We Want Recipes!

We have heard back from many of you that you would like to see pork recipes on our blog. First, please understand that we are not chefs but farmers.

We try very hard to find recipes that aren't designed to add flavor to otherwise flavorless pork or to completely mask the flavor. We try to find recipes that allow us to taste the natural flavor of the pork.

One of my favorite meals is Biscuits and Gravy. We usually eat if for breakfast on days that we are going to be out working all day. It is hearty, filling, and keeps us going until lunch. However I love the flavor that our sausage gives the dish so much that I often ask to eat it for dinner too.

Biscuits and Gravy

INGREDIENTS

1 pound of Christiansen’s Hog Heaven Berkshire Sausage

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups milk

Salt to taste
Freshly ground Black Pepper to taste

8 prepared biscuits

DIRECTIONS

Crumble and cook sausage in large skillet over medium heat until browned. Stir in flour until dissolved. Gradually stir in milk. Cook gravy until thick and bubbly. Season with salt and pepper. Serve hot over biscuits. Serves 4

This is how Hollie usually prepares our pork chops:

Grilled Pork Chops

INGREDIENTS

4 Christiansen's Hog Heaven Berkshire Pork Chops
3/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
3 T McCormick Grill Mates Pork Rub

DIRECTIONS

In a medium sized mixing bowl, mix pork rub seasoning and oil together. Place thawed pork chops in the bowl and stir oil mixture around till the pork chops are covered. Place pork chops on grill and cook to your preference. We like to cook our pork chops until the fat is just starting to crisp. To check if the pork is done, we make a small cut near the bone. The area around the bone is the last to cook. If you use a thermometer, the recommended internal temperature is 160 F. We usually eat this with fresh steamed asparagus and red mashed potatoes with skins on. Grilled onions and sautéed mushrooms are perfect as a topping on the pork chops.

This next dish is much more involved but mouthwateringly delicious. It beats nearly any dish I have had at any restaurant and is very gourmet. We adapted it from a recipe we found in Hobby Farms magazine

Cornish Game Hens with Apple-Bacon Stuffing

INGREDIENTS

2, 1- to 1 1⁄2-pound Cornish game hens (regular chicken works also)

1 tsp. salt 1 to 2 T. vegetable oil

For Stuffing

5 slices of Christiansen's Hog Heaven Berkshire Bacon

1⁄4 cup onion, finely chopped

1 1⁄2 cups dry bread cubes

1 cup apple, peeled and grated, tart or sweet according to preference

1 T. fresh parsley, chopped

1⁄4 tsp. dried thyme

1⁄4 tsp. dried marjoram

Salt and pepper to taste

2 to 4 T. dry white wine

For Glaze

1⁄4 cup apple juice concentrate, thawed

1 T. lemon juice

1 T. butter, melted

DIRECTIONS

Remove giblets from hens and discard or save for another use. Rinse hens under cold water and pat dry. Season cavities with salt. Set aside in refrigerator until ready to stuff. To prepare the stuffing, fry the bacon slices until crisp. Remove bacon strips from pan and crumble. Sauté onions in the drippings until soft. Remove onions with a slotted spoon. Reserve 2 tablespoons of drippings. (If bacon does not yield 2 tablespoons of drippings, add melted butter to equal 2 tablespoons). Place bread cubes in bowl and drizzle over reserved bacon drippings. Add apples, bacon, onion, parsley and seasonings; stir to combine. The mixture should just stick together without being soggy; if mixture seems too dry; add 2 to 4 tablespoons of dry white wine. Lightly stuff birds (do not pack firmly). If they still have their neck skin, pull the skin to the back and twist wing tips under back to hold the skin in place. If hens do not have neck skin, wedge a thick slice of apple or onion in neck cavity to hold stuffing in place. Tie legs to tail. Place hens, breast side up, on rack in shallow roasting pan. Brush with vegetable oil. Cover loosely with foil. Roast in a preheated, 375-degree F oven for approximately 90 minutes or until you can move the drumsticks easily in their sockets and the meat is no longer pink. Remove foil after first 30 minutes. Meanwhile, combine glaze ingredients. Brush hens with glaze two or three times during last hour of cooking, eventually using all of glaze. If desired, use pan drippings to make gravy to serve with the birds: After birds are done, remove them from roasting pan and keep warm on a serving platter in the oven. Strain the pan juices, dilute with 1 to 2 cups chicken broth and heat to boiling. Thicken using your favorite method, either flour and water or cornstarch and water. Serves 2.

If you have a favorite dish that you would like to share we would love to try it. Send it to us and we will post it on our blog (with your permission) so that others can try it as well!

Last Night's Dinner

Last night, we invited my sister and her family over for dinner. On the menu was pork chops, diced potatoes, and asparagus. My sister brought a pack of pork chops she had purchased at Wal-Mart. For fun, we provided some Berkshire pork chops so that we could all have a side by side taste test.

The diced red potatoes went into the oven after being seasoned with Red Robin’s seasoning that you can buy at their restaurants. We love the seasoned fries they serve there. The fresh asparagus was prepared to be steamed. And then we took out the pork chops. Immediately we began to notice differences. The Berkshire chops were darker in color. I pointed out the fine marbling to my sister and explained that this was why Berkshire meat was so much more flavorful and juicy. I also explained that the marbling of the meat is a characteristic that is unique to the Berkshire breed. Also very noticeable was the difference in size. The Berkshire chops were cut 1.25” thick. The Wal-Mart chops were about 5/8” thick. Hollie lightly coated all of the chops in a marinade of olive oil and Famous Dave’s grill seasoning. (I am realizing we are suckers for other restaurants seasonings.) We placed the chops on the grill and soon the kitchen began to fill with mouth-watering aromas.

I am by no means a chef and tend to overcook our meat when grilling. Like many others, I am always afraid I will get food poisoning if I don’t cook the meat long enough. (I guess I should get a meat thermometer.) Anyway, the beauty of Berkshire pork is that it is so moist and tender, that it is difficult to mess up. As the pork chops neared completion on the grill, I took a knife and carefully cut a slit into the center of a few of the chops to see if they were ready. The Wal-Mart chops were done as was evident by the color and texture of the meat. I made a small cut into the Berkshire chop and it filled with juice so fast that I couldn’t even see the inside of the meat! I had to hold it on its side to allow the juice to drain while I checked it.

I placed the chops on a plate and took them inside. The Berkshire chop was still 1.25” thick. The Wal-Mart chop had shrunk down to 3/8” - 7/16” thick. We all had a good laugh at the “poor little Wal-Mart chop” as we called it. Because it was so thin, I accidently burned it a little bit. Like I said, I am not a chef.

I carefully cut four pieces off of each type of pork chop. We all tasted the store bought pork chop first. It was good (as all pork is) but very salty. We checked the packaging and noticed the fine print that stated that these pork chops were enhanced. Salty is often mistaken for “flavorful” which was very apparent when contrasted with the flavor of the Berkshire pork, which followed next. The Berkshire chop had a very different texture. It was similar to a beef pot roast in texture. It was tender but not at all mushy. It was incredibly moist and bursting with flavor. It was actually very similar in texture and flavor to the filet mignon wrapped in bacon that you can get in a nice steakhouse. I actually am not sure how to fully explain it. If salty is a “hard” flavor, then Berkshire pork has a very “soft” flavor. When I say I soft, I in no way mean lacking in flavor. It had a very strong flavor; it just didn’t “bite” like the enhanced pork did.

Being the evil parents that we are, we fed the rest of the Wal-Mart chops to the kids and ate the good stuff ourselves. As a further testament to the Berkshire pork chops, some of our kids asked for more “chicken”. My son came up and asked if he could have a bite of my “steak”.

All in all, it was a very delicious meal. It is always fun to eat good food with good company. In our case the good food was Berkshire chops, red potatoes, and steamed asparagus. The good company was my sweet sister and her wonderful family. We love them very much and are happy to have them as neighbors.

Yummy Berkshire (Kurobuta) Pork; A Professional Review

Helen Rennie is a culinary instructor from Boston Massachusetts. She has graciously allowed me to post a review of Berkshire (Kurobuta) pork from her blog. Thank you Helen!








Pigepiphany -- noun -- 1. Tasting real pork for the first time. 2. A realization that 99% of pork sold in the US is complete crap.

American pork is bred for leanness to meet consumers’ unquenchable thirst for all meats to look and taste like chicken. Nothing against chicken, but people’s obsession with it is absurd. If American food industry could breed chicken in fish, pork, beef, and lamb flavors, they would. Since food science hasn’t reached such heights yet, we settle for “chicken of the sea” tuna and the “other white meat” pork.

I’ve been experimenting with pork chops from Whole Foods for the past month with terrible results. Brining, marinating, high heat, low heat… nothing worked. They came out dense, with a taste of salt and sugar, not pig. Just as I was about to swear to never cook another pork chop in my life, helpful readers of this blog and my fellow chowhounds from the home cooking board came to my rescue. The opinion was unanimous: “It’s not you; it’s pork!”

“What you need is Berkshire or Kurobuta pork,” the chowhounds told me. Big foreign words to describe something as simple as a pork chop make me nervous. But curiosity got the best of me and I Googled for Savenor’s phone number. Surely, a butcher where Julia Child used to shop had to carry it.

“No, we don’t have it,” the Savenor’s butcher told me, “but our pork is excellent.”

“It is fatty?” I asked.

“Oh no – it’s beautifully lean!”

Ok guys. The words “beautifully lean” would be a compliment for a model, not for a pig.

Try number two -- John Dewar’s. By now I felt like a desperate drug addict calling a dealer.

“Do you have Kurobuta pork?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“$20”

“Fine.

I’ll be there on Wednesday.”

You’ll love it!” said the butcher at John Dewar’s as he cut me 2 ribs of a pork roast, “It doesn’t even taste like pork.” Hmm, doesn’t taste like pork? That was the whole reason I was in this crème de la crème (and price de la price) of Boston butcher shops, paying $20/pound for a pork chop. I could be eating bluefin sashimi or foie gras for this price, but no, I had to go on this ridiculous pork chop quest. What I was hoping he meant was that it didn’t taste like the “other white meat.”

For comparison, I decided to get their regular pork chop for $6/Lb.








Regular pork chop ($6/Lb)








Kurobuta pork chop ($20/Lb)

“Are they from different places?” I asked.

“No. Both from Iowa, but different breeds.”

“Should I brine or marinade them?”

“No, our pork doesn’t need any of that.”

“Even the regular chop?”

“Oh yeah! With supermarket pork, I’d recommend it, but with ours…”

I don’t know why I always ask them for advice. I guess I need that extra reassurance with meat. They’ve told me stuff before that backfired, and different butchers at Dewar’s have given me conflicting advice.

I agree with the Dewar’s guy on brining. It’s really a cheap and dirty trick to enhance otherwise mediocre meats. I love how consumers are all up in arms about “enhanced pork,” so they buy Whole Foods’ untreated pork only to bring it home and brine it. How do you think pork gets “enhanced”? Marinade is a whole other thing though – it doesn’t make the pork spongy and can impart flavors other than just salt and sugar. Not to mask the flavor of the meat, I settled on a simple marinade of rosemary, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.

After a couple of hours, I fired up the grill, dried off my chops, and grilled them – first on the bone side to melt the fat and crisp it, and then on the flat sides. As soon as they browned, I turned down the heat to low until the chops reached 125F in the center. It’s not as undercooked as you’d think since the temperature went up another 10-15 degrees while they were resting. The only thing I did differently this time was keep the grill uncovered. This allowed the chops to brown nicely, while keeping the ambient temperature of the grill lower. The higher the temperature, the more the meat toughens, but the lower the temperature, the less the meat browns and less flavor develops. Man, and people say cooking fish is hard!








Regular chop grilled








Kurobuta chop grilled

After a 5-7 minute rest for the chops, during which they posed for pictures, we finally got to take our first ever bite of Kurobuta pork. Oh my! This is the part where words escape me. You didn’t need a knife. You didn’t even need a fork. The only reason you needed teeth was to get the pieces into your mouth. From then on, they just melted away. If this was a wine, I’d say it had a nice long finish of a Burgundy Grand Cru, but instead of truffles and violets, it tasted like a platonic ideal of a pig -- more flavorful than ribs, more tender than a tenderloin, more tasty than any pork I’ve ever had.









Inside of a regular chop









Inside of a Kurobuta chop

Eating a regular pork chop after this revelation was like drinking Two Buck Chuck. Ok, maybe not that bad. Whole Foods chops are like Two Buck Chuck. Dewar’s are like a $10 Australian Shiraz -- slightly better than the supermarket chops, but still of the “other white meat” garden variety. We took a few bites for the sake of science and left it at that.I must confess that the reason I undertook this experiment was to prove to myself once and for all that pork chops are not worth cooking and that paying $20 for pork is complete insanity. In that respect I failed miserably. That pork chop was worth a bowl of bluefin tuna; it was worth a slice of foie gras terrine; it was even worth an hour in the gym.