Mangalitsa life at Winfield Farm
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Video: Eric Pleschner
International conference on fat-type hogs in Herceghalom
The conference called Fatty Pig on fat-type hogs (including the more and more famous Hungarian Mangalitsa) might bring scientific and economic results. The conference was organized for the second time by the Research Institute for Animal Breeding and Nutrition and WESSLING Hungary Kft. on November 21 and 22 in Herceghalom, and it was attended by researchers and businessmen from all around the world.
Fat-type hogs play a key role in the production of high quality pork! Fat-type hogs are usually bred only in small populations, but in many parts of the world, and they represent a premium segment within the sector, and also enormous national, genetic and economic value. To utilize these values, it is outstandingly important to investigate and to understand more thoroughly their physiological and genetic properties. Mangalitsa is more and more well-known in the world and more and more sought-after by consumers – said Dr. József Rátky, director general of the Research Institute for Animal Breeding and Nutrition, co-organizer of the conference.
With genetic analysis against counterfeiting
For successful performance of a premium product on the market, in order to eliminate counterfeiting, traceability is indispensable, which is achieved by performing the necessary background analyses and molecular biological-genetic research. This was the goal of the MANGFOOD project, an undertaking of Biomi Biotechnological Service Kft., a joint venture of the independent analytical laboratory WESSLING Hungary Kft. and the Agricultural Biotechnological Center.
As Adrienn Micsinai, general manager of Biomi told us that, together with several other enterprises and scientific laboratories, a gene sequence specific to the Mangalitsa was found during the MANGFOOD project, which is suitable for the fast and highly accurate determination of whether the given product is really made of Mangalitsa. This way it was possible to differentiate genetically between Mangalitsa and other pigs. This solution can be used not only for products containg only one type of meat, but also for mixed products, e.g. sausages, and even the percentage Mangalitsa content can be determined.
The journey of the Mangalitsa
Elimination of counterfeiting is extremely important, since Mangalitsa today has an outstanding role in the Hungarian meat industry – emphasized Dr. Lajos Bognár, deputy undersecretary of the Ministry of Rural Development responsible for food chain contol supervision and agricultural administration. Mangalitsa was in a critical state in the 1990’s, but it was resurrected thanks to the gene preservation program that was started in 1995.
The fate of other fat-type hogs all over the world was similar to that of the Mangalitsa – said Péter Tóth, president of the National Society of Fat-Type Hog Breeders and the Genetic Resources Council of Indigenous Livestock. Ancient breeds were close to extinction and they were revived – concurrently with the appearance of a new demand for quality meat – by a few eager breeders, learning almost in a self-educated way all there is to know about this animal. And then they were joined by research institutes and economic players.
Lo Chin-Hsien Ra, owner of 551 HORAI, an Osaka-based Japanese restaurant chain came to Hungary specifically for the sake of Mangalitsa. He had heard a lot about the breed, and had already encountered Mangalitsa products in Japan. This was not an accident, because – as was told by Endre Nagy, general manager of Pick Szeged Zrt., known internationally for its excellent salami, among other things – the leading product of the company, “téliszalámi”, has been present in the Hungarian and world markets for 145 years, and its raw material is high weight, high quality pork, i.e. Mangalitsa.
Winfield Farm Spring Update
Spring is usually a busy time of year at Winfield Farm: tilling the soil, seeding and out-planting vegetable starts. This spring was doubly busy, with the arrival of 54 Mangalitsa piglets since March 18!
Although Bruce managed to plant some spring carrots, beets, potatoes, shishito peppers and heirloom tomatoes, and just finished planting a row of Costa Romanesco zucchini squash, most of his waking hours have been devoted to pig husbandry. In fact, heirloom Mangalitsa wooly pigs have become Winfield Farm’s mainstay!
Bruce has turned over most of our fields to pig rearing, so planted pasture instead of produce, and spends a lot of time building and moving fence. We corral our pigs with hog panels wired together so he can rotate the herd: when the little shovel-noses root up one section, he moves them to new turf. People driving along Highway 246 from Lompoc to Buellton can spy our herd of purebred swallow-belly Mangalitsas cavorting in the field. These wooly haired pigs look a lot like black sheep.
The 54 new arrivals are the offspring of 8 sows and 4 boars (3 more sows produced another 20 piglets last winter) – so our Mangalitsa herd now numbers more than 100 pigs total. It’s amazing to think that just 2 years ago we began this pigdom with only two pigs. We’re now able to provide fresh (or fresh-frozen) Mangalitsa pork virtually year-round.
We’re marketing our heritage Mangalitsa pigs to a growing number of discerning restaurants in the Santa Ynez Valley and beyond. For example, you’ll often find Winfield Mangalitsa prosciutto, lomo and pancetta at Industrial Eats restaurant in Buellton, and Clark Staub at Full of Life Flatbread in Los Alamos makes magical dishes – and pizzas – with Winfield Mangalitsa pork.
We also offer USDA certified, cryovac packaged frozen Mangalitsa pork products on our online Mangalitsa Market store.
We recently took several pigs to market, so have a fresh supply of frozen cuts available, including chops (a handful of skin-on, bone-in loin and a lot of skin-on, bone-in rib with a glorious cap of pure white Mangalitsa fat), bone-in sirloin roasts, smoked hams (both bone-in and boneless), sliced bacon (and a couple of belly slabs), ground sausage (fresh and sweet Italian flavors in bulk 2-lb packs), smoked hocks (yummy!), trotters and leaf lard (the best baking fat EVER!).
Please call us at (805) 686-9312 or email us at bruce@winfieldfarm.us to order.
Or you can order from our online store, but please call first to make sure we still have what you want. If we don’t have it now, we can custom-order it for you the next time we go to market. We’ll be taking more pigs to market in late June, and at least monthly throughout the summer and fall.
If you haven’t tried Mangalitsa pork yet, you’re in for a treat. Try Winfield Mangalitsa and taste the magic for yourself!
The Mangalitsa Pig: Royalty is Coming to America
By Francesca Shanks on May 1, 2015
This book is a love letter to a unique Hungarian pig breed, a breed whose history seems miraculous when compared to America’s agricultural traditions.
The curly-haired Mangalitsa’s “genetics have remained untouched since 1833”—an almost unbelievable story for those acquainted with large-scale agriculture in the U.S. But raising these pigs is a long game—they aren’t bred to fatten up quickly. They’re renowned for their taste and the quality of their lard, and they’ve found their way to several of the country’s highest-rated restaurants in recent years.
But, according to the book’s authors, this almost wasn’t so: in the early 1990s, less than 200 Mangalitsa pigs remained, prompting Peter Toth and a partner to buy a herd of 50 from a Hungarian farmer in order to expand the Mangalitsa’s numbers. Today, Toth is president of the Hungarian National Association of Mangalitsa Breeders, and, he writes, the breed is 10,000 strong.
TheMangalitsa_recipes-1Mangalitsa pigs are now (again) a big part of Hungarian cuisine, as 23 Hungarian chefs demonstrate with recipes that incorporate Mangalitsa cuts, from lard to brain to loin. Each beautifully photographed recipe comes with a short chef profile and detailed instructions—make Zsolt Litauszki’s Mangalitsa rillette in breadcrumbs with fermented wax beans, or simply marvel at Antonio Fekete’s “Apple dessert,” a white chocolate-covered molded apple mousse complete with dark chocolate stem (no pig included in this recipe).
If you’re desperate to taste Mangalitsa for yourself, there’s a list, including a map, of Hungarian restaurants at the back of the book, plus a couple of pages advertising Mangalitsa farmers in the U.S.
This beautiful book, with gold-embossed title and incredible photography, is translated from Hungarian, which, unfortunately, results in some typographical errors. This may drive you crazy if you’re an editor type, but don’t let it get in the way of the opportunity to read about this fascinating pig breed. If you are interested in a story that merges fine cuisine with a passion for animal husbandry, you’ll enjoy The Mangalitsa Pig, and probably learn something, too.
The Mangalitsa Pig: Royalty is Coming to America
by Mate Dobesch, Wilhelm W. Kohl, Peter Toth, Beata Bencsics, Eszter Szalai (Translator)
247 pages; Boook Publishing Hungary, 2014
Read the original post: modernfarmer.com
The One-Percenter’s Guide to Pork: The Best Pork, Ham, and Bacon in the World
by Kerry Acker | www.epicurious.com | February, 2014
Not all pork products are created equal. Just imagine for a moment that money was no object, that no supernal slice of lavishly marbled ham or haute hunk of succulent pork was too high-end or high-falutin’ for your budget. Here, our mini guide to some of the finest, most exclusive, pork, ham, and bacon in the world.
Jamon Iberico de Bellota
Celebrated El Bulli chef Ferran Adria once said of this traditionally cured Spanish ham, “Iberian pork meat is extraordinary. There’s nothing like it elsewhere in the world. There’s a great difference between a superior ham and all the rest.”
Raised along the Spain/Portugal border, the pata negra (black-hooved) pig roams free-range through old-growth oak forests, dining on herbs, grass, and, most significantly, acorns (bellota means “acorn”), resulting in an intensely flavored, distinctly nutty, and richly marbled meat unparalleled in the ham universe.
Get It: A 14.5-pound bone-in whole Jamon Iberico de Bellota ham from elite Spanish brand Cinco Jotas retails for $1,290 at La Tienda. But, wait, you’ll need to properly slice it, too, so consider investing in the Cinco Jotas Cortador kit–including a 13-pound bone-in Bellota ham, a black ham holder, two carving knives, serving pincers, and a protective chain-mail glove–which will set you back $2,450.
Culatello di Zibello
Among the rarest, most highly esteemed charcuterie in Italy, culatello is a boneless ham with a velvety texture and a robust, slightly sweet flavor. Produced in the foggy Po Valley, outside of Parma, culatello (“little backside”) is made from the muscle in the rear leg of the pig, and is related to prosciutto, but pig purists consider the version labeled with the D.O.P. “Culatello di Zibello” superior to its cousin. Because it takes a whole ham to make the culatello, and producers must adhere to strict D.O.P. regulations–including using only pigs born and raised in Lombardia or Emilia-Romagna, and a slow aging (without refrigeration) of 12 to 20 months–Culatello di Zibello is pretty hard to find. (Approximately 20,000 pieces of culatello are produced annually.)
Get It: Head to Italy’s lovely Antica Corte Pallavicina, a hotel/restaurant situated in Polesine Parmense and run by Chef Massimo Spigaroli, chairman of the Consortium of the Culatello di Zibello since its inception and widely considered one of the best producers of the exclusive ham. You can visit the on-site cellars, where the ham is aged to meltingly tender perfection, then sample it afterward at the Michelin-starred restaurant.
A Mangalitsa pig
Mangalitsa Pork, Bacon, and Lard
This rare breed of pig, the result of a 19th-century Austro-Hungarian experiment cross-breeding a wild boar with a pig raised for lard, is pretty darn funny-looking: Its distinct “fleece” coat gives it the look of a sheep-pig–which is why the Mangalitsa is also known as a “woolly pig”–and the pigs can weigh over 300 pounds. The animal was near extinction until the 1990s, when a Hungarian breeder revived it, and in recent years a handful of American farmers have started raising Mangalitsas. Though the woolly pigs are more expensive to produce than other heritage breeds, the buttery meat has been enjoying considerable popularity among chefs: Mangalitsa pork has been served on menus at the likes of the French Laundry, Le Cirque, and Blue Hill Stone Barns, and it’s also increasingly available as cured ham, bacon, and other products.
Get It: D’Artagnan sells a bone-in 12- to 16-pound Mangalitsa ham–dry-cured in Spain–for $400, Murray’s offers bacon ($17/12 oz.) from New Jersey-raised Mangalitsa pigs, and Florida-based Pasture Prime sells ground Mangalitsa pork, lard, and custom pork.
Edwards’ Surryano Ham
When it comes to dry-cured American ham, Surry, Virginia’s Edwards’ Surryano is a fabulous bet. Produced from Berkshire hogs and other heritage breeds–who dine on peanuts, grass, corn, and soy, according to Food Republic’s interview with Sam Edwards–the meat is dry-cured, smoked over hickory wood for seven days, then aged for 400 days. The ham that results is rich, smoky, and silky, and beloved by such chefs as David Chang, who serves it at Momofuku Ssam Bar.
Get It: A 15- to 17-pound bone-in Surryano will set you back $215, while $39 will get you 3.4 ounces of sliced Surryano heaven.
Benton’s Bacon
North Madisonville, Tennessee’s Benton’s Country Hams, famous for its world-class traditional dry-cured ham and (also dry-cured) bacon, is another American company that just makes us proud. New York Times writer John T. Edge said it best: “Allen Benton is the rock star of American bacon. There’s just something very primal about his bacon. It’s like barbecue and is so distinctive.” Chef devotees of Benton’s intensely, beautifully smoky bacon are many, and include David Chang, Sean Brock, and Hugh Acheson, to name just a few.
Get It: Four 1-pound packs of Benton’s famous hickory-smoked bacon cost just $26 via Benton’s website, but bear in mind that there may be a 5-week delay in delivery–which you will totally understand once you taste this extraordinary bacon, which would satisfy even the pickiest one-percenter.
Originally posted: 2/18/2014 : http://www.epicurious.com
A Place For Fat
Original post: http://www.breakingbutcher.com/
This post is about a certain Mangalitza breed of pig and the beautiful fat that IS this pig. I had no idea how much fat these pigs had until I worked with Yorkshire/Duroc breeds the entire time I was in France and then returned to Indiana to work on my first Mangalitza. I had exposure to the breed before, but that was when I would only watch someone break down a pig, before I knew how to handle one myself. This was before I had seen any other kind of pig except a Mangalitza. I assumed all pigs had this much fat. Then I started hearing commentary about the amount of fat, mostly negative because to raise these pigs just wasn’t financially feasible with the amount of meat available. I didn’t know, I took what I heard and stored it away for a time I figured I would get to form my own opinion and that time is now.
I may have lost a few of my readers already, for that I apologize. Allow me to back up a few steps and try to get everyone on the same post. An increasing number of heritage breed pig farmers have been popping up in the United States, heritage breeds are a special, sometimes rare breed of pig. From what I have gathered most farmers, cooks, and informed consumers have a preference as to which pig he or she fancies. Mangalitza is a type of heritage breed and happens to be the breed of pig that is raised at the farm that supplies meat to the restaurant where I work. This really isn’t a debate about which breed is better to me. I have had delicious products from many different breeds of pigs and I have come to decide that in the right hands basically any pig can be turned into something delicious. However, with that said, the most best breed of pig I have ever eaten is the Black Gascon.
Enough about what is better, I am talking about the Mangalitza and everything else can wait until another day. When I saw the back fat on a Mangalitza the first time after I had returned from France it shocked me. Literal shock, I froze, collapsed, and started convulsing on the floor… that isn’t true. So I picked that bad boy up and tossed him onto the chopping block. I wish that I would have measured the length of the solid mass of fat that towered on the crest of the pigs spine. Just from memory I want to say it was roughly 5-6 inches of beautiful creamy white fat. Fast forward to after three sides of pig where broken down, all products were fabricated, including right around 30 four inch by four inch chunks of lardo ready to cure, and enough back fat to add to freshly trimmed ham meat for saucisson. After everything was cut and salted I was left with pounds and pounds of the best back fat a pig can offer. I rendered some of it for lard and then found myself contemplating what to do with the rest. It seemed a shame to simply render the fat for lard and I didn’t want to freeze it for a later use. I felt that there had to be something to do to showcase this delicious fat and the fact that this is what these pigs are known for. When in doubt, eat.
I have heard people say that chops from Mangalitza’s aren’t really worth the money and hassle of raising the pig. After cutting my own bone in chops and leaving a beautiful cap of fat on each one, enough fat to say to a consumer, “I am a Mangalitza pork chop,” I have to say I was skeptical myself. There just really is not a lot of lean meat to be had in the loin section. I saved part of one of the loins for rillettes and after trimming the fat completely off the meat section of the boneless loin was almost laughably small. Then I had a bite of a seared Mangalitza chop, then another bite, and another, there is hardly a need for meat with fat that flavorful. My opinion quickly shifted and instead of viewing this breed of pig in comparison to another breed of pig I started to view the Mangalitza as the deliciously fatty pig that it is.
It was this feasting moment between myself and a fatty Mangalitza chop that inspired me to make more from the leftover fat than just lard, although the lard is great. I felt that if I was going to be receiving Mangalitza pigs to fabricate and put on a menu then the fat should be showcased. I wanted to leave more fat on the chops, make more lardo, and figure out how to make all these pounds of back fat into something that could serve to make delicious back fat shine as the main component in a dish. I hit the books and thumbed through multiple pages before my eyes stumbled upon Jamie Bissonette’s book, “The New Charcuterie Cookbook.” In his book he has a great recipe for whipped flavored lardo. He cooks the fat, strains the liquid, presses the fat, and then whips the cooled fat with different flavors to make spreads. This sounds delicious and it is what I intended to do with the fat I had. One of the first things I learned my one and only semester in culinary school is to read a recipe the entire way through before starting on a dish. I was only in culinary school for one semester so I clearly forgot this lesson. What I did was mess up Jamie’s recipe. I added all the flavorings to the raw fat, rendered everything together, and pressed the cooked, flavored fat. I knew that I had messed up, but at this point there was no return. I had no intention of whipping the fat like Jamie recommends. My mind was still in France and it was thinking about one of my favorite dishes called grattons that were made from pressed rendered fat. I went ahead and pressed the flavored mass overnight. The next day I came in and released the now beautifully pressed block of fat from its mold. What a fantastic result, it sliced like a cheese, it showcased the pressed ivory white chunks of fat, and retained just enough flavor to be extremely interesting when eaten like a fatty cheese.
I have sense waited to add most of the flavorings until after the fat is cooked, right before pressing, but the finished product is a thing of beauty. The flavorings get into all the nooks and crannies and cook a slight amount when added to the hot cooked fat, the different shaped fat chunks form a beautiful mosaic presentation, and the flavor is outstanding. A small slice set on my tongue easily melted away and left my mouth coated with fat and flavor. I have converted about 30 pounds of fat back into this cheese like fat product and sense returning from France it is the one thing that I most excited about at this point in my culinary life. In conclusion, I now love the Mangalitza for what they are, extremely fatty pigs. Isn’t this what I trained to do, use every part of a pig for the optimum benefit? If it is Mangalitza’s that I am dealing with I will now find a way to showcase the fat, not shy away from it, because that is what is special about these pigs. So for today, let us raise a glass for the delightfully wooly beasts that are the Mangalitza’s. Enjoy.
