Pig Tastes Good

My friends are shocked to know that I watch “Hell’s Kitchen” over “ America’s Top Chef.” I get it: “Top Chef” entails actual culinary skill whereas “Hell’s Kitchen” is more about how to be a glorified line cook. But that’s kind of the appeal; these people are unstable and uncreative which somehow makes me feel better about my own cooking. Does that make sense? It's kind of like how watching “The Biggest Loser” makes you think, “Damn, I ain't that fat.” And I also do like Gordon Ramsay’s cooking philosophy. He’s all about simplicity and quality of ingredients over presentation. Such a philosophy demands less skill. The clip in question comes at around 32:10 But in last week’s episode, one of the contestants blasted another over serving undercooked pork. She said something to the effect of, “if you serve raw pork, it will make you seriously ill,” and Ramsay agreed. This made me choke on my screwtop sauvignon blanc. This is utter pigshit. Pork is happy to be served medium rare. It’s true, growing up we were told that we shouldn’t eat raw pork and that it will lead to trichinosis. So here’s the down-low on trichinosis, a.k.a., trichinellosis: It’s a parasite caused by eating the eggs of the Trichinella worm. They’re found in pork, horse, bears and whatnot and once they incubate inside you, symptoms include nausea, diarrhea and other icky stuff. It sounds awful except for that over the past couple decades there have been around a dozen instances of trichinosis per year and most of those cases were related to wild game and not farmed meats. Meanwhile Americans suffer from around 30,000 incidences of salmonella and 70,000 incidences of E. coli food poisonings annually. But salmonella occurs more frequently in poultry and E. coli occurs more frequently in beef. So why does pork get a bad rap? My guess is that it’s just a pervasive old wives’ tale like how searing meat seals in the juices. The bottom line is that I’ve been eating medium and medium rare pork for my entire adult life and have never had any resulting illnesses. And most importantly, it tastes better. I have fond memories of my mother’s pork chops that were marinated in soy sauce and honey but the truth is, they were broiled to a crisp and dry like particle board. But when I had a medium rare pork tenderloin at Café Bizou, it was a revelation. How could this be the same meat as that brittle, dusty chop I had as a child? I’ve been resistant to buying pork after seeing that special on HBO where they showed sick pigs being shoved around by a forklift and Food, Inc., where they showed other ovine abuses, but over at Harmony Farms they sell Beeler pork. It’s not organic or wholly sustainable, but the pigs are raised in the open and piglets nurse with their mothers so I feel I can eat it a couple times a month without crippling guilt. They even have a movie to demonstrate the happiness of their pigs. I appreciate this isn’t an ideal situation, but it’s not completely barbaric. Relatively happy Beeler pigs So I bought a couple pork chops and marinated them in a manner that my mother would have approved of – ¼ cup of sugar (or honey), 1 clove of garlic, ¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce, 2 tbsp. dry sherry, some green onions and ginger, blended together. After an hour I brushed them off and grilled them at high heat for a couple minutes a side so that it was medium rare in the middle. Still pretty yummy To be fair, they did better when they were medium in the middle (while the tenderloin is better rare to medium-rare as it's more tender), but they suck when they’re cooked anything beyond that. And if you have a tenderloin, don’t be a sucker – keep it medium rare. Unless you’re Ted Nugent and killed a wild pig with a blow dart.