LITTLE CHINTHURST FARM PIGS OUR PORK - WHAT TO EXPECT
Our Pork - what to expect
The taste of slow grown, healthily fed free range rare breed pork will be superior to any pork you have tasted. It may have a little more fat on than you are used to, and it will almost certainly be a different colour.
Fat
Fat is critical to the flavour and texture of our pork. Apparently if every trace of fat is removed from a piece of beef and a piece of mutton, it's not possible to tell which is which!
Our pigs have grown naturally, slowly and outside, so they have a generous layer of external fat, as well as good marbling, to insulate them against the cold winter. Intensively farmed pigs have far less fat, as they have been farmed inside and fed additives such as antibiotics, steroids and hormones to speed up the development of muscle (lean meat) and inhibit the development of fat. Whilst people often worry about a high fat diet, they seldom worry about the possible long term effects of eating such biochemically adulterated lean meat.
Cook our pork with the fat on to give it flavour. The marbling will lubricate it from within as it cooks and you can cut off the subcutaneous fat and leave it on the side of your plate!
Sausages
Our sausages are made by Ernie at Countryside Meat.
Freezing
Our pork is all delivered chilled and can be frozen.
Freezing meat does not necessarily have dire consequences for its eating qualities, particularly if it has been properly hung.
Our pork is hung for about a week (as opposed to 2 days for supermarket pork).
We freeze our pork for up to a year with no problems.
Packaging
Meat likes to breathe. The plastic packaging our pork comes in is fine for freezing the meat, but be careful when you defrost it.
Remove it from the packaging as soon as you can, wipe it dry and let it breathe. If you want to keep it covered, put it on a plate or in a bowl and cover it with clingfilm so air can circulate round it.
Defrosting
Our friends at Tanglewood have passed on their experience of defrosting meat so that it retains more of its juices and so has more taste. The slower you defrost the meat, the better the result.
This means you need to take a pork joint out of the freezer a full FIVE days before you want to eat it. Chops and sausages should be ok with just 3 days of defrosting.
Day 1 : Take the pork out of the freezer and pop it into the fridge in its packaging.
Day 2-3 : Remove the pork from the packaging and cover loosely to stop it marinating in its juice.
Day 4 : In the evening remove the pork from the fridge & bring it up to room temperature (in a cupboard if you have cats or dogs!).
Day 5 : Ready to cook.
Please don't be tempted to rush this bit. Fast defrosting ruins the taste (of pork and all meat).
Cooking
We want you to enjoy every mouthful of our pork.
Generally, slow defrosting, slow cooking and time to rest the pork before eating gives the best results.
Please take a look at the Recipe Page to see some great ways to cook Little Chinthurst Pork.