Wild Boar

We often receive gifts of excess produce from a local hunt, Fiona sometimes works at a local cheese factory and the two brothers who own the business both hunt. Now while I would like to preserve wildlife as much as possible control of the hunt in France is done very well to preserve enough wild life populations from one season to the next and on in to the future this makes it sustainable. The quality of the meat is also excellent so we never refuse gifts of hunted meat so long as it comes from an official source.

So yesterday Fiona came home with a whole wild boar in the back of the car its been hanging in a fridge at work for a week so its well chilled and nice and dry ready for skinning and butchering. The hunters have already eviscerated it for me so I don’t have that truly messy job to do.

You can see its a good size, I took the easy option for transportation to the outside kitchen where we usually process our own livestock. Here it is ready to start operations, first I will cut off his feet and then skin him leaving a clean carcase.

Once I’ve skinned him and removed the skin to the compost heap along with the feet, now he is ready for butchering.

We have dinner guests on Saturday so I will keep one leg for that as a roasting joint, shoulders for roasts boned off the ribs and the midsection boned too. Here it is laid out with not much left to do, pack the legs and shoulders as they are dice the skirt and cut the sirloin in two. The bones will be roasted and then boiled to make stock fit for a king and then given to the best dog in the world.

But you say what happened to the best bits the offal and the fillet (fillet mingon) well the butcher does deserve some perks you know! So I get to keep the kidneys and the fillet for my dinner tonight it only seems fair.

Sautéed in our own lard with pinch of paprika, salt and a splash of brandy accompanied by butter nut squash chips, a meal fit for a king.

The rest of the boar was split half for us and half for Vanda a colleague of Fiona’s, may we all eat like kings.