Is it possible to remove or drastically mitigate boar taint?
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?
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”.
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.
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.
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