The Great Headcheese Experiment

I ordered a pig head from some purveyors at my local farmers' market back in the summer to be ready sometime in October. My wonderful mother picked it up and put it in our freezer for me while I was at school. I didn't have time to deal with it over Thanksgiving, but I got around to it over winter break.

Here it is defrosted

My sous chefs

First I rinsed it off in the sink. Not much can gross me out, but I was a little perturbed by some chewed up food in its mouth. Plus, while I know they are very happy, pastured pigs, I'm not too sure what's in their supplemental grain.... or how far down the alimentary canal it had gone while the pig was alive. It also had a fair amount of hair still on it. 

So I put it in a big pot and boiled it with peppercorns, salt, and a few bay leaves for several hours, until it was very easy to extract all the bones (and teeth). 

I had two recipes to choose from: one from the pork bible, Beyond Bacon, and another from a cookbook called Odd Bits, by Jennifer McLagan.  I decided to go with the Beyond Bacon recipe, because it was simpler. Also, the end result looked more like meatloaf, as opposed to meat and vegetable chunk jello. Sounds so appealing when I say it like that...

I have to say, I could've done with some more direction in the recipe. For example, it said to put the meat in the food processor. Well, this head had way more fat than meat on it. But it never said to do anything with the fat or skin, whether to add it to the meat or discard it. So I put it all in. Except most of the skin, which still had a lot of hair on it. If I were to do this again, I'd maybe see if I could get it de-haird a bit better. 

The end result were two pretty fatty loaves. I think the Beyond Bacon recipe only ended up one loaf, so either this was a bigger head, or the fat wasn't supposed to go in (at least not as much... which is more likely). 

It's..... fine. I left one loaf back at home (which probably won't get finished) and brought one back to school with me. With some extra salt and lots of garlic sauerkraut on top, it's not so bad. I've had it for breakfast the last few days. But it's not disappearing as fast as I'd like. I know it's good for me and all, but I may be sharing the rest with the dog. 

Just in time to start the head for second semester