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Just got my first Wildhog they told me to cook it for hours. I love my steaks rare. Can I cook it to medium rare on the grill?
No Sir. Hogs, especially wild hogs carry many types of internal parasites and diseases.
Yep. Be smart not sick. God Bless
Throughout my high school years I worked for a farm veterinarian.
I've eaten about everything medium to well done ever since.
Especially wild game...REALLY especially for any pork, and poultry.
Pork rare? Mmm think we'll done for any pork wild or not??????
No pork sushi for me either! Cook it slow and low, covered helps keep it moist too.
Absolutely not! It will crawl off your plate if not well done!
Wild pork should be cooked to kill trichinosis. That's no longer necessary for domestic pork. They get it from eating raw meat. That used to be a problem even for domestic swine when many were fed garbage. Anymore, domestic swine are on a vegetarian/processed diet.
Pink/rose in the middle is the way to go for pork. Just get it hot enough to kill any trich and enjoy. Pork and fresh homemade crabapple sauce....... Mmmmmmmmm. Makes me wish we had wild boar in our woods.
I like my wild hog in the ground........
But the coyotes usually dig them up.
Pig Doc. Good advice, IF you bother to use a meat thermometer. Many of us don't. For pork, I generally use still pink inside for domestic, and just cooked through for free range.
It's all about internal temp. Once it hits the recommended temp for a few minutes (no more than five), it's done. No need to make it brown shoe leather.
Don - Forget it. You don't want to take the risk. Just ship that hog to me. I will dispose of it properly utilizing some sherry-mushroom sauce and maybe a good, cold beer.
Grab a meat thermometer and go with the Pig Doc's directions.
Color, either of the meat itself or the juice running from it, is not a reliable indicator of cook temperature for meat..see any serious food safety publication. Suggested pork cooking temperature (Was Legally required for meat sold in a restaurant) was removed several years ago for DOMESTIC, commercially raised, pork. It's still a very good idea for wild pork and bear due to trichinosis.
Ditto pig doc. Get a thermapen if you like to cook meat.....worth its weight in gold. You'll never eat dry chicken, pork, or ruin a steak again!
never got a steak from a hog, but some good advice on here
have seen some nasty hogs after cutting, not worth attempting to eat, but a quick kill on a clean one will produce some good pork
the gadget looks like a good one Doc
Pigdoc
What temps to you recommend for good medium rare steaks (beef and venison) ?
I need to look into the thermapen. Always something else to buy!!
Buffalo1, There are plenty of temp guides online for meat doneness. Just remember, the temp will continue to rise a bit after you pull it away from the heat source. For medium rare, I will pull off at 125 deg. for a thinner cut, 130 for a thicker cut but I'd rather have it too rare than too well.
Here's the guide for male vs. female...
140-145 and take it off, rest it about 10 minutes and it will be fine
That Thermopen looks great, put an order in for one this morning. Look forward to trying it out.
yes, you can cook it as rare as you like it, but beware of the risk you are incurring.
Well, I assumed certain things. One being a guy isn't coming on here to ask how to cook a piece of pork he got from the butcher. Two, no one said cook pork to shoe leather composition. I know being the internet and all, you get things going in a different direction in a blink of an eye. But, it gets old having to type an essay.
Midwest, I follow you brother. On the way to eat beef and a women's idea of how to cook it. My wife is banished from the grill or any piece of Red Meat for the very reason that chart gives. After eating it the way I fix it, she as agreed it is much better. But, the poor thing just can't get it cooked right. God Bless
Good stuff guys! Thanks! New thread coming....
No doubt. I'll have mine rare please (Beef/venison. Pig Doc's advice is good.
My mom cuts the fat off of beef steaks before cooking and my wife throws left-overs away after a day!
The only problem with mold on your food is that you have to scrape some of it off before you eat it!
Thanx for the link Pig Doc, I got one.
Buy a Thermapen! Everyone buy one! Just like Pig Doc says...can't even image cooking without one. It'll change your life. Ok maybe I'm overstating it now, but really they are awesome.
as pig doc says, go to medium, minimum 145 internal
Pig Doc, can you tell us your qualifications? Are you a veterinarian?
Your advice ( on this thread and others) seems spot on, but I would just like to know if your handle is informative- Thank you
And, no offense. I mean, I have never shot a bull....
Bullshooter
"can't even image cooking without one. It'll change your life."
You guys are hilarious! People have been cooking for thousands of years without an electronic thing-a ma-jingy. My problem is not that I can't tell when my food is done the way I want, it's that I usually don't stand there watching it every second until it is. Does this pen have a wifi connection to a buzzer in my head that alerts me when it's perfectly cooked.
Pig Doc is more than qualified. He is a Dr. of Animal Science with a long background in the food production industry and had been a poster her for many years. He knows of what he speaks... I think I'm going to get one of those doo-hickeys, too.
Like PigDoc stated above, pork needs to be cooked to 145 degrees to meet the minimum recommendation. When cooking on a grill however, it's hard to achieve 145 in the center of a roast/chop without overcooking the rest of it.
I'm one of those people who will send a steak back if it's rare. When I ask for a blue steak, I expect my meat to be cool in the center and not warm, so I am a bit of a meat snob when it comes to properly prepared meat...especially wild game. If you're the same way, then I suggest investing a little bit of money in a sous vide device. In my opinion it's the ONLY way to cook meat without overcooking it. It really shines when it comes to wild game. It cooks the meat evenly without overcooking it. I've left backstraps in the pouch for six hours and had it come out perfectly juicy and rare. It's perfect for pork! You set the target temperature and then walk away. I cook almost all of our meat this way now.
Bon appetit!
-Cheryl
The other thing you guys can do is learn how your stove and grills cook. Once you master that you can use time for most meat.
Then again I am a total meat snob so any animal over 3 is meant for burger, braising and roasts. Young'ens get the royal treatment.
Wild hogs - have cooked many and would never mess with anything that isn't cooked well. Pig D. is a man after my own heart - nice piece of machinery there.
Other thing to have in kitchen is an electric pressure cooker (no not a canner). It's great at cooking roasts and other tough pieces with minimal liquid and maximum effectiveness.
"You guys are hilarious! People have been cooking for thousands of years without an electronic thing-a ma-jingy."
I bet these same morons that use the electronic thing-a-ma-jingy shoot compound bows too!
If you don't cook trad, you're not a real cook!
;-)
The Therma Pen is a fine quality digital thermometer, they're tough, durable, and reliable. They're also reasonably priced, (under $100) and will sell direct to consumer. If you do a lot of cooking game meat, you WILL up your game in both safety and quality by getting a good digital thermocouple (such as the Therma Pen) and learning to use it.
You can go ahead and cook it to well done.... but have a jar of applesauce or some other sauce or it's gonna be like eating sawdust.... I usually take it off at 130-135 and let it rest to 140-145 MAX, a touch of pink in it and not white/grey. They kill a LOT of pigs around here and I have NEVER heard of anyone getting sick from it being under cooked. Maybe different on the mainland, lots of things there that we don't have here, rabies, etc.
I know the professionals have to stay within guidelines, and they are likely right with them to get things to 110% safe, needing to come down within margins of error on the safety side. But the wild pig here, especially the mountain pigs, are very lean, easy to overcook. Never any problems going rare.... inedible overcooked....
Safe to say that makes you the leading expert on this thread. I'm getting a Therma Pen....
I'm nowhere near as qualified as PigDoc on the subject, but I've been a professional Food Safety Inspector and Instructor for over 20 years, I've literally lived off of, and raised 4 kids on, game meats of all types, for 30 years, and I approve his message :)
Thanks Pig Doc. Good to know
I currently have a less expensive meat thermometer but like the Therma Pen (apparently) it is made partly of plastic. That is what I don't like about it. I am afraid to expose it to too much heat on the grill.
Thoughts?
The Therma-Pens aren't heat-proof, but I temp things on the grill, on cooktops, in large commercial pots, etc. and it'll stand a LOT more heat than my hands will.
I have also run them thru commercial dish machines at 180 degrees F plus and they did fine (NOT recommended by the manufacturer, but mine have held up for hundreds of trips thru)
I've dropped mine on concrete floors, asphalt parking lots, stepped on them, and left them in hot cars all day, never an issue.
I use my ThermaPens every work day, all day long, for ten years, and I'm getting 3-5 years out of them. Eventually the switch that turns the display off and on when folding and unfolding will stop working.
My schools kitchens (I inspect 14 school cafeteria kitchens in two Counties) all have 2-4 Thermapens in their tool kits, they've had the same service life.
What this means is that for normal household service, they should last a decade or more, easily.
Pig Doc
Since you are an expert, what do you think about using a -40F freezer and putting pig meat in it over 24 hours. I have a lab tech friend who works in a lab testing all sorts of nasty bugs who says meat in such a freezer will kill tapeworm, roundworm, just about any parasite.
I don't know if the standard 0F freezer is going to kill all parasites, even over an extended period.
IMO cooking wild game past any pink generally means a tough chew unless low/slow cooked with moisture to where the connective tissue starts to let go.
home freezers aren't temperature reliable enough (especially self-defrosters) to kill trichina parasites, the rule is holding CONTINUOUS -30 F for 72 hours, tracked by datalogger, if the temp bumps up over -30F during the 72 hours, you start over. So, essentiall "ditto" PigDoc, home freezing isn't reliable, use cook temp to inactivate parasites.
Here is APHIS data on cold-processing for Trichina, BUT keep in mind, this is for commercial freezers which can be continuously and reliably monitored for temp.
Freezing - Experiments have been performed to determine the effect of cold temperatures on the survival of T. spiralis in pork. Predicted times required to kill trichinae were 8 minutes at -20° C (-4° F), 64 minutes at -15° C (5° F), and 4 days at -10° C (14° F). Trichinae were killed instantaneously at -23.3° C (-10° F). The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Code of Federal Regulations, requires that pork intended for use in processed products be frozen at -17.8° C (0° F) for 106 hours, at -20.6° C (-5° F) for 82 hours, at -23.3° C (-10° F) for 63 hours, at -26.1° C
(-15° F) for 48 hours, at -28.9° C (-20° F) for 35 hours, at -31.7° C (-25° F) for 22 hours, at
-34.5° C (-30° F) for 8 hours, and at -37.2° C (-35° F) for 0.5 hours. These extended times take into account the amount of time required for temperature to equalize within the meat along with a margin of safety.
I am a really good cook and without a doubt a meat thermometer is a great tool. If you do not see why then you are not a very good cook. There's a reason the pros use them!
