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Pork occupies a special place among all types of meat eaten by humans, thanks to which it has acquired a number of myths and prejudices. "Afisha Daily" continues the series of columns of the "Youth" butcher Petya Pavlovich with another important deed - debunking these myths.
- “Pork has an unpleasant smell and taste because pigs are dirty animals.”
- "Pork is too fatty."
- “Pork should never be eaten uncooked, let alone raw.”
Let's try to figure it out.
The pig is special
The isolation of pork is understandable: among all livestock, the pig is the only non-ruminant omnivore. On the one hand, this is good, because the pig is easier to feed, it is unpretentious in food; in addition, pigs are prolific and quickly gain weight. All this makes pork cheaper and more affordable than beef. In Soviet times, they ate more of it, but now no one wants to eat it: unlike, for example, beef, it is often considered unfashionable, difficult to digest and tastes unpleasant. Especially in cities where people have a wide choice of food. Despite the fact that pork is healthy, tasty and easy to prepare.
Oh this omnivorous
On the other hand, the food promiscuity of pigs can be the cause of diseases dangerous to humans. In ancient times, there was such a problem with pigs: they ate everything and you don’t understand where. For this reason, an unpleasant worm, trichinella, was often found in pork. This was a big problem, because this worm is dangerous for a person who has eaten such meat. Most likely, religious prohibitions on eating pork grew on this basis: thousands of years ago, people could not cope with such a scourge.
But progress, as we know, does not stand still. Modern conditions for keeping pigs on farms exclude contact with wildlife and pasture, and strict veterinary control before selling eliminates the risk of getting infected meat in a store or market. When raising pigs on free range, this pasture is still limited, both for pigs from the inside, and for rodents and other evil spirits from the outside. The risk still remains - if you buy pork in a spontaneous market, meat that was grown in some village somewhere by a walking pig that ate some kind of carrion. Eliminating such a risk is simple: you need to buy meat from trusted suppliers, in stores, in markets where the meat undergoes a veterinary check.
Taste
The peculiar aroma of pork is also interpreted by many as the result of the promiscuity of pigs in nutrition. Firstly, as I mentioned above, the diet of pigs on farms is carefully controlled, and they do not eat everything in a row. Secondly, the process of digestion of nutrients is quite complex, and meat (actually, fat) does not take on the taste of everything that the animal eats. Only some substances are deposited unchanged in adipose tissue and further affect the taste and other organoleptic properties of meat. For example, the basis of the diet of black Iberian pigs in the last months before they become jamon is acorns, rich in unsaturated fatty acids and antioxidants. This is an important reason why the fat of such a pig is very fragrant, soft and develops flavor during a long curing process. In general, the characteristic taste of pork is rather genetically determined, and it is for this taste that we appreciate it.
Fat is good
Yes, pork is often fatter than beef, and pork fat melts more easily, which adds to the fatty feel of the meal. There are many breeds of domestic pigs, only in Russia about two dozen are bred. There are bacon (meat), tallow and mixed breeds that differ in the ratio of meat and lard. The meat of bacon pigs is not very fatty. Other than that, fat is not a problem at all, because the newest healthy eating paradigm declares moderate consumption of animal fats to be good, and fat is the cause of juiciness and the conductor of flavors in meat. Especially fusible, enveloping pork fat.
So what's with the undercooked pork?
According to old memory, pork is preferred to be fried until the juices are completely squeezed out, when the temperature of the meat inside approaches the boiling point of water. This is, how to put it, too much. Most pathogenic bacteria and organisms for humans die at lower temperatures, but excessive overheating of meat makes it much less tasty and nutritious. It is also useful to know that the death of these bacteria and organisms depends on the combination of temperature and the time they spend at that temperature. The same trichinella dies at a temperature of 52 degrees within 47 minutes, and at a temperature of 55 degrees - within 6 minutes. The official recommendation with a margin is to cook the pork to a temperature of 63 degrees inside and leave it at that temperature for 3 minutes before eating. In amateur kitchen reality, the range of 59-62 degrees is optimal in terms of softness and juiciness of meat and at the same time safety, you just need to remember to check that in the thickest part of the piece the temperature reaches a value from this range and will last in this state for several minutes.
In a professional kitchen, using the sous vide technology (read "suvid"), you can cook pork even more raw, because it becomes possible to pasteurize the meat for a long time at a constant low temperature (for example, 52 degrees). And even more raw pork means new culinary possibilities: pork tartare, carpaccio, the perfect pork steak and more and more. In general, the flip side of the pig's omnivorousness is that it has become a universal object for a cook of any nationality and any qualification. It suits the widest range of tastes, textures and technologies. From ham to fake tuna, from pâté to steak.
"One and a half billion Chinese people can't be wrong"
Despite the fact that most people on the planet eat goat meat (surprisingly, but true), pork holds the world championship in terms of the amount of meat eaten. Most pork per capita is eaten in China and it is also produced there most of all. Pork remains the most popular red meat in Hungary, Spain, Montenegro, Belarus and other European countries. The reason is the same: pork is easy to breed, grow, cheap to produce and very tasty and nutritious, in general, not meat, but a dream.
Peace, love, pork chop.