Pretty much the title. We bought a pig, not knowing about boar taint so didn’t inquire about the state of the pig (gender, age) beforehand. First cook and it’s heavily present.
Will trimming off all the fat and boning it help mitigate the taint (and crossing my fingers here so hard it hurts) or remove it altogether? Anyone have experience on this problem?
Defatting and deboning won’t help much, the taste/smell impregnates into the meat. Instead I’d recommend marinading:
- add enough water to comfortably cover all the meat
- add 10g salt and the juice of half lime for each kilogram of meat plus water
- massage the meat a bit in the marinade
- leave it overnight, in the fridge for at least 12h
Feel free to add other stuff to the marinade, like herbs, garlic, onions, ginger, oil, etc. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to discard that marinade water, you can’t really reduce it into a sauce, so anything that you add there will go to waste. (If you must, marinade it twice)
Got this trick from helping out rural relatives butchering pigs. They often raised the pigs to adulthood, and sometimes they forgot to castrate a boar or two.
I’ve never eaten boar. What does this “taint” taste like?
It’s like old piss. When I did the first cook in the air fryer was the worst experience cooking I’ve ever had. It started out great and then the fat started to render releasing the hormones and punted that out the vent with malicious intent… I’m convinced boar taint is why pork is considered unclean in many cultures and religions around the world, because it’s, uh, pretty damn bad.
Also, boar is just male big that made it to puberty/adulthood before the butcher.
I haven’t tried the lime brine yet as I’m still recovering mentally, but hoping once I’m out of Thanksgiving leftovers I’ll be ready.
I’m convinced boar taint is why pork is considered unclean in many cultures and religions around the world, because it’s, uh, pretty damn bad.
Woah that’s fucking interesting.
I never considered that. Also just hearing about boar taint.
Damn that sounds awful and that’s super interesting about what you said about pork being “unclean” probably really is something to that.
I’ve never heard of this either, I had to check Wikipedia. Apparently it’s caused by two chemicals from boar balls, one is “sweaty” tasting and one is “fecal”.
Somewhere between the balls and ass, hence “taint”… got it.
Lol I didn’t even mean that, it’s literally what wiki said hahaha
But it’s just too perfect now I read it again 🤣
