Self-Taught Lesson #10: Wait, WHAT is a suckling pig?
Let's look at the different parts of the pig, the best ways to prepare them, and the features to look for when you're shopping.
Considering how much I became attached to shellfish, I’m hoping I don’t become existentially paralyzed by pork and their meat curators, pigs.
Because, shoot, pigs are really stinking cute!
So now that I’m already formally attached to pigs, I suppose it’s time to talk about the best ways to eat and cook your dead pig’s pieces.
For today’s research, Joy of Cooking and Larousse Gastronomique were invaluable foundational sources in addition to the links below from pork experts!
What is the history of pork farming, and how has it changed?
Pigs were domesticated first in China hundreds and hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus was ever an idea. But once he was alive and set to travel over the horizon, he traveled with pigs and brought them over to America. Pigs were valued for their easy domesticity, and one pig provided enough meat for one family to spread across the winter. (As these pigs rapidly reproduced and Native American settlements appreciated this new animal, they were both punished for stealing pigs and also having their pigs destroy new American colonists’ crops. Punished at both ends, as owners and thieves! As is the American way!)
As the world industrialized, train engineering developed methods to keep boxes icy, and Iowa corn created a massive food source for farming pigs, pigs became a commodity that could be reproduced quickly and transported across the nation.
Side note: If pigs are bred to reproduce, slaughter, and be eaten, boar are the wild, leather-jacket wearing alternative. Boars are pig-farm escapees that went feral. (Go off, girl boss!) Their tails and ears straightened into points, and they grew tusks that they use to dig into the ground. Both razorback pigs and Russian pigs were considered fun, sporting animals, until, according to The Joy of Cooking, they “spread wildly out of control.” They destroy habitats and are considered an agricultural danger wherever they are spotted. (Again, go off!) This makes them legal to hunt and sell. Their meat is darker and tougher than regular pork, and liable to a flavor literally described as “boar taint.”
Today, though pigs are farmed all over the world, China is still the world’s primary producer, leading to some dystopian skyscraper slaughterhouses. In 2017, China invented a new evolution of pig that could survive with less fat while still being able to regulate its own temperature. (Think of the cliché of a pig rolling in mud in the sun to cool itself off, as susceptible to sunburn and overheating as an Irish descendant like me.) This resulted in a commercial wave of pork that was leaner, healthier, but easier to dry out while cooking and less flavorful than a fattier alternative.
Taking this evolution into consideration is important when considering what you’re buying and how you’re going to cook it.
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