by Lorette C. Luzajic
Bruce Aidells is a man who loves ham. And salami. And spareribs. “I’m a fan of the rib,” he tells me. “I always like meat that’s still on the bone.”
Indeed, Bruce Aidells’ likes meat so much that he writes about it for Cooking Light, Gourmet and Bon Appetit. He also wrote several cookbooks on the topic, including The Complete Meat Cookbook, The Complete Sausage Cookbook and Bruce Aidells’s Complete Book of Pork: a Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World’s Favorite Meat.
Pork is not just the world’s favourite meat- it’s mine. But even so, the salami still hides guiltily in my secret vice cupboard, along with the Cheetos and the white merlot. It’s been hard to get over pork’s bad reputation, what with the fat, the maggots, bacterial death and nitrite fear mongering. I’ve only been cooking it at home for a few years, and though my maple pecan roast is killer delish, I thought it was time to discover new inspiration. So I picked up Bruce’s awesome book and donned my apron, plunging headlong into the Jerk-Marinated Ribs.
Bruce’s book affirms what good cooks know- pork’s versatility is astounding. It tastes spectacular with nothing but salt and pepper, yet no meat pairs so perfectly with sweet, fruity salsas. Complex, fiery flavours also make a sensational fit. “It starts with really good pork,” Bruce tells me. “The breed is a critical factor.” The Berkshire is one of the best breeds, he says. (The Boston Globe would agree, having called it “the Kobe Beef of the pork world.”) Bruce also likes the Tamworth and Duroc breeds. “It’s not just the marbling,” he explains. “The flavour of pork is called ‘porkiness.’ A strong pork flavour is important.” It’s true that many supermarket selections have almost no flavour at all. Pigs that have been especially stressed from farm to market will be “dry, tough, really bad stuff.” (This is called PSE meat, or “pale, soft and exudative.”) Other pork is so water logged that you’re paying for water, not meat.
Hunting down decent pork in your region will mean a better tasting roast or chops, but finding a trusted source can also mean meat with fewer or no chemicals and antibiotics and more humane animal treatment. Finding a small farmer who feeds his or her pigs scraps and acorns in addition to grains, soybeans, and corn will mean more nutritious and delicious meat, too.
More families are raising their own pigs, guaranteeing superior, safer pork. Tiffanie Tasane and Carl Burgess of Whitehorse, Yukon, bought a house that already had a pigpen. They decided to try raising a few hogs, teaming up with several neighbours. Though regulations mean they can’t sell butchered meat, they enjoy excellent meat for themselves and barter with others for chickens or other foods.
“The meat is fantastic, far less fatty than what you buy in the supermarket. And sweet. We feed them a mix of grains for protein and produce as well as any scraps/compost we produce,” Tiffanie says. “We don’t raise them for anything other than the meat, though the compost is an added bonus for my garden! It is amazing how they dig up and unearth all the rocks, etc. I am contemplating moving the pen around every few years and using the cleared and manure rich areas as new garden beds.”
Tiffanie’s family brines and cures their own bacon, and would like to start rendering lard, eventually. There’s very little wasted- a Slavic family requests some heads and feet, both used in traditional eastern European cookery. But the best part is the new tradition- an annual pig roast garden party enjoyed by friends and family.
It’s bizarre that North Americans are so afraid of pork. We’re fatter and less healthy than just about everyone else (with obvious exceptions such as populations suffering from starvation or malaria). That pork is super healthy may come as a surprise, even to those among us who wear t-shirts proclaiming Real Girls Eat Meat. Raising our own like Tiffanie and her family, or finding tasty, healthy meat from traditional farms is best. But even the humble offerings of the supermarket are filled with more good stuff than bad.
In addition to the benefits of saturated fat (it’s still hard to get used to saying this type of thing!), there are further benefits in the mineral and vitamin content of pork. Pork is rich in iron, protein, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, potassium, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B12, B6, and fat. (One of the biggest, deadliest debacles to come out of the industrial vegetable oil scam sham has been the idea that vegetable oils and unsaturated fats are healthier than the fat we’ve been using since the beginning of time- lard. But that’s another story.) There has been much ballyhoo about “the China study” and the “plant-based” diet of Asia. We hear a great deal about how the paragons of longevity, The Okinawans, live to be centenarians because of their veggie soy diet. This is outright propaganda. You might be surprised to find out that Okinawa is known as The Island of Pork. The Okinawa Prefectural Government says, “It is no exaggeration to say that the present-day Okinawan diet begins and ends with pork.” (www.wonder-okinawa.jp) And you might be surprised to know that the Chinese aren’t vegetarians- they eat masses of pork, their staple meat.
So, wow, pork helps burn off fat, build bones, deflect fatigue, maintain skin tissue, and protect the heart. But what about a little matter of trichinosis? I’m surely not the only one who cremated a pork roast, waiting for the little food thermometer to hit 170, hoping to kill off deadly bacteria. I was surprised and relieved to find out in Bruce’s book that this fear is much ado about nothing. Yes, he writes, American (not European) pork was often infected with the parasitic worm trichina, but that was 50 years ago. The pigs were often fed garbage, and today that is not the case. The officials today can’t be 100% sure that every single pig is free of trich worms, so they continue to recommend cooking pork at high temperatures just to be sure. Bruce advises not to be hysterical, since there have only been eight cases in the U.S. since 1997. “…Cook the pork to an internal temperature of 137 degrees and hold that temperature for several minutes,” he writes. Most of the delectable recipes in The Complete Book of Pork call for a done-temp of 140 or 145- which will rise 5 or 10 degrees when resting before eating. No more burnt offerings!
It seems the whole maggots hysteria is nothing but an urban legend. Yes, flies will lay eggs on rotten pork; so don’t leave pork chops on the counter for six days and then eat them. Obviously.
Finally, about that salami. Raised German, I have a taste for the stuff and suffered a tremendous longing during my stint as a vegetarian, longing that didn’t go away no matter how many ways I learned to skin a carrot. I dreamed of dancing salamis, not unlike the dancing sugarplums. Sweet and fatty, or dry and peppery, velvety, sharp- all other deli meats pale in comparison. And so I read about Bruce’s salami-making adventures with my mouth watering onto the cookbook. I learned with fascination how salami is cured and fermented. Now, it’s been a while since I knew that pork was back on board, along with all the other meats I’d been depriving my body of. But salami stayed on that verboten list, acceptable only for PMS and other emergencies. After all, we all know that nitrite preservatives are carcinogenic.
Nitrites and nitrates are chemicals that can turn into nitrosamines in the body, another chemical that has long worried scientists and consumer citizens. I asked Bruce if they’re really so bad. Much to my shock, he’s not that worried about them. Sure, we don’t want to overdo anything and eat 12 pounds of salami a day and nothing else, but Bruce says nitrites have been used in meat curing for thousands of years.
Wondering if it’s really possible that I can indulge fearlessly on nitrate heaven, I did some googling and found that there is zero consensus whatsoever that cured meat nitrites are carcinogenic. Nitrites do seem to be implicated to some degree in gastric cancers, but they also appear to protect the stomach from ulcers.
Nitrites may also be- wow- beneficial for the heart. They also have antimicrobial properties, which is why they are added to preserve meats. But they appear to destroy bad microbes in us, too. Finally, the much-maligned nitrite appears more commonly in foods other than lunch meat- and those foods are vegetables! These veggies include green beans, carrots, squash, spinach, celery and beets. Should we automatically assume that veggie sources are healthy and meat sources deadly?
At www.preventcancer.com, they state, “Nitrite containing vegetables also have Vitamin C and D, which serve to inhibit the formation of N-nitroso compounds. Consequently, vegetables are quite safe and healthy, and serve to reduce your cancer risk.” I admire this consumer site’s prevention goals, but unfortunately, vegetable foods DO NOT contain vitamin D. There are no veggie sources of this nutrient. Pork lard, however, is the highest source there is, save for cod liver oil. Though the body uses sunshine to make vitamin D, it must have cholesterol to do it’s work, and cholesterol is not available in beets, squash, celery, or carrots. These veggies are all loaded with vitamin C, however. Does that mean pork sausage AND beets are all nitrite safe? Does that mean as long as I’m lying on the beach, I can eat hot dogs with green bean salad? I’m not sure yet, so I’m going to do a lot more research, and in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy all things in moderation.
One final and amusing note to add to the confusion is an interesting tidbit. Bruce told me that many sausage makers are now using celery as the source of their nitrates.
Bon appetit!
Stay tuned for a complementary article, this time about the pig and the origin of pork taboos in history and folklore. 