The flesh from a pig’s head is flavorsome and tender. Consider, its cheeks have had just the right amount of exercise and are covered in just the right enriching layer of fat to ensure succulent cooking results, and the snout has the lip-sticking quality of not being quite flesh nor quite fat, the perfect foil to the crunch of the crispy ear.
For the past few months, a group of my friends has been getting together on either Saturday or Sunday to eat, drink, and have fun. It’s the perfect opportunity to share one of he recipes from “The Cookbook”, and one of the first I made was this one, a warm pig’s head salad. Which means that I needed…
… a pig’s head. I picked this beautiful piggy noggin up at my local supermarket, believe it or not. Much love to my Hispanic brothers and sisters for being the force behind the demand for such awesome things. On top of that, it was only ten dollars! They have no idea what goodness they’re selling, and I have every intention of taking advantage of it at many times as I can.
Cooking the head for this recipe is exactly like cooking it to make Brawn, so the same stock vegetables were needed, along with the herbs, the peppercorns, the lemon zest and the splash of red wine vinegar. This time though, we didn’t need extra gelatin that the Brawn called for so the trotters were left out.
Before putting the head into my stock pot and filling the whole thing with water, I cut the ears off for easier removal if the flesh started to fall off the cartilage.
On to the stove the pot went. The water was brought up to a boil and then back down to a simmer for two and a half hours.
While I waited on the head to finish cooking, I started working on the salad side of the recipe. I needed a big handful of curly parsley that had been finely chopped, a handful of cornichons, also chopped, and yet another handful of capers.
I also needed a few sorrel leaves to add to the salad. The sorrel leaves have a very unique flavor to them, a sort of tart strawberry. This little plant was picked up at the Austin Farmer’s market, along with a few other little herb plants. That’s one of the greatest reasons to visit your local Farmer’s Market: you never know what neat things you might come across.
By this time the ears had fully cooked. I pulled them out of the pot, dried them off and threw them into the fridge to cool down. Once they had cooled, the cartilage was nice and firm, making the slicing process much easier. I tried to slice each ear as thinly as possible, as I’ve found that if the slices are too thick the cartilage is a real pain to chew.
Sorry for the terrible picture, but it’s hard to get into a good position when you’re frying slices of pig ear. The slices relish spitting hot oil as they crisp, and usually in the exact direction of the closest person.
The slices were nicely crisp and crunchy. My wife and I had to stop ourselves from eating all of them before we got to our friend’s house.
Beep, beep, beep went the timer, ow, ow, ow screamed the cook (thanks to awkward nature of trying to remove the head from the boiling stock). Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings, because I had a fully cooked pig’s head on my cutting board. Judy Garland, I am so, so sorry. After I had stopped hopping around the kitchen holding my scalded hand, we started removing the meat from the skull, and skinned the tongue. Usually I’d have a picture showing the process, but since it’s rather grizzly I decided to hold off on it. When the meat was properly shredded, we packed all of the needed recipe components up and headed over to our friend’s house.
A little dressing, a few chunks of day old bread and some peppery salad greens were mixed together with the sorrel, parsley, cornichons, capers and meat. The crispy pig ears were placed on top for garnish–a very tasty garnish, might I add–and the dish was complete. Much more than a salad, this recipe could easily be considered a full meal. And what a meal, too. Perfectly tender cheek meat married to unctuous fat was the star far and away, but the crispy pig ear slices were delicious as well as texturally exciting. The other ingredients added hints of salty and sour and sweet, which only ramped up the layers of complexity.
This salad wasn’t exactly what you could call a fifteen minute meal by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t worth every ounce of the effort.
One down, sixty seven to go.
14 Comments to “Warm Pig’s Head”
September 12, 2009
Thanks, Ryan, for the post and pics. I have my own pig head in the freezer that I haven’t decided yet how to cook, and the more ideas, the better!
I’d be interested to know how much the head weighed and how many people it ended up serving.
September 13, 2009
I was fortunate enough to receive the book for my birthday, and I am happily working my way through. I found your excellent site while searching for advice on brining containers for my ox tongue. I hope you don’t mind two questions.
I brined some duck legs last week, which were delicious but too tough — possibly I did not poach them with enough gusto (the heat was very low). Any advice?
Do meats in brine have to be fully submerged? Such things tend to float, and at the moment I’m keeping them under with food safe plastic things, sqished down with a lid, but I wonder if this is reallly necessary.
Many thanks again for an inspirational site.
September 14, 2009
Courtney, thank you for the comment! I should have weighed the hog’s head before I started working with it, but I can tell you it was a big fella. I got a good deal of meat off it, and I only used one cheek and some of the tongue for the salad with lots left over.
James, thank you very much! I’ve had tough ducks legs before due to the same reason–the heat was too low. You’ve got great kitchen sense. I think you’re also on the right track with keeping things submerged. I’ve seen Alton Brown use similar techniques to keep the floaters down. If I get an oddly shaped piece of meat that needs to be brined, but defies my wishes to stay submerged, I’ll just flip it every day once until the required time passes. Usually that works out fairly well. Best of luck with your efforts with “The Cookbook!”
September 14, 2009
I made the Brawn recipe back in January and fried up the ears for the salad too. Yikes but they spit oil like crazy! Had to use one of those metal splatter guards and stand well away… But yeah, tasty! On the other hand I thought they were a bit too chewy. A couple months later I had dinner at Michael’s Genuine in Miami, and when you see Crispy Pig’s Ear Salad you just have to go for it. Amazing! I managed to get out of the server that they braise the ears for something like eight hours to overnight. Then slice it thicker, like maybe 1/2″ by 2″ strips and fry it up. That cartilage chewiness is gone, replaced by crunchy outside, gooey inside. Definitely how my next pig’s ear is going to be done.
September 14, 2009
Whoa! Good info to have Russell, thank you for sharing. I’ve gotta give that a try too!
September 14, 2009
Damn that salad is fine eating I bet! It is a bit wrong to call something with a braised pig’s head in it a “salad” :-). Feels like it needs more of a porky meaty name.
September 14, 2009
Aw, wow. That looks like quite a project, but so delicious. It reminds me a bit of a salad we had at cochon, though they plated the salad on top of slices of headcheese rather than shredded headmeat. I imagine your version was extragood!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootsintheoven/2856584792/
September 17, 2009
This is great! Not too long ago, a friend and I made soup out of a lamb’s head. Wanting to try something different, we talked about cooking up some pig heads the next time we get together. I love the idea of this salad and your previous headcheese post. I’m feeling pretty inspired for our next adventure.
September 17, 2009
Good on ya for getting the damn pig ears to not explode in the hot oil! I haven’t recovered from my own encounter with spitting pig ears. No bueno.
Looks like an excellent dish, glad Fergus went with something crispy…
;-)
September 19, 2009
Thanks for the leg advice. I have some tongue coming out of the bucket this afternoon. Should be emotional. Last of the brined dinners for a while.
Also talked some friends into dinner at St John’s (I live in London). Will report back.
September 21, 2009
Enassar – I agree! It should have been called Warm Pig’s Head with some leafy greens. :)
Rachel – OMG! Did they bread those pig ear strips?!
Dan – I love your site. You’re living my dream, and I really appreciate the fact that I’m getting to see Culinary school through your eyes. Let me know if you do something with a piggy noggin!
Hank – Brother, I’ve got some nice scars from the first pig ear I tried to deep fry. We’ll have to compare battle wounds!
James – I wanna hear all of the details. I can’t wait!
September 26, 2009
Hi! First time on your site as, by a lovely coincidence, I am making this today and found you in the course of my research.
Thank you!
September 29, 2009
Wonderful! I’m reading about it now!
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