The thrill of rillette

Enjoy it while you can, because it is sure to become illegal very soon: rillette. Fatty pork meat cooked in fat. Cooled down and covered under a few centimetres of fat, it is served on toast or fine crispy brown bread. Keeps for months in a cool place. 

Rillette.

The recipe, or at least: a recipe, which takes a lot of time to cook but still less than half of the 9 or 10 hours some prescribed by others:

- 1 kilogram of pork shoulder; this is rather fatty meat, and is a cheap cut (my butcher sells it at EUR 9,00 per kilogram.
- 200 grams of smoked bacon or speck
- 300 grams of kidney fat or other white pork fat which melts easily (belly, not back). If you like, add goosefat for kicks.
- 500 ml dry white wine
- one or two sprigs of rosemary, 2 bay leaves
- 2 onions (diced) and some garlic if you like;
- salt and pepper, or some chilly pepper.

The French will say that this is not the proper way to do it, as I am overdoing it with the herbs. Salt and peper will suffice if you are from la douce France.

Melt the fat together with the wine, herbs and onions in a sturdy cast iron pan. Dice the meat and stir in together with the bacon. Simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours. This is what it looks like, the smell is fantastic.

Rillette in the making.

When the meat is brown, tender and almost falls apart, take it off the stove and separate the meat from the fat. Take out the rosemary and bay leaves. With a fork, push and pull the meat until it is not a paste, but rather an appealing looking mixture of pulled meat with sufficient texture. If the flavour lacks character, add salt and pepper, but this may not be necessary.

Take a jar or pot and fill with the meat, pushing it down firmly so there is no air left in the mixture. Pour the molten fat on top. Try and only use the clear liquid fat, get rid of the rest if you can afford to.

Rillette, still hot.

This is what it looks like, if you ad a bay leaf for decoration on top. Better to do this later than I did, when the fat has solidified slightly, or else it will sink to the bottom (see top picture).

When the fat cools down, it forms a nice cover for the meat, sealing it and keeping it safe from nasty germs for a very long time, if you keep it cool. 

Rillette's inside.

Alternatively, put the rillette in those nice traditional pots of Le Parfait. Put the rillette in, squeeze all the air out and add a little of the clear fat. Close and seal by putting the pots in a sterilizer or a large pot with boiling water for an hour or so (the content is already cooked, it is to sterilize the pots and create the vaccuum). 

Rillette in Familia Wiss pots of Le Parfait.

Eat the rillette on toast or brown bread as a snack. The flavour of the white wine and the fat is amazing. You can also put a few spoons of it in a frying pan and bake some eggs in it. 

A bit of rillette.

So. Go to your butcher. Buy it. Make it. Eat it. And don't tell you health insurance company.

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