“Pa skinned it for them carefully, and into the long end he thrust a sharpened stick. Ma opened the front of the cookstove and raked the hot coals out into the iron hearth.
Then Laura and Mary took turns holding the pig’s tail over the coals. It sizzled and fried and drops of fat dripped and blazed on the coals. Ma sprinkled it with salt…At last it was done, it was nicely browned all over, and how good it smelled! They carried it into the yard to cool it, and even before it was cool enough they began tasting it and burned their tongues. They ate ever little bit of meat off the bones, and then they gave the bones to Jack.
And that was the end of the pig’s tail. There would not be another one till next year.”
– Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Heyya gang,
Those of you who have spent any time around here know that I am addicted to pig. I admit it openly…heck, I embrace it openly! Hi my name is Perry…are you going to finish that pork chop?
In fact, my whole obsession with La Caja China started with the lust for crispy, succulent roast pig (one which the Cuban box has sated amply and often, I might add.)
So, last week I was cruising through our local Winco, which, like most large grocery stores that cater to a wide variety of ethic groups, has a meat department that is stocked with practically everything you need to assemble your own pig or cow…(I love that!), and there, nestled innocently between the trotters and tripes, were these beauties…pork tails!
My inner Zimmern instantly lept forward.
I mean, how different could they be from chicken wings, pope’s noses, and lamb neck bones…all of which I love? Except…they’re pork…that most loveliest of meats, most noble of beasts, and the divine proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!
Besides, they were a buck a pound. Into the cart they went.
Getting home, I didn’t have a recipe for pork tails handy (alas, my copy of Fergus Henderson’s The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, has not yet arrived) nor did I bother with The Google. It’s pig…I know how to cook pig.
Pig tails. Roasted, then finished on the grill.
Salty/Savory Dry Rub + Assorted Pig Parts + Low & Slow Roasting = Perfection
So, a loving massage with a liberal blanket of seasoned salt , and into the oven at 250. Two hours covered in foil, another two hours uncovered. How’d they turn out? Well, let’s come back to that in a second.
Foodies have long grumbled about the lack of quality (and variety) of meat available in the local supermarket, outside of the standard steaks, roasts, and assorted bird appendages, if you wanted anything different, historically you either had to visit an ethic “specialty shop”…or raise it yourself.
With the growing food movement, and increasing acceptance and demand for traditional ethic dishes (and not just the Americanized versions of them)…well, the times they are a’changing.
In addition to a desire for variety, there’s also a growing concern with the issue of wastage. Because consumers today like their meat packaged up in those easy-to-cook cuts, much of the carcass is thrown away — the sign of a rich and disinterested society, IMO – even though, with a little time and attention, much of it is not only edible but delicious. With hunger, especially child hunger, becoming a ever-increasing tragedy in our country, and around the world, the ability to feed twice as many people from a single animal is more that a no-brainer, it’s a moral imperative.
Thus, the “nose-to-tail” movement, endorsed enthusiastically by a new generation of “celebrity chefs” is exploding in popularity.
Let’s face it – you can eat the same delicious and interesting foods, prepared by the “stars” of the culinary world, for cheap, all while feeling smug and superior as part of a “counter-cultural movement”. In my hometown of Portland, this is enough to make your wool-clad toes curl up in your Birkenstocks…
In other words, it’s about as close to foodie-heaven-on-earth as you can get.
Ironically, this “new way of eating” is really just a return to how the entire pre-industrialized world ate, as a necessity, from the dawn of mankind all the way up to “Little House on the Prairie” days (and is still the norm in much of the world.)
One leader in this movement is Fergus Henderson, an English chef who founded the St John restaurant in St John St, London. He is noted for his use of offal (organ meat) and other neglected cuts as a consequence of his philosophy of Nose To Tail Eating. Celebrity chefs such as Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali have both praised Henderson for his dishes, which optimize British food while making full use of the whole animal. St John was awarded a Michelin star in 2009.
In 1999 Henderson published Nose to Tail Eating, in which he provides recipes incorporating trotters, tripe, kidneys, chitterlings and other animal parts. Henderson also explains the philosophy behind his cooking explaining that “it seems common sense and even polite to the animal to use all of it.”
In 2007, he published the sequel, Beyond Nose to Tail.
“On other pages,” writes Henderson, “I have sung the praises of how the pig’s snout and belly both have that special lip-sticking quality of fat and flesh merging, but this occurs in no part of the animal as wonderfully as on the tail. Like an ice cream on a stick, a pig’s tail offers up all of the above on a well-behaved set of bones.”
By the way, if you have access to pork tails, and a desire to eat them, you’re the kind of serious eater who needs this book!
You can watch the master helping two chefs prepare this dish on this YouTube clip from MasterChef Australia. The tails they use are referred to as “long tails” as opposed to the docked version you typically find (as I did) here in the States.
By the way, if Henderson seemed a little stiff or quirky, or the camera cuts seemed odd, it’s likely because he has Parkinson’s disease. When I found that out, my respect for his restaurant work and accomplishments soared. He should be an inspiration to us all. Oh, and did that host weird anyone else out, lol?
So, how did my own experiment turn out?
Holy Smoke!
These pork tails are the reason I roast whole pigs…that amazing combination of chewy/crispy/fatty/intensely porky flavor you find in a perfectly cooked bit of pig skin. So full of collagen that your fingers and lips stick together and your teeth feel deliciously gummy after you finish.
Seriously, this is one of the Top 10 best bites of food I’ve ever had. It’s the chicken-wing appetizer version of a whole roast pig. Awesome!
And, I’m not the only one who thinks so. Here’s a great description, which I whole-heartedly concur with…
“Unlike oxtail, the tails of pigs come with the skin intact so that each segment is a perfect cross-section of skin, fat, tendon, and meat. Fried or roasted, the skin of the tail is chewy and crisp, with a gelatinous layer underneath. Tail flesh is fork-tender like that of the neck bones, but meatier in composition than trotters. There’s a modest amount of tendon around each bony hub–just enough to make the gnawing enjoyable, but not so much as to distract from the whole. All in all, a tail is a little porky universe unto itself, a powerful reminder that the discarded cuts of the animal are often the most delicious.”
– “The Nasty Bits: Crisp Fried Pig’s Tail” – by Chichi Wang, serious eats
My recipe is a pretty basic, “roast ‘em and eat ‘em with your fingers” kinda affair. If you want to get a little more hoity-toitey with your hog wagers, check out this Pig au Vin recipe from Serious Eats, as well as the Crisp Fried recipe in Wang’s article above.
Oh, and for those who are sensitive to such things, I would recommend cutting the finished tails into 3-5 “bite-size” sections each, as the whole tail can appear a bit *ahem* suggestive…if you know what I mean.
Looking back, I can’t sum it up any better than Ms. Ingalls did…”even before it was cool enough they began tasting it and burned their tongues”
Laura, baby…you and me!
-Perry
Author’s Rant: You would not believe (or maybe you would) the grief I got when I mentioned this adventure on Facebook. People who wouldn’t hesitate to eat those mystery-meat and rat-feces mush tubes we call hot dogs, were gagging and grossing out over the idea of eating a pork tail.
One reader actually posted that she “threw up in her mouth” at the thought. Another commented that he agreed with his child’s assessment that the tail was “too close to the poop.” When I asked him where he thought the ham was located, there was no response. I’m assuming his five-year-old didn’t know.
Anyway, I’m not sure why I continue to be shocked and disappointed in the Pollyanna viewpoint that most Americans have about food, and their flat out refusal to eat anything that can’t find on the menu at their local McDullards…it makes me sad.
Although, with only one tail per pig, if this ever becomes the new haute cuisine, I’d probably never be able to afford them again. So there you go.
Deep End o' the Pool 