be chain restaurant. I do recall coming across reviews saying things like "This <insert chain name here> is the best restaurant in town." I did find one review that said something like "<restaurant> just opened, and it is real Mexican. Finally, a place in town worth eating at." When I drove by, it was already closed. That same town did not have an OG, but there was one just 30 miles down the road. I guess it is noteworthy, especially in times like these, to find your hometown on the OG map.