Wild boar

(KM) #1

I figure if anyone has an opinion, it’s you guys. :kissing_heart:

I just bought a packet of (frozen) wild ground boar meat. The sticker shock is killing me and I can only hope the company is for real, that is, they either raised the boars Salatin style in natural forest, or actually went out and hunted them.

In any event, I don’t know what to expect from this, or what’s the best way to prepare it that honors the meat and doesn’t just hide the flavor in a meatball or something. Is it basically like any pork? I like gamey meat so that isn’t a problem, but … do I just fry it up like hamburger? Anyone, anyone? Beuhler?

(Doug) #2

I had it in Italy - ‘Cinghiale’ - and it was not gamey. To me it tasted like 2/3 pork, 1/3 beef. It was cubed in little chunks and in a light tomato sauce. Really good, I’d definitely get it again.

Ground meat - ‘turkey burgers’ turned out well, IMO, so maybe the hamburger style?

#3

I barely remember but it wasn’t anything special and I prefer normal pork as I prefer my pigs fatty :wink:
Any wild boar I can get is hunted, that’s no problem. We have many wild boars around here, deers and mouflons too and it’s not hard to get their meat…
I prefer deer and that’s easier to get and probably cheaper anyway for some reason.

I would be a bit lost anyway but with ground meat? Even more. I only make meatballs with ground meat, I mix it with some egg (and if the meat is lean, with something fatty, I would use fatty pork skin when I have and fatty pork when I don’t. I always have fatty pork) and fry it.
If it wouldn’t be ground, I probably would make it into a stew but that’s not proper carnivore (just almost, good enough for me. I make very low plant stews).

(Doug) #4

I bet your fatty pigs would be really good. Here in the U.S. they are too fatty, I think. I get bacon and cook it, sometimes, and there’s almost nothing left if it’s crispy.

(Jane) #5

I had to look up mouflons…. a wild sheep or sheep cousin?

(Jane) #6

I live in the middle of nowhere……. where the nearest computer store is a 3-hr round trip.

There was no butcher when we moved here 7 years ago and then 2 years ago one opened up only a few miles from us - heaven!

Imagine my shock when the last time we stopped by they had camel meat!! :open_mouth:

It was very expensive but she said people bought it just to say they had eaten it. We asked where they got it from and they said Australia.

We didn’t buy any but nay be tempted next time :smile:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #7

American bacon is not the same as what gets called bacon in other parts of the world. The cuts of meat are quite different in the U.S. and the U.K., for example. The year I spent in London with my lover at the time, before we moved to the U.S., we had a kind of bacon that was mostly meat, and very little fat, the reverse of U.S. bacon. When I asked the butcher if he knew what we should ask for in the States, he said to look for uncured back gammon. Never really found it over here, but that’s what to look for. Canadian bacon and Taylor ham are closer to what we had in London.

(Doug) #8

Right on, Paul - had Taylor Ham in the New Jersey, New York, Connecticut area many times. Very good on sandwiches.

“back gammon” is that auto-correct having its way? Canadian bacon is back bacon, right? Really good; perhaps that’s more akin to English bacon.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

“Gammon” is the word. It means “a cut of pork.” Apparently, it is derived from Old French jambon, which, apparently, comes from a Latin word for “leg.” The “gammon” in “backgammon” comes from an early English word meaning “game” and is not related.

And I think you are right about the Canadian bacon.

(Alec) #10

I know nothing about wild boar except that Obelix liked it (reference provided if asked :joy:).

Gammon certainly is a cut of pig meat, had it often when I was a lad (a loooonnnnnnnnggggggg time ago). I would call it ham.

The regular bacon here in Aus is not fatty enough IMHO… I always get the streaky bacon, and that gets me about 30-40% visible fat.

#11

@OldDoug: We have pork with 0-100% fat tissue content. I stop at 30% fat, it’s already way too fatty for me just to eat as is but I cut off the fattiest parts and make lard and scratchings!
Mangalica can be pretty fatty and it’s very popular now… Many people loves smoked pure fat tissue, it is a very traditional food item, Mom loved it too. So there is no such thing as too fatty pork here, only for an individual. I like to have meat in my pork, even if it’s just some smoked boiled loveliness but I can go very high-fat with that one (pork jowl). Normal meat for roast? Pork chuck is perfect, I don’t need more fat than that…
Bacon is super fatty but we eat it in tiny amounts (at least most people, not the ones on this forum, apparently ;))… My problem with it is the salt. But adding enough eggs help. And I buy the meatiest bacon I can…

@Janie: Mouflon is wild sheep. We have them in the wildlife park next to us and surely in many other forests as well. It has good meat but of course, it’s a sheep… :wink:
Never ate camel. Had kangaroo (allegedly) but it wasn’t nearly as good as mutton…

@PaulL: Never knew this from different bacons! We have our traditional pork belly (in big pieces, usually, usually smoked but raw is available too, usually with skin) - and packaged bacon, expensive and oversalted. I can handle smoked salted pork but bacon is hardly edible without many eggs for me. The stripy one is expensive and not even always tasty so I don’t often try any. But it’s lovely when crunchy or wrapped around leaner pork.
I always preferred ham (that’s traditional unlike bacon anyway. I probably had no idea what bacon is in my childhood), smoked, fatty, raw :slight_smile: The pig farm shop I visited yesterday to pick up some fresh meat order (and amazing smoked ribs) had ham with extra aging…

Sounds perfect to me. For me, I mean, of course. I want meat for my money. Fat too but not overly much. That’s why I don’t buy pork belly except if I find pieces with little fat (there is a brand cutting the pig up that way. it’s too low-fat to me but my SO loves it in scrambled eggs). And I would never buy pure fat tissue…

(Doug) #12

Okay, “back gammon” it is - I will see if any is available. :slightly_smiling_face:

I should have googled it: Gammon is the hind leg of pork after it has been cured by dry-salting and may or may not be smoked.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #13

That’s it.

(Bob M) #14

Ever see Phineas and Ferb? Someone is taking a picture, and the camera person says, “Everyone say, Canadian Bacon!” And they all say, “Ham!”

(Doug) #15

It does taste closer to ham. I can’t find any true back gammon to buy, but Canadian bacon or ‘back bacon’ - oh yes, and for essentially the same price as regular bacon.

#16

That was my thought too… Isn’t that just ham? :smiley:
I like ham but one need to be careful to buy a good one. At least in a supermarket. It’s possible and anyway, I can get it from a farm but there are horrible ones with lots of added water, I don’t know why there is demand for that…

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #17

If it is in steak form go for it. Ground? Not so exciting.

Australia has the largest camel herd in the world. Mid 1800s they used them to transport goods, when the trains came along, they just released them into the wild. They are everywhere in central Australia.

We had camel, crocodile, and kangaroo while we lived in AU. Both camel and kangaroo make nice steaks. Crocs are just over grown fish as far as taste goes. Camel is more tender than kangaroo.

(Doug) #18

I wish I had a nice camel steak. Kangaroo - had it as an appetizer in a bar, a little ‘medallion’ of it. I thought it was good, and different than other meats, but it didn’t really strike me - I wouldn’t go out of my way or pay a lot of money to get it again. Crocodile - I thought it was good, but not life-changingly good. Not purely a 'fish’taste, but also like chicken, as overused as the phrase ‘tastes like chicken’ is. The meat was more firm than fish, but still easier to pull apart that beef would be, for example.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #19

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(KM) #20

Reporting in, the boar is very lean and really nothing to write home over. I’m pleased with the concept, execution wasn’t worth the cost.