Rillettes — potted meat

Another traditional Loire Valley food product is called rillettes, or potted meat. The English term "potted" is kind of unfortunate, don't you think? We Anglo-Americans have a way of making good food sound unappetizing without meaning to, I guess. I think it's because we are so squeamish about food in general.

The French word rillettes sounds a lot better. Pronounce it [ree-YET]. If you want an American equivalent, think Deviled Ham. But that product is so full of spices and chemicals that you'd never even know it is made with meat! Again, it's "deviled" — that can't be good, can it? It's evil.

I got these rillettes from a vendor at the market in Saint-Aignan.
His shop is in Angé, a village about 5 miles west on the Cher river.

Rillettes are usually made from pork here in the Loire, but you can also buy or make rillettes of duck, goose, rabbit, or chicken. I bought some rillettes de porc to serve to our friends from California last weekend, because I was trying to serve mostly local foods.

According to the web site of a major producer of this kind of potted pork, rillettes were first made in the Touraine. But the best known rillettes today are made in Le Mans, the city famous for car races that is an hour or two north of Tours in the area called the Sarthe.

On the back of the container, some pigs are having a pro-rillettes
demonstration. "Up with rillettes", their sign says. "Oh, to be
made into rillettes by traditional and artisanal methods," says the pig.

In fact, there is a local rivalry, and some people enjoy the debate over the relative merits of rillettes du Mans and rillettes de Tours. Our neighbor Bernard says he and his hunting buddies have such a debate every year, since they hunt in the forests and fields between the two cities and the hunters come together from the two areas. They bring rillettes for their mid-day picnic (and bread and wine too, I'm sure).

Bernard says that the Tours-style rillettes are meatier, less fatty, and not cooked quite as long. He prefers that texture, in which the chunks of meat are left more nearly intact.

The best way to understand what rillettes are like, if you've never had them, is to realize that American-style tuna salad is called, in French, rillettes de thon. The tuna in tuna salad, like the pork or other meat in rillettes, is cooked until it starts to fall apart. It's shredded.

Here are the ingredients in the locally made rillettes:
lean and fat of pork; seasonings.

Then it's put up in fat — mayonnaise in the case of tuna (mayonnaise is an emulsion of vegetable oil and eggs or egg yolks), and pork, duck, or goose fat in the case of potted meat. Rillettes, like tuna salad, are easy to eat because they are spreadable, and they're good eaten on bread or toast or in sandwiches.

In the old days, before modern refrigeration, rillettes were made in the fall when hogs were slaughtered on the farm. Smoking the meat was one way of preserving the meat so that it would last over the winter. Making sausages, which could also be smoked, was another method of preserving the meat. Another was to pack it in salt. And another, in France, was making rillettes, which were packed in crocks and covered with a layer of fat that protected the meat from air and mold.

I bought these duck rillettes at the supermarket.
They aren't local, but they are good. They're 70% duck.

Making rillettes requires long, slow cooking the pork or other meat in fat and liquid. Six hours or more of cooking is not too much. Here's a well-known chef's recipe that I found on the web and a link to the French site:

Jacques Thorel's recipe for rillettes

• 4½ lbs. of pork breast
• 4½ lbs. of lean raw ham
• 1¼ lbs. of lard
• 2 cups of water
• 1 cup of white wine
• 1 Tbs. salt
• 1 Tbs. black pepper

1. Cut all the pork into 1-inch cubes.
2. In a thick-bottomed pot, bring the water to a boil. Add the lard and the cubed pork.
3. Cover the pot and put in in a water bath in a 220ºF oven for six hours. Stir the pot frequently with a wooden spatula.
4. When the meat starts to fall apart, it's done. Pour on the white wine and let the meat cook for another hour.
5. Take the pot out of the oven and stir and shred the meat.
6. Put the meat into ramekins or jars while it is still hot. Store in the refrigerator.

Here's what rillettes look like in the container.

If you are in the U.S., you need to find fresh pork that has a sufficient quantity of fat to make good rillettes. I remember when I needed pork fat to make sausages in San Francisco. I had a hard time finding any. Finally, at Tower Market, I talked to one of the butchers. He brought out a big pan of fat that had been trimmed off the meat they were selling. I said that was exactly what I needed. He gave it to me free and wouldn't let me pay him when I tried. For him, it was something to discard. Ah là là !

The "industrially made" rillettes have a longer list of ingredients:
duck (70%) including lean meat, fat, and connective tissue*;
pork, including lean meat, fat, and connective tissue*;
sea salt, salt, pepper, and E250 (a preservative).

How do you eat rillettes? Cold, spread on bread or toast. Or in a sandwich. The traditional accompaniment is the little sour gherkins called cornichons in French. Any sour or even dill pickle, or pickled onions, would also be good.
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* I assume that "connective tissue," aka "conjunctive tissue" (conjonctif de canard, conjonctif de porc) is listed as an ingredient because of European regulations. The local rillettes surely contain it too, even if it is not listed. Again, it's not very appetizing, but here's a definition I found on the web: the tissue found in nearly all parts of most animals. It yields gelatin on boiling, and consists of variously arranged fibers which are imbedded protoplasmic cells, or corpuscles; - called also cellular tissue and connective tissue. Adipose or fatty tissue is one of its many forms, and cartilage and bone are sometimes included by the phrase.