Singing the praises of Berkshire

Do you remember pork before it became the other white meat?

Do you remember when pork was juicy and tasty and you could produce a glorious Sunday meal with just salt and pepper rubbed on a pork roast on a rack with potatoes and onions mingling underneath gently cooking in the pork fat.

If you do remember I guarantee you were born before 1980.

Somewhere along the line in the diet mad late 70's and early 80's Americans convinced the pork industry to breed pigs that were leaner and less marbled.  The pork producers and the breeders obeyed the call and since we Americans are an all or nothing country, eventually all pork became almost as lean and in some cases leaner than poultry (skin off of course). 

The problem with this was that lean means tough and dry and more often than not, tasteless. I could say a lot about the fact that we no longer have many local small butcher shops, about the fact that most people would have no idea how to trim and prepare ther own cuts of meat and how places like WalFart have driven the very limited demand for what producers are willing to, well, produce, coupled with the whole HURRY UP AND JUST THROW A PIECE OF MEAT ON THE GRILL ON HIGH HEAT NOW culture that we have become, but if you are reading here, you probably know all this already because you are probably someone who wants eat better than that.

Sure you can cure a few of those dry and tasteless ills by brining your pork. Something that I heartily recommend as a solution for chops and tenderloins, but now dear readers, I have found another solution for those times when I want a taste of my childhood, a 'real' pork roast.

The pig that most Americans eat these days is the basic white pig, think Wilbur from Charlotte's web if you must.  Now an alternative pig that has been raised in the States for years is finally making it to the market. The breed is what would today be called a heritage breed.  Called a Berkshire (pronounced BARK sheer), these pigs were developed as a specialist breed in England in the mid nineteenth century as a cross between a British breed and another breed introduced from Japan. It's a smaller breed than the white with very short legs and finely marbled meat with plenty of fat and it was a perfect breed for smallholders.

I first had Berkshire pork in England dining with husband.  Eating that pork in the U.K. was a revelation.  I realised that all pork hadn't been bred to withing an inch of its taste.  There was still hope.  When husband moved over here I searched and searched for a place to get a pork roast with a fat cap still attached so I could make a proper Christmas roast with cracklings. For the first couple of years I ordered my roast from this place.  The roasts were good, the taste much closer to what I had in England, but it still wasn't the same.  Besides the shipping costs were higher than thecost of the roast itself.

I had my first Berkshire pork here when CSCA had their open house in October.  Roberta made a Korobuta ham for the event and it was spectacular. I ordered one straight way for Mom's party and we roasted it in a low oven and I glazed it in a cherry apricot cognac glaze.  It was fabulous.

A week before I had called up John Dewar to order a pork roast for Christmas to fulfill husband's dining request.  I always make a point to ask that they don't trim the fat cap and could they perhaps order a Niman Ranch pork roast.  The glorious beast that you see above is what arrived in my package wrapped like this. I'm not sure if it came from Snake River Farms or Niman Ranch, I need to check with Bill.  But this is THE SINGLE FINEST pork roast I have EVER had in my life.  *Hand held to my heart*

I treated it reverentially and gently.  I made a paste of ground white and black pepper in extra virgin olive oil with a few cloves of garlic that I pulverised in the mortar and pestle with kosher salt.  It was roasted low and slow with a high finish to form the crust.  It was cooked to an internal temp of 138 and then rested to rise through 140, my prefered cooked pork temp.

I can highly recommend calling the boys up and ordering one for yourself, find a Berkshire pork provider, talk your butcher into carrying it, write about it, tell your friends about it, raise a ruckus.

Berkshire pork.

It's most definately NOT the other white meat.

Comments

[wte]

Oh, wow, that looks absolutely delicious... My mouth is watering just looking at your pictures! After returning from spending some time living in Asia, I have never really been that psyched about typical American pork. In Boston, the barbecue pork available in Chinatown seems to come closest to replicating the Asian pork experience. Makes sense, but I wonder if they use different suppliers, or if it's just the different cooking style. Do you have any idea?

[Yorkshire Soul]

I love roast pork with crackling, and that looks just fantastic.

[doug]

Raised in an Italian family in the 50s and 60s, Sunday supper was synonymous with a roast pork with cracklin' crisp skin seasoned with garlic and rosemary over browned potatoes (drool bucket, please). I think that a further investigation on the subject might reveal that the epidemic of coronary disease, that thoroughly modern disease, long attributed to eating a lot of animal fat in our diet as we had for generations I should instead be attributed to the introduction of trans-fatty acids via margarine and vegetable shortenings into the diet on a scale humans had never experienced and obviously are NOT biophysically capable of metabolizing in a way that keeps us healthy. Bring back the lard and butter.

[Marilyn Terrell]

Mouthwatering pix.

Here's a funny photo of lard-sculpted pigs singing their own praises at 1942 International Livestock Show in Chicago (click to the photo for May):
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/flashback/2003