In Lard We Trust: Ossabaw Island Pork

What is the best way to preserve a extremely rare heritage breed of animal, eat it!

Ossabaw Island is a small Island off the coast of Georgia. When the Spanish were exploring the Americas in the 16th century, they brought livestock with them as a mobile food source. The Ossabaw Island pig is a feral breed of the pigs the Spaniards left behind hundreds of years ago on the island. They are also thought to be the only U.S. breed which is descended from the Iberian-type pigs in Spain.

Both the island and mainland populations continue to be considered vulnerable by the ALBC, Slow Food, and others.The breed is listed as "critical" on the priority list of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy,and is also included in Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste, a catalog of heritage foods in danger of extinction

The meat of Ossabaws is dark, with a unique texture, and is prized for resembling the jamón ibérico of the Black Iberian pig. It is considered to be artisanal, heritage product especially well-suited to use in pork, cured meats, and whole pig roasts. Source

As a man with a love of all things Porcine, I jumped at the chance to get some of this rare pork from my local butcher, Cleaver and Co.

The first cut I got from the butcher was a chunk of back fat, about 3 lbs in size. This block of pork love was destined to become God's gift to man, Lardo.

Lardo is a Tuscan cured pork product. Where slabs of back fat are cured in marble tubs with salt, pepper, rosemary and garlic. They age for as long as 6 months before being sliced thin and served as charcuterie.

I used a recipe from Ruhlman and Polcyn's book Charcuterie. Salt, sugar, pink salt (sodium nitrite) pepper and bay.

This mixture was vacuum packed around the pork and left to cure in the refrigerator for two weeks.

The salt pulls out moisture, resulting in a very firm texture in the pork.

The curing mixture is washed from the surface of the pork and then left in the fridge to dry for a few days. Shaved thin, it is best served with air, it also makes an excellent lip balm. Its sweet, salty, porky flavor is impossible to describe, it must be tasted.

Oh, but I couldn't stop at Lardo, Bacon must be had as well.

I also purchased a belly of this same wonderful pig. As you can see, the meat is very red compared to domesticated pork. Signs that this is again a special animal

Rulhman's bacon recipe was used, with the sugar being brown instead of white.

The meat is covered in cure.

Vacuum packed tight and aged in the refrigerator for a week.

After curing, the belly is rinsed and returned to the fridge to dry for a couple days.

At this point we have a well cured pork belly, but it is not bacon without smoke. The above is a Smoking Gun, it has a little chamber in which wood chips smolder, the smoke from this is then blown down a hose into whatever vessel contains your food. Allowing one to cold smoke anything from cheese, to meat, to chocolate. All in a very quick and controlled manner.

The smoked meat is then vacuum packed again for its date with the water bath.

A dip in the sous vide for 24 hrs at 155 degrees F cooks the meat and begins to render the fat, allowing the meat to crispy wonderfully when pan fried.