8 parts of the pig you may have overlooked (2024)

The pig is one of Louisiana's most important animals.

It's where boudin, cracklins, andouille and tasso come from. Pork is often a key ingredient in gumbos, jambalayas and red beans and rice.

But there are so many parts of the pig that are overlooked by everyday cooks.

Almost every piece can be consumed — from the diaphragm in fresseurs (or innards) stew to the brain in a garlic-and-onion omelet. There are many tasty piggy parts that you won't find at your everyday grocery store.

We sat down with a couple of people who might know more about pig anatomy than they do the human body.

Toby Rodriguez has made a career out of his public slaughtering business Lache Pas Boucherie et Cuisine, and Manny Augello spends his days creating unique dishes from piggy parts at his restaurant Bread & Circus Provisions.

Each one has a respect for the animal that is demonstrated through careful use of every body part.

"I can't say that I have one favorite part of the pig," Rodriguez, an Acadiana native, says. "I wish I did, but I love them all. I'm an equal opportunity pig eater."

Augello, who grew up in Sicily but has lived in south Louisiana most of his adult life, comes from a long line of cooks, farmers and artisans.

He creates new dishes at his restaurant based on parts of the pig he needs to use. That's how Augello started deep frying shelled peanuts in pig lard for a dish on his Saturday brunch menu.

"The pig comes with his own first aid kit for the kitchen, basically," he says. "It can be used so many different ways in so many different dishes."

Here are a few of parts of the pig you may have overlooked.

You probably won't find these at chain supermarkets, but you can likely purchase these piggy parts at your local meat market or slaughterhouse.

Braised in a tomato-wine sauce, this unlikely pig part becomes a surprisingly tender piece of meat.

"The tail is very long and very thin," says Augello. "And you don't realize there's anything in it. But once you cook it for six to eight hours, there's a certain level of magic that works its way out of it."

Pig blood is most commonly associated with boudin noir (or blood boudin) in Louisiana, but there are many other uses for pig blood in cooking.

"You can do a blood-liver souffle or a blood-liver mousse," says Rodriguez. "Recently, I did a chocolate-blood-liver mousse. Then there's blood pudding and blood sausages. It's something that is used in other cultures. It's not an oddity elsewhere. It used to not be an oddity here, but now there are restrictions and laws put on slaughterhouses."

Blood and blood products now have to be pasteurized and have lost some of their popularity, according to Rodriguez. What he refers to as "fresh blood" isn't available unless you're attending an actual animal butchering.

The ears typically go into a pot to make a hog's head cheese due to their gelatinous nature. At Bread & Circus, Augello uses the ears as part of the hog's head cheese, as a topping for shrimp and grits or as a sauce thickener.

"After a quick boil, the ears get pickled in cider vinegar with things like juniper berry or sometimes molasses, depending on how we feel," he says. "Once they're pickled for about a week, we shred them very thin and use them in things like our shrimp and grits. It gives a similar taste as if you were to throw in bacon or tasso, but you'd never suspect that it's a pig ear."

A pig's feet are typically tossed into the hog's head cheese pot as well because they, too, are gelatinous and are vital to solidifying the cold cut.

"The four trotters — the feet, same thing — are boiled with the head until there is nothing left but bones," Rodriguez says. "And that's what's used to get the head cheese to congeal."

Even if you completely clean the meat off the bone as you take apart a pig, you can still rub the pig bones in tasso seasoning, soak them in soy sauce and rice vinegar and cook them down to pull every ounce of flavor from the bones.

"You cook them down until it becomes a glaze," Augello says. "It becomes a hell of a chicken wing glaze. We use it for our Thai wings."

Traditional Cajun and Creole cuisine uses a layer of the vigorously cleaned small intestines of a pig as a casing for boudin and sausage. Similarly, a layer of the cleaned large intestines is traditionally used as a casing for andouille.

"That's the reason andouille has a larger radius than boudin or sausage," Rodriguez says.

Both Rodriguez and Augello still use the natural pig intestine casing when crafting their boudins and sausages, although many in the area have switched over to using artificial casings made from materials such as collagen and plastic.

The stomach is typically washed and cleaned then stuffed with ground pieces of other parts of the pig.

In the Acadiana prairie — Eunice, Mamou, Ville Platte — the stomach is traditionally smoked and referred to as ponce. In the Acadiana watershed — Lafayette, Breaux Bridge, St. Martinville — the stomach traditionally isn't smoked and is referred to as chaudin.

"This guy right here," Augello says as he holds a dripping stomach that has just been soaked in baking-soda water, "will swell up to about three times this size. You'll end up with a really massive sausage, and then it's smoked for hours and hours and hours."

Augello uses his smoked stomach to create a spicy ponce and pineapple pizza for the restaurant.

Pork tongue can be cooked down and served up a number of ways after the skin is removed. It is sometimes found in stews or in other dishes.

"Most of the time beef tongue is what's being talked about because it's larger," says Rodriguez. "But to me, pork tongue taste-wise is far superior. You can put that in the fresseurs or make tacos out of it."