So this is a cool random discovery.
Pork is an interesting meat. In my experience it’s often dry and funky. And there’s a variety of cultural reasons for and confirmations of this:
- Trichinosis – a parasite that develops in pigs when they’re used as garbage disposals. Killing the parasite requires cooking pork to temperatures that make it dry.
- Pigs fed garbage diets develop of funky flavor.
- Heavy seasoning is often employed to mask funky flavors (brine, sausage, smoke).
- Marketing pigs to the mass consumer population led to the development of streamlined pig diets that reduce funky flavor and trichinosis. This also led to pig meat becoming less fatty in nature, but with less fat the meat dries out even quicker.
- People were slow to change their cooking habits to account for trichinosis elimination and drier meat.
Ergo – the pork we’re used to now is either heavily processed or very dry and lacking depth of flavor.
Then I discovered kurabuta pork!
Perusing the meat cooler at my local upscale grocer, I noticed what appeared to be beef due to its deep red color, but in the form of pork shoulder chops. Fortunately the internet was available in my pocket and revealed the mystery: a specialty breed of pig fed a non-grain diet. Free-range/grass-fed or something to that effect.
It’s juicy and meaty in flavor.
The pork revolution is at hand! Keep an eye out for this stuff. Down with boomer pork!
–Simon