What can be cooked from pig heads. How to make pressed meat from a pig's head? Alternative recipes and useful tips

Home-cooked pressed meat is an excellent substitute for sausage. It is used as a cold snack. With pressed meat you can make a hearty sandwich for breakfast or serve it on a holiday table. Guests will appreciate the taste of this dish. The main ingredients are relatively cheap, but the result is practically a delicacy. Try it!

You will need:

Half a pig's head;

1 large chicken leg;

1 onion;

A few black peppercorns;

3-4 cloves of garlic;

Bay leaf;

Large saucepan;

A piece of gauze 30*30cm.

Preparation:

1. Buy half a pig's head at the market or store. It can be fresh or frozen. Ask for it to be cut into 3-5 pieces. Don't forget to buy one large chicken leg.

2. Soak the pork head pieces in cold water. To do this, put them in a saucepan, cover with water, and leave for 2-3 hours. Then drain the water and rinse the pieces of meat under running cold water.

3. Place pieces of pork head and chicken legs into the pan. Fill everything with water so that it completely covers the contents of the pan. Cover the pan with a lid and place over high heat.

4. Reduce heat as soon as the contents of the pan come to a boil. Place in it a peeled onion (whole), a few black peppercorns, and a bay leaf. Cook the pork head over low heat until the meat comes off the bones easily. During the cooking process, do not forget to salt the broth to taste.

5. Once the pork head is cooked, turn off the heat. Wait until the contents of the pan have cooled to room temperature.

6. Place gauze in a deep cup so that its ends hang over the edges of the cup.

7. Carefully remove one piece of boiled pork head onto a wide flat plate. Separate the fat and meat from the bones, place them in a deep bowl on cheesecloth. Disassemble the entire contents of the pan in a similar manner. To prevent the pressed meat from falling apart when cutting, first place large pieces of lard on the gauze, skin side down (towards the gauze). Place pieces of boneless pork and chicken meat on the lard. Place the pieces of lard on top again, only this time with the skin side up. When laying out the meat and lard, sprinkle them with finely grated garlic.

8. Gather the loose ends of the gauze together and twist them several times. You will get a tight knot of gauze with meat inside. Place the bundle of meat in the cup so that the twisted ends of the gauze are at the bottom. Place a cutting board on top of the meat and place a weight on it (heavy pan, jar of water, etc.). Leave the meat under pressure for 5-6 hours to harden.

9. Free the meat from the gauze, cut into neat slices, and serve.

Bon appetit!

People most often turn away in disgust when they see pigs' heads on the counter - it's too naturalistic. However, by ignoring this by-product, they deprive themselves of many taste pleasures. Pork head dishes are a real delicacy. They are prepared in all countries (unless religious principles have banned pork). And the food is eaten almost first of all, even on a very rich holiday table. Dishes made from pork head have the only drawback: they all take quite a long time to prepare. But for a real gourmet this is not an obstacle!

Proper preparation

Before cooking a pig's head, it must be properly gutted. First of all, if you get stubble, shave it off with the cheapest disposable razor. We don’t recommend scorching - you won’t like the smell and it will take a long time to dissipate. Then take a stiff brush or washcloth in your hands and scrub the skin in all places, paying special attention to hard-to-reach areas - the snout and ears. Further cutting depends on what you are going to cook from the pork head: in some recipes you need it whole, in some - in pieces or only its meat parts. But the basis remains the same: the offal must be washed very carefully!

Estonian jelly

When pork's head is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is the well-known jellied meat. Of course, it turns out very rich and hardens perfectly even without gelatin. However, we must admit, the end result is a very fatty dish. Estonians suggest doing things a little differently: taking equal amounts of head, legs and veal. The cheeks are cut off from the head onto something else, and the rest is placed on the stove covered with cold water. After removing the foam, two onions directly with the peel, a whole carrot and root parsley plus a celery root are placed in the pan. When the meat begins to fall off the bones on its own, add peppercorns, salt and bay leaves. The cooled meat is disassembled into small pieces, filled with strained clear broth and, after boiling, poured into containers.

Roll

Before preparing a pig's head in this form, you need to cut off the meat along with the skin, cut out the tongue and clean off everything unnecessary from it. The ears are removed; the meat with some of the fat is laid out along the tongue, the neck muscles are cut, and the eye sockets are covered with slices of meat. The entire structure is generously rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with dried herbs. Crushed pepper, rosemary, thyme and basil are very good for this pork head dish. The roll is rolled up and tied with twine, under which fresh rosemary is placed. Pieces of cut fat are laid out on a baking sheet, a roll is placed on them, and foil is placed on top. The dish is placed in the oven for three hours. Periodically it needs to be watered with melted fat. When ready, the cooled roll is hidden in the refrigerator overnight. And in the morning you can already eat.

Pressed meat

For it, take a pork head (photo in the article), wash it thoroughly and boil it for a long time - about five hours. Towards the end of cooking, spices and salt are added. You can limit yourself to laurel and pepper, or you can choose something to suit your taste. Then the head is disassembled; soft cartilages also come into play, as does lard, which needs to be cut into smaller pieces. All the cuttings are mixed with garlic, placed in a colander (it is better to line it with gauze), poured with a glass or two of broth and placed under pressure in the refrigerator. After about five hours the meat can be consumed.

Pork head with horseradish

It’s almost the simplest thing to cook from a pig’s head, quite quickly and without complex cooking techniques. The cleaned and washed head is filled with water and boiled with parsley, onion, bay, salt, carrots and pepper. Readiness occurs a little earlier than jellied meat: the meat separates easily, but does not fall off the bones. The sauce is made: grated horseradish root is fried per kilogram of head, a spoonful of flour, previously dry-dried, is poured in, broth (half a glass) and sour cream (a glass) are added. After boiling, add a little vinegar, salt and sugar (to taste). The head is placed on the table, cut into portions and poured with sauce.

Heads with vegetables

The first stage of preparation is boiling the heads. To speed up the process, you can chop them coarsely. In parallel, for this dish, the pork head is fried with onions, carrots and parsley roots. When you are satisfied with the color and smell of the frying, add sautéed flour (a large spoon), tomato puree (three), a couple of cloves of garlic and one and a half cups of broth. After boiling, the head, disassembled into small pieces, is placed in the gravy, and the dish is stewed for about a third of an hour.

German Kabbes

In Germany, pork head dishes are highly respected. You can try making sour kabbes, traditional for this country. The head is chopped into small pieces and boiled - but only until half cooked, and in a very small amount of water, so that during cooking it almost completely boils away. Sauerkraut (at the rate of 200 g for the same amount of meat) is mixed with sliced ​​apples, juniper berries and chopped onions. The resulting mass is placed in the broth and simmered until the head is ready. At the end, pour in a quarter glass of white wine and add a little cumin. To serve, you also need a sauce: two spoons of flour are simmered in melted butter, a quarter glass of broth, a couple of large spoons of heavy cream, grated horseradish and salt are poured in. Once it boils, you can pour in the kabbes laid out on the dish.

Ukrainian stuffed head

To prepare it you will have to show considerable culinary dexterity. First of all, the head is cut from below, but so that the skin on the crown remains intact. After repeated washing (or better yet, soaking for two hours in water changed several times), the bones are removed, the eyes are sewn together and the head is stuffed. For the filling, a kilogram of veal liver is stuffed with lard and stewed until crisp with onions. The white loaf is soaked in milk and squeezed out. Half a kilogram of veal is ground with liver and bread, supplemented with four yolks, a quarter kilogram of finely chopped boiled corned beef and, finally, foam of four whites. Half of the kneaded minced meat is put into the shell of the head; mugs of five hard-boiled eggs, a dozen pickled mushrooms and five pickled cucumbers (slices or mugs) are placed on it. The second part of the minced meat is laid out on top, the head is tied with twine and cooked for two to three hours. Place on the table with horseradish and mayonnaise.

Chuvash pie

If you're interested in cooking pork head dishes, don't stop at traditional ones. In Chuvashia they came up with wonderful baked goods from this offal. Yeast dough is kneaded from half a kilogram of flour. While waiting for it to rise, the filling is prepared. For her, the washed and prepared head is chopped into quarters and cooked until almost done. All the meat with some of the fat is removed from it and ground in a meat grinder. The minced meat is fried until lightly browned, combined with fried onions, salt and pepper. After kneading, it is laid out over thickly rolled out dough. The edges are sealed - you should get a large oval pie. After three quarters of an hour of proofing, it is brushed with beaten egg, pricked in several places with a fork and sent to the oven for half an hour.

Pork head pate

Various types of spreads make quick snacks very easy and serve as a pleasant addition to lunch. Pork head pate would be good for this purpose. You can do it in different ways. The simplest one: chop the offal into pieces, add water in a not too large volume, add whole carrots and onions and cook as if you were about to prepare jellied meat. When the meat begins to fall off the bones, the strained broth is left for some soup, and the pulp, including the skin, lard and soft cartilage, is whipped in a blender with garlic and onions. Ready-made pork head pate is seasoned with salt and spices. For them, ground pepper is required, the rest is up to you. But the use of nutmeg will be very successful.

Pate “Delicacy”

True gourmets are not too fond of a dish made only from head meat. They can be advised to combine it with the liver in approximately equal quantities. The chopped head is boiled, and the liver, coarsely chopped, is fried (you can also boil it, but it will be too watery). You can also add quarters of onions to the liver - then you won’t have to fry them separately. All components are ground or put through a blender, salted, peppered and seasoned with other spices - and the pate can be consumed. If you have prepared too much of it or plan to leave it until winter, add six eggs to the mass, place in half-liter jars and sterilize for an hour and a half. After sealing and cooling, they must be stored in the cold: canned food is a capricious thing and can spoil.

Pork head pate can also be prepared with meat. The actions and ratios of the products are similar, only the meat is cooked together with the head, and the onions are fried separately.

Stew

For this, meat and lard will have to be carefully cut off the bones in small, centimeter-sized slices. The workpiece is filled with cold water and cooked for about three hours. Salt and spices are added at the right time. When the pork head stew is ready, it is packaged in sterile jars, covered with lids and sterilized for half an hour. After sealing, the jars are turned upside down and cooled without wrapping. It is better to store, like any other, in the cold. And if you really like stewed pork head and you intend to cook it in large quantities, buy an autoclave - it makes it possible to store canned meat for quite a long time.

You can make an excellent cold appetizer from pork head - brawn or saltison. The dish turns out very tasty, spicy, aromatic and goes away quite quickly, especially with vodka. This is an excellent option for a family celebration (even for a wedding with a small number of guests) from the “cheap and cheerful” series. True, you will have to tinker with its preparation. But it's worth it.

There are two main options for serving a pork head under pressure - in the pork stomach or in the form of pressed “square” bars. Classic saltison is prepared in a pork stomach. If you don’t have a stomach at hand (or for some other reason you don’t want to cook in it), then you can pack the meat in intestines, cooking sleeves, cling film, plastic or even just gauze. Another option is to carefully cut off the skin (with layers of fat) from an already boiled pork head and then wrap the chopped flesh with seasonings in this skin. This is exactly the delicious roll shown in the very first photo.

In addition to the pork head itself, you can also take additional liver, heart, tongues and just pork meat. You can also use spices and vegetables to suit your taste, there are quite a lot of options. And the broth left over from cooking the head will be an excellent base for jellied meat.

Ingredients for pork head saltison

We take a whole or half pork head. You can also ask at the market to have it cut into several pieces. Be sure to use ears and nickels - these are the main parts of the head that contain gelatin. As a last resort, you can replace them with pork legs (hooves). If you still doubt that the broth will be rich enough, you can add regular food gelatin - then it will definitely set.

To prepare a pork head under pressure, take:

• pig's head
• pork belly
• garlic – 5 cloves
• carrots – 1 pc.
• Bay leaf
• black peppercorns
• parsley root
• pork pulp, tongue, liver - optional
• spices to taste, onions - optional

This is how we got a meat set from a chopped head.

Cooking a pork head under pressure

The first thing you need to do is start preparing your stomach. You need to do this the day before preparing the main dish. If you don’t want to bother with your stomach and will cook without it, then you can skip this point. We thoroughly wash the stomach, turn it inside out, wash it again, remove excess fat, scrape it out with a knife, sprinkle it with salt and leave it overnight. We can add crushed onions to fight off the unpleasant smell of the stomach. In the morning we rinse again, changing the water a couple of times. You can sprinkle corn grits on your stomach, massage and leave for half an hour, and then wash off the grits - this also helps get rid of the smell. It is also advisable to clean off all the mucus.

Let's return to the meat. We will cook it like jellied meat – for several hours. We just take less water. The first step is to thoroughly examine all parts of the head, singe them if necessary and remove all hair and stubble with a knife. Place the meat in a large saucepan, fill with cold water and leave for half an hour. Then drain the water and cook in another.

At the bottom of the pan we place ears, coins, cheeks - everything that needs to boil more deeply. If we cook with additional tongues, it is better to cook them separately or add them to a common pan about an hour before the end of cooking.

Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat, skim off foam.

Cook covered for about 3-4 hours.

About an hour before the end of cooking, add the roots and vegetables. Salt and add spices 30 minutes before readiness, 10 minutes before adding chopped garlic. There is another option - you can not put the garlic into the broth at all, but add it in crushed form to the finished and finely chopped meat.

We remove the cooked flesh of the head, ears, tongues, and meat from the broth.

Carefully select and remove all bones. We clear the tongues. We throw away everything that does not inspire confidence and appetite. Cut the remaining meat, ears, tongue pulp into cubes or slices.

Strain the broth and discard the boiled vegetables. If desired, add spices and crushed garlic to the chopped meat. Mix thoroughly and pour a little broth into the mixture (about a tenth of the mass of the meat pulp).

If we cook saltison in the stomach, then it’s time to stuff the tripe with the resulting meat mixture. Carefully fill the inside of the stomach, compact, press and sew up the holes with thread.

Place the filled and sewn up stomach in a container with broth. It is convenient to use a casserole dish, although a spacious pan can also be used. If there is not enough broth, you can add hot salted water. Let it cook for another 2-3 hours.

We take out the boiled tripe and put it under pressure. Leave in the cold for a day or two.

That's it, this is a ready-made saltison. Goes very well with mustard or horseradish. It can also be done with mayonnaise.

If you cook without a stomach, then the meat can be boiled a little longer (up to 5 hours). Then pack it in gauze or cling film and put it under pressure. The result will be something like this “square” brawn.

And finally, a video of cooking a pork head under pressure.

Pork's head is rarely considered as a serious culinary product. It is customary to make jellied meat from it, and the tongue makes a good aspic. But that is not all. It turns out that you can make very tasty pressed meat from a pig's head.

Everything ingenious is simple

Recently, the daily menu of any family is increasingly being “attacked” by sausages. They have become a real attribute for a quick breakfast or light dinner. This significantly reduces cooking time, but does not provide the same pleasure that is felt after eating food prepared with your own hands. And it’s not that difficult to do. Take, for example, a pig's head. You can make not only jelly from it, but also something interesting. There is an excellent recipe that makes it easy to make unusual pressed meat from a pig's head. For this you will need a pork head, garlic, onions, ground pepper, carrots, spices and water.

You need to prepare as follows:

1. Wash the pork head, cut it into two parts lengthwise and place in a wide pan.
2. Pour the product with water and immediately cook for 4 hours.
3. After this, remove both halves from the pan, place them on the table and completely remove them from the bones.
4. Then spread gauze on the table, place one piece on it, skin side down, and generously season it with spices.
5. Roughly chop onion, carrots and garlic. Mix the products and spread the resulting mass on top of the first piece of head.
6. Cover the entire structure with a second piece and wrap the resulting roll very tightly in gauze.
7. Place pressure on top and leave the product in this position for one day.

Pressed pork head meat prepared in this way turns out very tasty, juicy and aromatic.

A long-familiar product

There are many dishes in cooking that are prepared in this way. Take brawn, for example. By and large, it is the same pressed meat from a pig's head, decorated in the form of a sausage product. To prepare it at home you will need: 1 pork head, 7 liters of water, 3 onions, 1 kilogram of piece pork, salt, 1 carrot, parsley root, spices, 2 bay leaves, herbs (parsley, dill) and lemon zest (for those who like ).

Preparing brawn is quite simple:

1. Boil a piece of pork and head along with roots for 5 hours. Half an hour before the end of cooking, add bay leaf and salt to the pan.
2. Place the finished product on a cutting table, remove any existing bones and cut everything into small pieces.
3. Now the chopped meat must be boiled again along with the onion and lemon zest. This will take approximately 1 hour.
4. Combine the boiled pieces with the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Then put everything on gauze, roll it tightly, tie it with twine, put it under arbitrary pressure and put it in the refrigerator for several hours.

The finished pressed meat from the pork head should be served on the table, first cut into pieces and sprinkled generously with herbs.

To prepare pressed meat, you can use not only pig heads, but also legs. For variety, you can also add any poultry meat. For the standard version with pork you will need the following ingredients:

• 2.5 kilograms of pork legs;
• 2 carrots;
• 1 potato;
• 3 bay leaves;
• 5 sprigs of cloves;
• a tablespoon of peppercorns;
• 2 onions;
• 5 cloves of garlic;
• salt;
• several stalks of dill;
• 2 tablespoons of gelatin powder;
• 1 tablespoon honey;
• a couple of juniper branches and 10 berries of this plant.

The work starts with the most important thing:

1. rinse, clean and dry with a cloth.
2. Then brush them with honey and let them sit for 15 minutes.
3. Place the legs tightly in a saucepan, add water and slowly bring to a boil.
4. Skim the foam from the broth, and then add the chopped vegetables and other ingredients. Cook the legs in this composition for at least 3 hours.
5. After this, remove the skin from the legs and cut off the meat.
6. Line the prepared pan with pieces of leather.
7. Grind the meat, mix with gelatin and place on top of the skin in a mold. Make several such layers. Cover everything on top with skin again.
8. Close the mold, place a weight on it and leave it in this position for a whole day.

The result is very tasty pressed meat, which is well known in Norwegian cuisine. Scandinavians eat it with toast or special flatbreads, topped with sour cream and dill sauce. But everyone can decide for themselves what to eat such a delicious dish with.

Equipment in everyday life

Technology is increasingly coming to help housewives in the kitchen. Designers are developing new devices that can make work in the kitchen easier. One such mechanism is the ham maker. It makes cooking much easier. A special recipe has been developed for each dish. Pressed meat, for example, is very convenient to make using this device. It is not necessary to take the head. For preparation, you can use the following ingredients: carrots, spices, sweet pepper and 2 eggs.

Everything is prepared in two steps:

1. Cut the meat, carrots and peppers into pieces, mix and set aside for a while (2 hours) so that the products are lightly marinated.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and mix everything again.
3. Line the ham pan with foil and place the prepared mixture in it. Cover the device with a lid and place in a deep frying pan. Poke holes in the marked holes and pour a glass of plain water into the pan. Place the structure in the oven for 1.5 hours.

After cooling, the finished product can be removed from the device and safely served. This aromatic meat product can be placed on bread in the form of a sandwich or served in a plate with a vegetable side dish.

Wide choice

Any housewife can decide for herself how to make pressed meat. It all depends on the availability of products and auxiliary equipment in the kitchen. If you don’t have a standard ham maker at hand, you can always cook the meat in regular cling film. It is better to take a simpler recipe. For this option, the following set of products is suitable: 1.2 kilograms of pork, a glass of water, spices, 3 tablespoons of gelatin, salt, a little garlic and onions (if desired).

The dish is prepared in the usual way:

1. Cut the meat into large pieces and place in a pan. Then fill it with water and put it on fire. During cooking, add salt, onion and pepper.
2. At this time, dilute the gelatin with cold water and set aside to swell.
3. Remove the finished meat from the hot broth into a separate plate and let it cool. Then carefully separate each piece into fibers. Add chopped garlic to the meat.
4. Dilute the prepared gelatin with a little hot broth.
5. Moisten the baking dish with water and line the inside with film.
6. Pour some gelatin onto the bottom and place some of the meat and garlic on top. Continue to lay out in the same order until all the products are gone. There must be gelatin on top.
7. Wrap the resulting mixture with the edges of the film and place a weight on top. Place this design in the refrigerator for 10-12 hours.

The meat should be served on the table generously sprinkled with herbs.

When choosing fresh meat at markets, many deliberately avoid stalls where pig heads are sold. At the same time, culinary connoisseurs, on the contrary, try to buy a pig's head, because it is a real delicacy! With skill, you can prepare many delicious dishes from it, and their cost will be much cheaper than from ordinary meat. Now we will look at the simplest options that any housewife who knows how to cook a little bit is capable of.

Aspic

The simplest and most incredibly tasty and versatile dish immediately comes to mind - jellied meat, popularly called jelly. Preparation begins with the head being washed well, divided into a number of parts; many, by the way, if there is a suitable container, are placed whole, filled with water and boiled. The pork head should be well boiled, so this one will take about five hours from the moment of boiling; if you cook on a regular stove, it will take a little less.

The scale that will form is removed. The cooked meat will separate well from the bones. Directly with your hands they remove everything into one container, including the tongue, ears, brain, in this case it is not time to talk about disgust, because this is the most delicious thing in the head, even in many expensive restaurants, dishes prepared from these “elements” are considered the most expensive! Afterwards, the bones are thrown away, and the meat is disassembled into small fiber pieces and dumped into one basin. Add the strained broth in which the meat was cooked and bring to a boil. If there is practically no liquid, you need to add just a little fresh boiling water. Add salt, pepper, bay leaf and almost before boiling, add a little chopped garlic or onion.

The boiled mass is evenly packaged into portioned containers or ordinary cups, taking the jellied meat to a cool place, for example, on the veranda. After cooling, the jellied meat is ready, all that remains is to remove the fat that has floated to the surface and serve.

Homemade brawn

Homemade brawn is very tasty, which, like jellied meat, is prepared from pork head meat that has already been cooked and removed from the bones. In this case, it is not torn into fibers, but chopped into very small pieces with a knife. Combine with a small amount of garlic, salt, pepper, and spices. All additional ingredients are used solely to your taste; you can add something else or, conversely, leave it out.

After stirring, the meat mass is put into a bag and sent to a cool place, preferably under a little pressure, to harden. The result should be a kind of meat briquette, which only needs to be cut before serving.

Sausage

Pig's head makes a very tasty homemade sausage. Its preparation, like the previous dishes, will take very little time, except for cooking the head itself. The meat separated from the bone is passed through a meat grinder, along with pieces of garlic. The resulting minced meat is peppered, salted, and spices can be added. Now, if you have equipment for making homemade sausage, put everything there. If not, then the minced meat is simply placed in small portions in bags and given the shape of small sausages, which we usually buy in the store.

Knowing how tasty and “exotic” the “components” of a pig’s head are considered, you can completely use them separately! For example, fried cheeks, boiled and fried pig ears, and baked pork tongue will turn out very tasty. Even the brain is considered an ideal ingredient for some dishes! The main thing is to rinse it all well before starting cooking, peel it if necessary, and after boiling, be especially careful so that small bones do not get into the dish, which, in principle, can be noticed when chopping regular meat, and not just a pig’s head!

In addition, meat taken from a pig's head is perfect for baking, making vegetable rolls and even cutlets. If a banquet is being prepared for a large number of people, then the head can simply be boiled in spices and served as an independent dish with some appropriate sauce! Try to cook anything from the offer, and you will be pleasantly surprised at how quickly these dishes sell out!