09.18.07

The Real Use for the Pig Heads…

Posted in The Story at 1:34 pm by Chef Matt

So other than just scaring co-workers, we did actually have a reason for bringing pig heads into our restaurant. Indeed one of the other sous chefs, Andrew, wanted to make a pork terrine from them. (That is our more palatable way of saying “head cheese”.)

I actually sold head cheese back in high school when I was working at the Heidelberg Pastry Shoppe in Arlington. In fact, we sold two kinds, regular and spicy. Didn’t much matter which you chose, they were both nasty. So with those troubling childhood memories in my mind, I had to admit I was mildly trepidacious before venturing down this road of boiling pigs’ heads in our kitchen.

Warning: The following story goes into some details involving pigs’ heads, saws, brains and other dissecting things you may find kinda gross. If that’s not your bag, stop reading now, and instead watch something seriously funny instead.

Oh good, the warning didn’t scare you off. So apparently the first step when making head cheese is to scoop out the brains of the pig, as they don’t add much to the resulting stock. (You can still leave if you want to…) The problem is that the brains of the pig - as is the case with most mammals - are surrounded by a lot of skull. Andrew had forgotten to ask the butchers to saw the heads in half when he ordered them so that this would not have been a problem. But even though this oversight of his allowed me to pull off my great prank (would not have been nearly as scary with only half a pig head…) it did place us in a bit of a pickle. How would we saw through a pig’s head? Yes our knives are sharp - but not THAT sharp.

So Andrew found a hacksaw in our toolbox at the restaurant, but a few seconds of that clearly showed that this was not going to work anytime soon as the blade was pretty old. We were thinking about calling some local butchers to see if we could bring them these heads for cutting, when suddenly it dawned on me that there was a maintenance man in the house repairing some lights and fans…

“Look, I know you’re busy and I don’t want to break your concentration or anything, but can the saws on your truck go through flesh and bone?…”

“Excuse me sir,” I called to him at the top of his ladder. “We have a pair of pig heads that we have to saw in half… would you happen to have a reciprocating saw in your truck?”

I am willing to bet I am the first person who ever posed that question to him with that premise. The look on his face and follow–up question confirmed this belief.

“Did you say ‘pig heads’?”

“Yessir, we need to cut them in half, and we don’t have a saw that can do it in house.”

“Well hell yeah I got one that’ll go through metal!”

As I expected he was thrilled with the concept of getting a chance to do something so outlandish. We pulled in his saw, sterilized the blade and he made quick work of the jaw bones (to separate the lower jaw from the rest of the head) and then a cut through the inch-thick skull. Unfortunately he also made quick work of our cutting board as well. (We set it aside as one to use for future such projects…)

The repair man went back to work with the biggest smile on his face I have ever seen, and set back into the task at hand. The brains of the pig were liberated, and the pig heads were soon cooking in broth.

I put a lot of effort into the images I make for you people. Here is how the pig head slicing went down…

A few hours later, we strained the broth, and it was time to pull the meat from the skulls. This was fascinating as I learned where all the meat on a pig’s face (there is a lot of it) is located. The jowls - which we had bisected with the reciprocating saw - were the biggest surprise as I was almost ready to throw out the skull when I found that huge pocket of meat near the eye socket.

And in the end, it is experiences like this - not just combining power tools and meat, which I have previously mentioned is awesome - where I can learn to make something totally new and different that keep me coming back day after day to work. Sure, it’s not everyone who looks forward to the odd chance to make head cheese, but if you could have tasted the end result, you would come back for more - it was fabulous!

Chef Matt

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