two. ate.

When we were in France, we ate rillette (say "ree-ette") which is long cooked meat (usually pork) shredded and packed then sealed with some meat fat. It's been called an "old-school" appetizer of the highest order and is really delicious.

I decided to try my hand at making rillette and the method looked pretty straight forward: cook meat, shred meat, pack meat, store meat, wait for a week then eat. Well, except for the waiting part, it was a snap. Two pounds of pork belly, one pound of pork shoulder, salt, pepper, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, pork fat...it felt just like making sausage.

The pork (not the fat) gets cut into cubes and all gets piled into a heavy bottomed pan and covered with four cups of water. Roll a bouquet garni (thyme/parsley/bay) and add to the pot. Bring to a boil then slowly simmer for six hours. No need to add water as you *want* the water to evaporate and render the fat. And pork belly is pretty packed with fat.

Around hour five, there was only pork and rendered pork fat in the pan and it started to brown ever so slightly. By the end of the hour, the kitchen smelled like I was cooking carnitas (which it could have easily been...). Kill the heat, stir in salt, pepper then let it cool until warm...and let the shredding begin. Actually, I drained the rendered fat and saved it since it would come in handy later...

I used two forks to pull the meat apart (for a while) trying to preserve the natural threads of the meat. That got tiring and used my fingers.

The pork shreds nicely if it's still a bit warm...

All of this mixture got packed into five 8 oz. snap ring jars which I felt were small enough to provide 2-3 portions each plus they'd make good sized gifts to boot. The meat is packed semi-tightly as you can see here:

Lovely...

Ready for sealing...

While all of this action was taking place, the rendered pork fat started to set up. Rather than use strips of pork fat to lay over the top of the rillette, I used the rendered fat confit-style to seal the tops of the jars. Since most of the flavor is in the meat, the fat (in any form) is just used to seal the meat, keep it moist and preserve it for a while.

The semi-liquid fat flowed and sealed the top of the rillette nicely...

To finish...wiped everything up - the whole process gets kind of greasy - attached the rubber snap rings and got them ready for a long sleeep in the fridge.



Ready to go...just three days left...

They'll spend a minimum of three days in the fridge. That will allow the flavors marry and mingle. By Wednesday, we should be ready to devour.