pastured pork – Harmonious Belly

Lately, I’ve gone to a number of meetups with the Traditional Community Kitchen. This is an official Meetup group based in NYC, and one that I help organize (I’m a Co-Organizer and to some extent the Social Media Manager). It’s been one of the most fun social groups I’ve been a part of in NYC, and I’ve met some delightful people there that have become friends. Everyone is really friendly and eager to both teach what they know and learn from each other.

If you are in the NYC area, and interested in cooking together – whether your orientation is WAPF, paleo/primal, grain- or gluten-free, vegetarian, or simply an overall curious person looking for more inspiration to eat whole, real food – I highly recommend joining this group and coming to one of our meetups!

So, one of the most recent meetups was actually a repeat event – making a big pot of meatballs. This recipe was originally developed by Hannah Springer here in NYC, and she shared it with one of our meetup members, who passed it on to the rest of us. We’ve all really enjoyed the resulting delicious savory meatballs (which I like to make on the smaller side), enough so to make them together again.

They are different from any other recipe I’ve seen for meatballs, in that they are free of grains. Essentially, they are all meat, with the addition of egg, cream, and a few other things. I’m not personally avoiding grains, but for those omnivores that are, this is a great recipe

I remember the first event – which took place at my home – to be really fun. This second event was a lot of fun, too, and held at another member’s home. The four of us chopped onions and I was glad to talk about my favorite way of chopping onions, which I’m happy to say sped up the chopping process – chopping onions can be a painful experience, so getting through them as fast as possible is a real benefit.

We then mixed those onions with spices and some pastured lard, and fried ’em up. You can only imagine how wonderful the house started to smell while this was going on.

Continue reading “Grain-Free Meatballs”

Recently, I had the opportunity learn a bit about butchering a pig – how to take it apart and turn it into the various cuts you see in the market (or at the farmer’s market). A friend who has excellent knife skills and some butchering experience led the workshop, and was really great about explaining what the different cuts were.

We lucked out and had half a local pastured pig for the workshop, and I was also fortunate to be able to take home a piece of the shoulder cut, a boneless blade roast. This roast had quite the fat layer on it.

Make that a delicious fat layer. Over the many hours it cooked, the fat basted the meat – and some dripped into the pan, leaving me some wonderful lard for future cooking. Then there was the disintegration of any connective tissue during the long roasting process, making for meat that really just fell apart. It was a truly tasty transformation.

But first, I created a marinade for the meat.

In it was garlic, oregano, salt, ground grains of paradise, citrus juice, apple cider vinegar, and a little bit of bacon fat (for viscosity). I used grains of paradise – a species in the ginger family with a peppery flavor – because I ran out of regular black pepper.

After I created the marinade, I put it on the meat and let it sit for an hour in a glass pan, covered in plastic wrap, in the fridge, and then 30 minutes on the counter, warming up a bit.

Continue reading “Pastured Pulled Pork”