Wild Boar

[A Balic]

I am sadly saying good bye to my youth tomorrow (I am turning thirty). I am having some friends around to help me not have an early mid-life crisis (and to celebrate the wonderful me). I wanted to cook a pair of suckling pigs, but here in Scotland they cost as much as a full grown porker, so objecting to paying for potential pig I went for a leg of wild boar instead (yes, I know it is an obvious choice, but it is my birthday so I can have a little joke at my self).

I will marinate it for several days in a cooked wine marinade, but does anybody have any suggestions for cooking times/temperatures? Low and long or high and short. I favour the former, but how low can I go do you think?

[IslandMom]

Happy Birthday, Adam!  Tomorrow's my birthday, too.  Wish I could say I was just turning 30.  Oh well, c'est la vie.  Wild boar - sorry, I have no advice about that, except to be very careful that it's fully cooked so that you won't get trichinosis.

[Scarpetta]

Adam,

the way I cook boar, I first sear the marinated leg patted dry, salted, peppered on a stovetop in lard, saltpork (cubed small) two chopped onions, two/three cloves, 1 chopped carrot and one celery stalk, one bay leaf (crumbled) and two large pinches of dried thyme. When the meat is well browned all over - it should take about 30' over medium heat - I pour a mixture of water and wine (50-50) so that I have about an inch of liquid in the pan and bring it to the boil.

At this stage you put the whole thing in a preheated oven at 350°F. After 20' lower the oven to 300, turn the leg and keep cooking for 3 hours, turning the piece every 30 minutes. I add some liquid if it should dry out. Insert a kitchen needle to test for doneness: it must slip in till the center effortlessly.

Happy birthday!

[A Balic]

Thank you both for the birthday wishes, happy birthday to IM.

Scarpetta: thank you for the cooking advice, it is similar to the idea I had in my head. With the searing part is that skin on or off? Having an Italian talking about wild boar reminds me of driving with an Italian friend near his home (Rada in Chianti), he always slows down at one bend in the road because that is were the boar crossing is -  he figures that if he sees one in time he could proberly ram it with his car and get a free meal. So far I haven't seen him getting any boar, but we did see a porcupine. He didn't kill it though, he said that although it tastes good, when skun it looks like a human baby, so is a bit off putting. Ah, Italy what a great place.

[Jinmyo]

"Skun"?

And Happy Birthday.

[A Balic]

"Skun" It isn't correct English, I know (you can take the boy out of the country, but....etc). Down my way, it is the past tense of skin. We are going to skin the rabbit, we have skun the rabbit. Mind you, "down my way" people also say "Yous people", so what do they know?

Thank you.

[yvonne johnson]

And skunnered is a terrific Scots word. It means as it sounds=fed up, sickened.

And many happy returns of the day. I guess we should include Andy...wasn't he hinting a couple of days ago it was his birthday?

[Scarpetta]

Better get the skin off, Adam. And don't be tempted to use the wine of the marinade in cooking -- it smells too heavily of wild pig!

If you're interested, there's an interesting sauce (with bitter chocolate, raisins and prunes) that goes quite well with boar.

[A Balic]

I don't think that the meat will be to gamy, as it is a young, female, farmed "wild" boar that I am cooking. I would love the sauce recipe, it sounds very interesting. Is it Sicillian or Andalusian by any chance? It sounds like it has some Arabic background.

[Jinmyo]

I seem to remember Mario Battali doing this on the Molto show. A quick search on the Food Network site would turn it up.

[Jinmyo]

It's called "Cinghiale In Agrodolce" but the site doesn't have the recipe.

[A Balic]

I found this site with a couple of slighty different versions:

http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/nr0957.htm

[Scarpetta]

Adam, when the meat will be cooked you should eliminate most of the fat from the pan, deglaze it with a little wine and reduce the obtained drippings by half.

In a small saucepan cook over medium heat 4 tbs sugar, one crushed garlic clove, a bay leaf and a couple spoonfuls water. Stirring constantly bring the melted sugar to a blond color, then add 2 ounces of dark, grated bitter chocolate. Let it melt then add a scant half a cup of good wine vinegar and the reduced boar drippings.

Cook the sauce for a few minutes -- you might want to thicken it with a little fecola di patate (potato flour). Discard the garlic and bay leaf, add about 2 ounces of raisins plumped in white wine, one ounce of pine nuts (maybe briefly roasted in a skillet), 12 plumped pitted prunes (nice allitteration!) and some candied orange and citrus peel.

This recipe is from Umbria, it's called "dolceforte" but there are several similar concoctions which date a long way back - probably back to the Middle Ages (minus chocolate, of course). Well... buon appetito!

[A Balic]

Scapetta, thank you for the sauce it was a great success. I used candied cedro peel and a little preserved ginger instead of the orange peel. The boar was very good, nice and tender. My guests remarked how it wasn't what they were expecting as its flavour was milder then swine pork, more like very young lamb. I have had this farmed wild boar several times and have always found this to be the case. Strange, don't you think.

[Fat Guy]

Did you have leftovers? Did you make any sandwiches out of them, perhaps a WildBLT?

What is the difference between a pig and a boar, if both are raised on a farm? Are they two different species? I've never given it more than a moment's thought, but in that moment I thought a boar was just a wild pig.

[A Balic]

Wild boar are the same species as the domestic pig, but there are obvious differences, due to the intensive selective breeding of the latter. You can also get feral domestic pigs, which have reverted back to a wild boar like phenotype, but are not technically the same animal. Just like different breeds of cattle taste different all these porcines taste different depending on their genetics and what they have eaten. Here is a link for you to explain it better:

http://www.britishwildboar.org.uk/profile.html

Um, With the leftovers I made wild boar and braised fennel sandwiches and then my wife made the rest into a ragu and we had that with papadelle.

[Fat Guy]

Interesting. Have you tasted other parts of the farmed wild boar, such as the ribs?

[A Balic]

Not ribs, but I have had roast loin and chops cooked in that that Anjou sauce(prune/wine/cream) manner. Always a very mild flavour. I have also had wild "wild boar" prosuitto/salami with pecorino (with truffle) and rocket , from this little hole in the wall place near the Duomo in Florence (A filled roll and a glass of wine for about Ū, you stand in the street and put your empty wine glass back on a little shelf).

I have a confession to make, I have never had "ribs". What cut are they and are they nice?

[Fat Guy]

Well, if you look at an anatomical diagram of a pig you'll see that there's a whole lot of rib area. Thus there are a number of different cuts that qualify as ribs. I've seen them categorized six or seven different ways, ranging from country style spare ribs to baby back ribs to rib tips to St. Louis-style ribs. But they are all delicious if prepared properly. They generally need slow cooking, and if they are cooked to the appropriate level of tenderness and doneness they are one of the greatest foods ever. They reach their pinnacle in Memphis-style barbecue, and also in some of their Asian incarnations. They have a natural sweetness in excess of almost any other meat, and they take very well to all kinds of rubs, sauces, and marinades.

Here's some information about ribs, from the Ribman:

http://www.ribman.com/abtribs.html

[mamster]

In my area, at least, country-style ribs aren't ribs at all;  they're rib-shaped cuts from the shoulder.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[A Balic]

Thanks for the information guys. This is starting to look the replys to my question "so what is Kosher?".

[Fat Guy]

Mamster, it sounds like you're talking about boneless country-style ribs, which are common because there's a lot of meat between each rib up there and you can butcher them bone-in, bone-out, or bone-in-every-other-rib. But I'm pretty sure it's rib meat either way. Country-style ribs come from near the shoulder, but I don't think they're technically shoulder, unless there really is a regional difference in labeling.

[Jim Dixon]

Adam,

Just exactly what an American means when he or she says 'ribs' depends on where he or she comes from. For most of us, though, it means pork ribs, the part of the pig with the actual rib-bone still in it, most often sold and cooked as a solid slab of meat and bone.

Anyone claiming to know the 'best' way to cook them is looking for trouble from the numerous opposing camps of barbecue cookery (not to mention the Texans, who insist that barbecue includes beef ribs). There are many, many sites (and books, etc) devoted to barbecue (and an entire section on my own site), so there's no need to get into that here. But I think you could approximate the flavor over there in sunny Scotland.

Getting the ribs themselves shouldn't be too hard, since there are apparently lots of pigs around. Just make sure that you have one piece, rib bones intact.

Make a rub from a half cup of salt, quarter cup of sugar, lots of black pepper, and maybe a touch of cayenne (but not too much). You can add other spices as well, but that's the basic formula. Rub it all over the ribs and let them sit for awhile.

Make a mop from vegetable oil, worcestershire sauce, prepared mustard, and cider vinegar (about 2/3 oil, then toss in the rest).

Ideally you'll cook this over a wood fire, not too hot and with lots of smoke. A covered outdoor grill (in America, the brand name Weber is synonymous) works best, but you can improvise (not sure how much the Scots are into barbecuing). Build the fire to one side of the cooking unit so that the meat isn't directly over the heat. Keep the fire low so the temperatures don't get much over 300F.

Cook the ribs (the slab) for a few hours, mopping with the mop sauce and turning when you feel like it.

Ribs are usually served with a tomato-based barbecue sauce (but again, this is subject to much regional variation). If you can't find one in the bottle, search the web for recipes.

Eat the ribs with your hands. Wear a dark shirt. Drink lots of beer. Side dishes (aka 'sides') include beans, greens, cole slaw, and corn bread. The most common accompaniment at rib joints over here is a few slices of industrial white bread (aka Wonder Bread).

Jim

[A Balic]

Thank you all for the rib information. I have now read about them in"The Man Who Ate Everything", but as we all hate that barstard I wasn't sure if they were worth the bother  ;)

.

Jim - Scottish BBQ's are very, very sad. People should BBQ in the sunshine #### it. The supermarkets here sell BBQs in the "seasonal" section.  I miss the this aspect of the Great Australian Dream very much. As I am of a partly non-Anglo-Saxon background, my family would always roast a whole pig or sheep (not lamb) on a spit for special ocasions. After six hours of slow cooking those animals really taste fantastic. I will give the ribs a go in my oven, although that may be a little sad.

[Scarpetta]

Glad everything turned out well, Adam. And, yes, a domesticated boar becomes less rustic and "wild" - even in taste - than the original animal. This is well known. Also, farm raised boars are usually rather fatter than the free range ones.

In fact, I believe they are excellent, combining some of the best qualities of both types.

BTW, why do you hate Jeffrey Steingarten? I find him incredibly funny.