The National Pork Board has been touting pork as "the other white meat" for decades, providing low fat pork to the American public. In the last fifteen years the average pork chop has about the same amount of fat as skinless chicken breast. The only problem is that while being low fat, it is also low taste, just like that pasty white, mushy chicken breast. In many cases the pork has no taste at all. You try to fry up a chop and you end up having to add lots of fats or oils to brown it, and if you aren't careful you end up with a tough, dry, and flavorless hunk of inedible pseudo-pig on your plate.

Pork isn't supposed to be white, or even light pink. It should be a light red meat, but commercial pork producers have been breeding lower and lower fat hogs for decades, and it hit it's apex a few years ago. The fat and flavor ratios are so low in today's commercial pork that my local A&P / Food Emporium doesn't carry much in the way of untreated raw pork, only pre-brined, chemical laden and flavored raw pork. Brining is soaking raw meat for several hours to days or even weeks in a mix of water, salt, phosphates, and other chemicals and flavorings. It is used to add moisture and flavor to meat that has had all the fat, and so all flavor, bred right out of it. You also end up with the pork absorbing up to 10% water, a cheap way for pork producers to charge more for less meat per pound.

Now I'm not adverse to brining per se, it's just that I'm the one who wants to do the brining. A well brined piece of meat can be completely luscious, adding hints of spice, salt, and sweetness. It's when the meat is soaked in chemicals and pumped with water that gets my goat, or pork.

Well, those in the know look for the other red meat, Heritage Pork. It may be a bit pricier, but the incredible flavor is worth it. The meat has enough fat marbled through it that it cooks up juicy without adding any fat to the pan, and the flavor is tenfold that of the "white meat" pork substitutes. So brining isn't needed, or even wanted, with meat this tasty and juicy. You can now get pure bred, heritage pig strains like Berkshire pork (what is called Kurobuta pork / Black Pig in Japan), Chester White, Duroc, Hampshire, Landrace, Poland China, Spotted, and Yorkshire pork.

I've been a big fan of heritage pork for a long time. I was lucky enough to spend childhood summers exposed to farms and animals and have worked on farms here and there. I seek out and pay a premium for the best pork (and beef, chicken, lamb, goat, etc.) that I can find. If at all possible organic and humanely raised as well. If you haven't tried any of these new, old breeds of pork, then you are in for a treat. Once you taste it you will have a difficult time going back to the other stuff. Also, while they may have a bit more fat that the commercial crud, it isn't off the charts, and it is actually relatively healthy, mostly unsaturated fat. Now if I can only get my greasy hands on some of the endangered, but in the process of being revived, Red Wattle pork mentioned in the following article. Mmmm, I betcha it's tasty stuff.