The pig is pretty damn good in almost all its edible forms, or at least all the edible forms I’ve tried. Sure, there might be a tail fritter or hoof souffle that I’d find disagreeable, but until I make that mistake, I’m sticking with pig. This summer I found a pork picnic at my grocery store in the 10 pound range for less than $8. I promptly froze it, and this weekend–some six months later–I turned it loose for pulled-pork.
The prep for a chunk of meat this large is non-trivial. There’s a half-inch think slab of fat and skin along the bottom of the piece of meat that you’re likely to want to cut off. I didn’t want to waste it, so I decided to try my hand at making crackling. I went here first but then just figured I could fake it. I cut the slab of fat into thin strips and just set to cooking.
Pork fat splatters a lot, so I upended another frying pan over top of this one to contain some of the mess. Here’s how it looked about half an hour later:
In the meantime, I seared the chunk of meat in a heavy-bottom pot. After browning it all the way around, I added a couple of spoonfulls of rendered fat (from the crackling) and sauteed three onions until softened. Then I deglazed the pan with a mixture of red wine vinegar and water and added the meat back in along with some dried lemon grass, some salt, and a hearty squirt of Vietnamese hot sauce.
And while I was dishing out rendered fat, I figured I’d make up a little cornbread using a variation on the recipe in the Joy of Cooking (or “Rombauer” as it’s known around here). Here’s how that looked going in:
And coming out:
The pulled pork is still cooking, but a preliminary taste indicates I have about a week’s worth of delicious pulled pork sandwiches in my future.