02 August 2016

Connaissez-vous « la caghuse » ?

La caghuse was new to me when I saw it prepared on one of Julie Andrieu's cooking and food shows, Les Carnets de Julie, a couple of months ago. It's a speciality of the Picardy region in the north of France, and it consists of pork cooked with onions, cider or wine, and a little bit of vinegar.

The cut of pork that you use might be unfamiliar to you too, but it is very commonly available and very affordable here in the supermarkets. It's usually called « une rouelle de porc » or « une rouelle de jambon ». It's one of the leanest cuts of pork — a slice of the ham or back leg of the pig. When I say "ham" I mean fresh raw pork, which needs to be cooked, not cured ham like « jambon de Paris », « jambon de Bayonne » or prosciutto (a.k.a. « jambon de Parme »).


A big slice of fresh pork leg can be an inch or two thick and can weigh between 2 and 3 pounds — or more. The rouelle I used weighed in at nearly 2 kg (at least 4 lbs.). The other main ingredient in the caghuse is onion, and you need a lot: at least a pound or, better, 1½ lbs. That's a dozen smallish onions or six to eight large ones. Here's a recipe in French.

You can make caghuse in a slow-cooker or crock pot, or in the oven. All you do is put about half the onions, sliced, into the bottom of the crock or baking dish, with some butter or vegetable oil. Lay the oval-shaped rouelle (or some other cut of lean pork) over the onion slices and then cover it with another layer of sliced onions. Add salt and pepper, a bay leaf or two and some dried thyme, and then pour on half a cup or so of apple cider or white wine, half a cup of chicken broth, and a splash of vinegar.


Turn on the slow-cooker or oven and let the pork and onions cook at low temperature for 6 to 8 hours (or on high in the slow-cooker for 4 or 5 hours) — until the pork is starting to fall apart and the onions are completely "stewed" or confits. Eat the caghuse hot out of the pot or oven or let it cool down and serve it at room temperature. If you want to put it in the refrigerator overnight you can serve it as a tender, cold terrine, almost like a pâté, the next day. The slow-cooked, melted-down onions give the meat a very nice, almost sweet flavor.


I made caghuse when CHM was here in July. Part of his family comes from the Picardy region, so it was appropriate and interesting to him as well as Walt and me. We ate it hot the first day, and then we ate some cold out of the fridge — at room temperature, really — a couple of days later. It was hard to say which way was better. It would be good eaten with Dijon mustard as a condiment either way.


The fresh ham slice weighed 4 lbs., as I said, so we still had leftovers. A few days later, I shredded the rest of the caghuse and cooked the pork with its accompanying onions in a pan with a little bit of hot North Carolina barbecue sauce, which is vinegar-based (no tomato). I added some hot red pepper flakes and we ate it as "barbecue" with cooked kale from the garden and gratin de macaroni (mac and cheese). That was good too.

19 comments:

  1. That dish was new to me, because, as I understand it, it comes from the western part of Picardy, whereas my father's family comes from the eastern part!
    It was really delicious and the meat was, actually, melting in your mouth. The cold version was also very good!

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    1. LOL ! I was wrong about the area where caghuse originates. According to Wikipedia, it comes from the eastern part of Picardy! What threw me off, I guess, is that the lady in the Carnets de Julie uses cider which is a staple in Normandy the region closest to western Picardy. In the eastern part of Picardy they brew beer, no cider. As I said before, you learn something new every day!

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    2. The Wiki article mentions Aisne versions of caghuse with vegetables and Soissons versions with légumes secs (haricots de...)

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  2. Here's a link to the show where Julie Andrieu helps a Picard woman prepare her version of caghuse and gives a recipe.

    Your explanation of the western provenance of Picard caghuse reminds me of the vast difference there is between Eastern North Carolina barbecued pork and the Western N.C. version. There's no comparison.

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  3. In my old age I'm starting to prefer your BBQ sauce and I bet it would be very good with this cagese of yours.

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    1. It was very good with the tender pork and onions. Not too spicy, but with that little edge the vinegar gives it.

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  4. and it ends up tasting more like ham or more like pulled pork?

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    1. Well it's fresh pork, not cured, so it's more like pulled pork than country ham. The onions lend flavor and moisture. Didn't you eat fresh ham growing up? We did in Morehead City.

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  5. So, Ken, did you make it in the slow cooker, or in the oven? If you were making it in the slow cooker, it seems like you would need to reduce the amount of liquid you start off with, because the slow cooker creates so much liquid. I just can't seem get good results when I use the slow cooker, because the liquid throws me off. What did you do?

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    1. I usually take the meat and vegetables (onions in this case) out of the cooker using a slotted spoon (écumoire) and then pour the cooking liquid into a saucepan and reduce it over high heat on the stovetop before pouring it back over all as a seasoning. The reduced liquid is all flavor, and you can degrease it if you want.

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    2. Oh, that makes sense!
      In the video, they add, vinaigre d'alcool.... would you say that any kind of wine vinegar would work? or apple cider vinegar? I imagine it's not a big deal what kind you use. Also, do you remember... it seems like she heated that first... maybe reduced it a little?

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    3. Cider vinegar would be a good choice. Or a wine vinegar that you like. I don't think heating the vinegar itself would matter -- why not heat up all the liquids at that point? Since cooking the meat and onions in the crock pot makes so much liquid, why not reduce all of it separately at the end of the cooking process?

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    4. Thank you Ken, the removal and reduction is a good tip for the slow cooker...
      I can think of many other recipes that need that!

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  6. Never heard of "caghuse"....
    but, boy, that looks really scrummy...
    I can almost imagine the smell!!
    This is a good excuse to buy a rouelle....
    I can't make out from the pix if you left the skin on or not?

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    1. I left the "rind" on the ham slice, but I made vertical cuts in it so that the piece of pork wouldn't curl up as it cooked. Actually, the rind releases a lot of collagen/gelatin into the cooking liquid, enriching it. The rouelles are often available at very good prices.

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