Just a little preview of what’s to come… tonight I de-boned the head of what appears to have been an absolute behemoth of a hog. And boy was she a beaut. This pretty much means removing the skull while trying to keep everything else in one big butterflied piece. Fun stuff. It sounds way more gross than it really was. It’s actually pretty interesting once you get over the fact that it’s a massive head. I used Chris Cosentino’s Porchetta di Testa video tutorial as a bit of training to prepare myself…
This pig was a fatty. Fatty fat fat. The head alone weighed what felt like around 30lbs – no joke. And I won’t even mention how much it cost because honestly it was a little ridiculous, considering it’s a head. But judging by the amount of mud all over his face, I’d guess he was a pretty happy hog.
By the time I got it all disassembled (in once piece!) it started to look like a good amount of meat. I’m pretty excited about what this is going to turn into but also a little nervous because a lot of money has gone into this head and if it’s not amazing I’m gonna be pretttttty disappointed.
First step = giving the head a good shave all over to remove all the leftover stubble and the few big hairs that were still hanging around. I didn’t have a torch to burn off the tricky to get to ones so I had to just give it a proper shave.
In the end, it looked pretty much like this:
Ears on top, snout on bottom, holes where the eyes were and giant fatty jowls.
After that I seasoned with a little salt, pepper and thyme from the back yard and tossed it in a bag to marinate until Saturday.
And of course, in the spirit of not wasting and in the spirit of getting every drop of flavor out of every bit, I roasted the skull and am simmering it over night to make stock. Definitely the most hardcore looking pot of stock I’ve ever made…
More to come…
