In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with one of my favorite people in the whole wide world of food, chef and author Jesse Daidue. We talk about his new book, "Chef's Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Pigs: A Chef's Guide To Hunting, Butchery, And Cooking Wild Foods" and how he got started in his career as a chef. We also talk about what it's like to be a chef and why it's important to have a good relationship with your staff. I think you're going to love this episode, and I hope you do too! Joe's new book is out now, The Hog Book, which is a cookbook about hunting, butchering and cooking wild pigs. It's out now and it's a must-listen book! If you haven't checked it out yet, you should definitely do so! It's a great book and I highly recommend it! I think it's worth the price of admission if you're looking for a good cookbook or cookbook. I'm sure you'll agree that it's going to be well worth it. Joe also talks about how he's a good friend of mine and I think he's one of the most genuine people I've ever had the pleasure to talk to. I really hope you enjoy this episode and that you enjoy it and that it brings you a lot of value. - I'll see you soon! Cheers! - Joe and the crew! XOXO - The Joe Rogans Experience - Jesse D'Andrea Check it out! - Jesse's Book: "The Hog Book" by Chef Jesse's Guide: The Chef s Guide to Cooking Wild Food by Chef Daidee's Guide by Chef Steve Rinella Chef s Guide: A Guide to Harvesting Wild Foods: A Handbook of Wild Foods, Hunting, Hunting and Eating Wild Foods by Chef's Handbook by Chef Eddy's Book "The Farmhouse" by Jesse's Farmhouse Podcast by The Hogbook by Chef Jesy Daidie and I'm looking forward to hearing back from you guys on the podcast! and we hope you're all having a good day! Thank you so much, Jesse! - podcast, Jesse's book "The Guy Who Cooks Wild Foods Podcast" by Chefs' Guide to the Wild Food Podcast
00:00:57.000And he's so smart and he's so important to that world, the world of wild foods.
00:01:05.000I heard you on the podcast on his podcast a few years back when uh you were talking uh you guys were talking about uh cooking and and daidue your restaurant here in austin and you could tell right away that what you're doing is very much a like a passion project like you're you're a guy like when you talk about food and you talk about cooking when you talk about like the ingredients that you use and it's like I fucking love when someone's really into what they do.
00:01:34.000When I hear you talk about Dai Due, when I hear you talk about cooking in general, and of course you got a new book out.
00:02:37.000Sometimes I might disagree a little bit with the artist label and more that, you know, sometimes I'll tell our staff is like we're plumbers.
00:02:46.000Like we're more craftsmen than artists.
00:02:49.000Now there's some chefs that are artists that are out there that Way smarter than me.
00:02:53.000And they can make a foam or they can compose a dish with things that just like will blow your mind.
00:02:58.000You're like, I don't think that's going to be good.
00:03:00.000And then they put it together and it is really good.
00:03:02.000I think of being a chef got really hip.
00:04:04.000For sure, a Finnish carpenter, that's an artist.
00:04:07.000But there's something about food that, for whatever reason, I think until Bourdain came along, people didn't really look at it like an art.
00:04:19.000When he would go and travel to France in some strange restaurant that was in the middle of some farm, and they have farm-to-table, these incredible chefs are all running around cooking these little things.
00:04:33.000There's strange little projects that these people are doing, and they're composing these foods, these dishes, based on local ingredients and everything.
00:04:42.000It just gets you excited about what you're eating.
00:04:45.000It's a different way of looking at food.
00:05:19.000As a brick-and-mortar restaurant, seven years.
00:05:22.000Now, it's been in business since 2006 when we started and basically going to farms and setting up outdoor dinners and doing these big dinners outside.
00:07:44.000And then if you go someplace like Europe, where it's like, oh, well, there's a lot more resources there, like in southern France or Italy or someplace like that.
00:09:52.000But I enjoyed being in the front of the house, but I knew that it wasn't a long-term thing for me, so I took the pay cut and went to the kitchen and just started working in kitchens when I was about 20. And then I was born in North Texas and kind of just worked my way south to Austin and got here in 98. Is going to culinary school the normal path when someone becomes a chef?
00:10:20.000I've known a lot of people that came out of culinary schools that have done a wonderful job in their career and also a lot of people that, you know, it didn't work and, you know, they're on to massage school next, you know.
00:10:45.000You know, and attitudes are changing these days, but, you know, back, you know, 20 or so years ago, it was still kind of that system where you had to really work your ass off.
00:12:01.000And the guy takes you across the canal.
00:12:02.000And then we went and bought the most beautiful sole, you know, like a little miniature flounder, these tiny little flatfish.
00:12:08.000And then we go back to his kitchen, and he's got a reach-in cooler, and it's the depths of the off-season, so there's not much going on vegetable-wise.
00:12:37.000And then he cuts a lemon in half because it's winter and so the lemons are in season.
00:12:41.000It's this beautiful lemon and he puts that on the plate.
00:12:42.000And then he picks the small arugula and puts that on the plate because it's delicate.
00:12:46.000And then he takes some olive oil and he puts it on top and he puts it in the window and a waiter comes and takes it.
00:12:51.000And I just remember thinking, like, how is that?
00:12:55.000We could not get away with that in the United States, like serving food like that.
00:12:59.000Here's a chef who's extremely talented.
00:13:01.000He's been working in these hotels all over Europe his whole life.
00:13:05.000And he has the ego, a lack of, to just put a perfectly cooked piece of fish, some raw meat, Greens, some beautiful olive oil and a perfect lemon on a plate and send it out in the dining room.
00:13:46.000And it was all ingredient-based, and it was all hyper-local.
00:13:49.000And there's got to be something satisfying about being able to respect the simplicity of a dish, to not get your fingerprints all over it, and just to know that as it stands, it's amazing.
00:14:03.000You don't really have to fuck with it.
00:14:04.000At that point, your skill is really sourcing.
00:14:09.000It's relationships that you've made with a fishmonger or a farmer or a rancher or somebody that's pressing olive oil.
00:14:18.000It's things like that that I think are really exciting because once you have those base ingredients, you really don't need to do that much.
00:15:06.000It's just time and understanding what you're doing with it and salt and meat.
00:15:11.000I mean, it's about as primitive as you get.
00:15:14.000But when it's done right, there's something about food where you can almost feel the effort when you cook something perfectly and then you serve it to someone and they're eating it.
00:15:24.000The effort of the people that have put this dish together comes through as you're eating it.
00:15:29.000And when it's done really well, It's like you're excited about the skill of the person who put this together.
00:15:36.000If you have a perfectly cooked steak and you're eating like, oh, and you're excited about how they took care of it, whether they dry aged it, how they cooked it, how they checked the temperature perfectly and served it.
00:15:51.000I'm excited about the relationship we have with the rancher, too, you know, and the story that they tell.
00:15:57.000You know, it's just like, oh, it's been the rabbi primals are going to look really good for the next month or so because we've had so much rain, the grass is really high, things like that.
00:16:08.000And how that, I mean, how it computes the whole system.
00:16:11.000And, you know, I think it's imperative that cooks get out there and see what it's like to grow a carrot or see a cow in the field, catch a fish, kill a deer, things like that.
00:16:24.000I think that all those things are really important lessons that tie you to that whole, the source and then the whole system that it takes to get it to you.
00:16:34.000You use a lot of local ingredients, but you've also been doing this thing where you take people hunting and show them how to butcher an animal and show them how to cook an animal.
00:17:02.000I'd been a prep cook and a butcher in a restaurant.
00:17:05.000And being new to hunting at that point, I had just started hunting a couple years prior and was really excited about it and saw the You know, I knew how to butcher before I knew how to hunt.
00:17:23.000And so I had a little bit of an advantage on the back end of it, but still have and still do have to this day a lot to learn about the front end of it.
00:17:31.000And I wanted to be able to share that with people because I think that hunting is a very key way to show people the importance of food.
00:17:39.000Because if you can I feel sad about taking the life of a deer or a pig or a squirrel, then you can also understand what a case of carrots that is rotting at a grocery store because they haven't been sold or they don't look good enough to sell anymore.
00:18:52.000Yeah, they're typically weekend classes.
00:18:55.000We used to do a lot of private events and now I've just gone to, we work with one ranch.
00:19:00.000We do a Friday through Sunday class and in all honesty though, our whole season this year has fairly much been booked up by people that came to previous classes.
00:19:12.000They come back, we have a pretty high return rate on those.
00:19:16.000We're about to release our schedule of those, but there's going to be very, very little seats available to those.
00:19:38.000If you've never been hunting before, you have a guide.
00:19:40.000We walk you through the whole process.
00:19:43.000Series of events, like from sighting in the gun to, you know, it's this constant barrage of, like, learning.
00:19:50.000And it's like, this is how you put your heel down.
00:19:52.000You know, this is the way the wind is blowing.
00:19:54.000This is the way we're going to walk to do this.
00:19:56.000You know, this is what time of day we expect deer to move, when we expect hogs to move, why we're sitting right here.
00:20:04.000We're constantly feeding information, and then once that animal is taken, we're feeding more information about this is how you skin, this is how you gut, this is how you use the liver, this is call fat, this is a shank, this is best for grind, this is best for slow cooking, things like that.
00:20:19.000And then we teach them how to butcher it, break it down.
00:20:23.000And then we really want them to be able to do it on their own.
00:20:26.000And the whole time we feed them game to kind of really keep it in context because a lot of times people have been told, you know, you can't eat that.
00:20:34.000You know, deer liver is no good or venison tastes gamey to me or I'm not going to touch the hog topic yet.
00:21:06.000And I mean, that's really important to me and very meaningful that It's a formative experience, even if they never do it again, you know, but it teaches them to really value a resource.
00:21:17.000That time they killed a deer, because it's really hard, like, for me, once you've killed that deer, if you open up a bag of beef or something, I can't help but think, like, all those animals in a field,
00:21:32.000you know, They all had lives, they all had deaths, everything.
00:21:38.000I think it teaches you to appreciate resources and once you start to appreciate that resource, Maybe you'll start to appreciate all resources, you know?
00:22:33.000The pig thing, I'm glad you brought that up, because that is one thing that I keep hearing out here from folks, that there's an attitude about pigs that they're disgusting, they're just dirty creatures, and they kind of just want them dead.
00:22:46.000And I've talked to people that go helicopter hunting, and I go, well, what do you do with all the pigs?
00:22:52.000And they're like, you leave them there.
00:25:09.000You know, the way that works out, you know, you've got, I think it's 20, I want to say 26 days that they can go back into estrus, something like that.
00:25:32.000They're not indigenous to this country, so they came here in the mid-1500s.
00:25:37.000Columbus brought some to, I mean, just the Caribbean islands.
00:25:42.000But the mainland is usually attributed to Hernando de Soto, who dropped off a bunch of pigs on his way before he died in Arkansas.
00:25:52.000And then there was some other explorers that also brought in pigs, Spanish explorers that brought in, you know, domestic, semi-domestic hogs and dropped them off.
00:26:02.000And so what we saw was this real slow build in pig populations.
00:26:06.000There was also some Pacific Islanders that dropped them off in Hawaii way before that.
00:26:10.000So if you're talking about The technical United States.
00:26:13.000When did they drop them off in Hawaii?
00:28:09.000And what it's doing is it's breeding like crazy out there with a feral boar.
00:28:15.000And it's just creating more feral pigs.
00:28:17.000So like I said, once they're on the wrong side of the fence, they're fair game.
00:28:19.000Well, we should explain to people what happens to pigs, right?
00:28:22.000I've talked about it on the podcast before, but if people haven't heard that episode, there's a physiological change that happens to pigs when they get wild.
00:28:30.000So when you're saying that these are pigs, they're wild pigs, people are like, wait, but they're boars.
00:28:46.000Their hair can become shaggier and their snouts will elongate in order to allow them to root more effectively because that's one of their primary ways of feeding is rooting and that's the most destructive way.
00:28:57.000I mean they can dig three feet down in soft dirt and they're getting roots, they're getting insects, they're omnivores and they'll go after anything.
00:29:07.000And so, once they get out, they go feral quick.
00:29:16.000And so, you add all this together, you know, the herds that were initially brought here for food, and then further domestic herds, and then you have escapees over hundreds of years of...
00:29:29.000You know, settling in this country and you've got escaped domestic hogs.
00:29:33.000Then you've got hogs specifically brought in for hunting, namely your Russian boars, your Eurasian boars, which are kind of the big hairy razorbacks.
00:32:25.000I mean, we had a farmer just north of Austin for a while that had a pair of Osaba hogs and was raising them because, I mean, purportedly, for their incredible quality.
00:32:58.000But I wouldn't say it was the best pork I'd ever had.
00:33:02.000Is the difference in the way domestic pork versus wild pork, the way it tastes, just primarily diet?
00:33:08.000Or does something happen to their flavor profile when they assume this metamorphosis, when they get out and their snout extends and their hair gets bushy?
00:33:55.000I mean, when you're hunting wild pigs, you know, very, very, very few of them have been caught and castrated, the boars.
00:34:03.000So you're going to have that hormonal influence on them.
00:34:07.000You're also going to have diet, which is huge to me.
00:34:11.000Like, I mean, a pig that's foraging along the coast and potentially just eating, you Or in South Texas in like mesquite scrub where there's not a lot to eat versus a hog that lives just 30 minutes southeast of here that's got four varieties of acorns and wild pecans and like nice soft ground and blackberry roots to choose from.
00:34:32.000One of those is going to be really good, and it's that last one.
00:34:35.000You know, they're going to put on a lot of fat and be very, very good.
00:34:39.000So one of the things that we address constantly is the disparity in quality for wild pigs.
00:34:49.000But, I mean, to your question of the difference between a domestic hog and a wild pig, it's mostly consistency because a domestic hog from a given farm is going to be given a pig ration, and they're going to be fairly consistent.
00:35:01.000Now, some of them might bully their way to the front of the line and eat a little bit more.
00:35:16.000Feral hogs are typically a lot leaner, and they can be anywhere from identical in flavor to a domestic pig to very, very different.
00:35:24.000And a lot of them, because they're omnivores, they could perhaps be on, like, they could find, like, a dead deer or something like that and start eating that.
00:36:17.000So there's a sizable chunk of the Texan community that believes that rattlesnakes have stopped rattling or they're not rattling as much because if a rattlesnake rattles when something approaches it,
00:37:16.000Okay, so people think that because any rattlesnake that rattles gets eaten by a pig, that the rattlesnakes that survive are like the quiet ones, the non-rattlers.
00:37:25.000And so rattlesnakes aren't rattling as much as they used to, and so there's kind of an uptick in bites.
00:38:05.000I think it would require a lot of hogs to eat every rattlesnake that rattled, and then the snakes to, over a period of, and the time frame for this, too, according to the folklore of it, is like maybe the last 20 years.
00:38:19.000So in 20 years, rattlesnakes are now just, I don't know, what do you call them now?
00:38:59.000There was a genetic anomaly where one of the moths might be black.
00:39:06.000And within a very short period of time, I want to say maybe 10 or 15 years, this white moth turned black because the ones that survived were the dark ones that weren't, you know, skylit by the soot.
00:39:19.000And so it's, I mean, I don't know if it's the same.
00:39:22.000There's scientists out there just laughing at me right now.
00:39:25.000But, you know, I guess it's plausible.
00:40:01.000Well, we think we have a map of the entire process of how a single-celled organism eventually becomes an octopus and all the steps along the way.
00:40:10.000And like, oh, it adapted to its environment.
00:40:17.000When you see an animal that can literally become the ground, like it looks like it's the bottom of the ocean, and then something comes by and it just comes out of nowhere and becomes an octopus again and snatches it up.
00:41:01.000Cuttlefish, unlike our eyes, the eyes of cephalopods, cuttlefish, octopuses, and their relatives contain just one kind of color-sensitive protein, apparently restricting them to a black-and-white view of the world.
00:41:32.000That they're becoming a color that they can't even see?
00:41:37.000Have you ever seen when they take a, I think it was a cuttlefish, they take it and they had it swimming in a place with a checkerboard pattern and it was trying to emulate the checkerboard pattern.
00:44:20.000I mean, and nationwide, I believe it's in the billions.
00:44:23.000And I have to be real careful about that, too, in my staunch defense of, you know, respecting the pigs, is that, like, if you go up in a helicopter and you want to shoot a bunch of pigs, And you're not able to utilize any of them.
00:45:37.000I mean, that's my role in this is to convince people because of the mythology that's out there about them.
00:45:43.000I mean, I've heard everything from you can't eat them, period, to you can only eat them if they're under, and I have heard every weight category that you can imagine, and it's always laughable to me.
00:45:55.000If they're under 80, 100, it goes in 20-pound increments at least, you know, to make it, you know, seem a little more scientific.
00:46:02.000But, you know, I've eaten 300-pound boars that had testicles the size of cantaloupes, and they were absolutely delicious.
00:46:26.000I don't care if you do or not, but I'd really like to give people the confidence to try them more and know that a lot of the things that they've heard about pigs are not true.
00:46:36.000There's a lot of generational mythology.
00:46:39.000You can't eat that pig because it's too big.
00:47:40.000And that's, I mean, that's also, that's hard when you're like trying to, you know, hunt an animal that's got a very cute sense of smell and you've got seven people with you.
00:47:50.000So we ran snares on a fence line where the hogs would cut under there.
00:47:57.000And we ran these wire snares on there.
00:49:38.000And so, I mean, I think that that's a very clear-cut example of what stress can do.
00:49:45.000And then also, you know, if you think about a big boar, which they get the bad rap for tasting really bad, is that, you know, they're really large animals that are hard to bring down.
00:49:54.000If you're rifle hunting or bow hunting, it takes longer for them to die.
00:50:00.000And then, I mean, there are the hormonal things, and those big pigs, they can be very strongly flavored.
00:50:07.000But what we try to do is approach hogs, and forgive me if I'm getting off topic, but...
00:50:13.000In a way where we kind of categorize them where they're not all treated the same way.
00:50:18.000But, you know, like a big boar and a big sow, and then there's a medium hog and a small hog.
00:50:24.000And you're going to cook all those a little bit differently.
00:50:26.000You know, you're not going to cook them, you know, if you manage to get like a 25-pound little, like, nice young pig and then a 300-pound boar.
00:50:33.000They're not, you can't treat them the same way.
00:50:35.000And what is the difference in what you would do with a 300-pound boar?
00:50:46.000Something that's probably going to be highly spiced.
00:50:48.000Maybe you're going to have to add some fat into it if it's lean.
00:50:51.000Typically, out of the same litter, If you have a sow and a boar next to each other at the same age, the sow will probably have a little more fat on her, typically.
00:51:03.000Also will depend on where she's at in her pregnancy cycles.
00:51:08.000So boars tend to be leaner, but a big boar I mean, it mostly is going to be, you know, like, it's going to be like curry or chili or something that you're going to add some spice to.
00:51:21.000You wouldn't cook a ham off of it or anything like that?
00:51:23.000If it was particularly fatty and looked really good, then I would.
00:54:10.000I don't often like take a back strap and sous vide it.
00:54:13.000I prefer to just cook it on the grill.
00:54:16.000I will sous vide things like ribs and things like turkey legs that I think will benefit from a very, very long controlled cooking where they don't get overcooked.
00:54:28.000So then I can usually, I like to put them on the grill afterwards.
00:54:31.000Yeah, I was watching a YouTube video yesterday where this guy cooked an inexpensive chuck steak and he sous vide it for 24 hours and then grilled it.
00:54:41.000So he sous vide it, I think he did it at 125 degrees for 24 hours and it just broke down all of the collagen and all of the hard, stiff stuff that's in that kind of a more firm cut of meat and then Right.
00:55:26.000And what I like also about it is that it's an empowering tool.
00:55:30.000Because sometimes people, they get into something.
00:55:34.000You know, they're like kind of technologically, they just like to nerd out on something.
00:55:38.000SUV is a classic way for somebody to do that.
00:55:42.000If you're struggling with cooking game or it's like, oh, it's come out tough or this or that, I love to see tools like that enter into the lexicon.
00:56:52.000She was on the podcast talking about the issue with chemicals from plastic affecting people's endocrine systems and the fact that there's a thing called phthalates.
00:57:06.000It's spelled with a P. P-T-H-P. I think I've seen that before.
00:57:11.000And phthalates, when they're introduced into mammals in utero, they're showing that they have a profound effect on their sexual reproductive systems.
00:57:23.000And they think the same thing is happening to people.
00:57:37.000They take out the BPA. Oh, they're free of phthalates and BPA. Okay, so in this case, phthalates in large doses like BPA can compete with hormones, in this case testosterone, but most plastic wraps, Ziploc bags, freezer bags,
00:57:53.000and sous vide bags are free of phthalates and BPA. The change from polyvinylidine chloride to polyethylene was for safety, but it did make the cling wrap cling less.
00:58:22.000This is our book, Countdown, How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race.
00:58:37.000And it's because, I mean, you know, maybe it is BPA free, but there's still something about just cooking in plastic to me.
00:58:43.000And it's a once every two or three month deal for me.
00:58:46.000I mean, we're going out of town this weekend and I wanted to be able to just like, you know, cook it, throw it in the cooler and throw it on the grill.
00:58:52.000You know, and it's something I don't like to make a habit out of without knowing the science behind it other than I don't like plastic.
01:00:24.000We do that with duck quarters, anything like that, where you can take Something and kind of cook it to where it's tender and then just, you know, set it aside.
01:00:34.000I mean, put it in the refrigerator for a few days and then when it's time to grill it, it comes out and you're just adding some char and smoke, crisping the skin on it, maybe glazing it with something.
01:00:43.000And I think it's just a really great way to kind of just reverse that whole process where instead of browning it in the middle and then braising it, you're braising it, then cooling it and then browning it.
01:00:53.000It's a very, like, Mexican technique right there.
01:00:57.000Where so many meats are slow cooked and then you know like when you get a taco on the street that's like it's been it's just been cooked forever and then it's just hit on this flat this plancha that just like sears it and you know reheats it and it's just and that's where you get that crust and that Maillard reaction and everything and it's just it's brilliant and it's broken down and tender and I think that applying that to game I mean you can do domestic animals too of course but applying it to game is really good trick.
01:01:24.000And when you do that in terms of cooking it and then refrigerating it, what temperature do you like to bring it back up to before you sear it on the outside?
01:01:55.000I'm not saying falling apart tender, but if you get them to where they're almost tender, if you let them come back up to room temperature, they're going to start to get a little floppy and hard to deal with.
01:02:03.000If you go cold onto the grill and start to manage that crust on there, they'll be a lot easier to handle.
01:02:09.000So I typically will go cold onto the grill.
01:03:51.000Or it works really well with venison ribs, too.
01:03:53.000If they're particularly lean, you just put them in water.
01:03:55.000You season the water really heavily with onions and spices and garlic and whatever, ginger, whatever.
01:04:01.000And then cook them until they're almost done and then you pull them out.
01:04:05.000Cool them off a little bit and then finish those on a grill and then you can glaze them with something that's sweet and sour and sticky and whatever from there.
01:04:47.000And what we'll do is we will season that and then we'll submerge that in hot beef fat and cook that at a very low temperature, which is called a confit, where we're basically just braising it in fat until it's tender, it's tied, and then we pull it out and cool it.
01:05:02.000And then to order, I mean, because that process takes four or five hours.
01:05:06.000And then to order that cold, tender, but firm beef rib just goes onto a hot grill and gets rolled on a grill until it's hot throughout and it gets crisp on the outside.
01:05:16.000And so you get a little bit of smoke and some texture on the outside and the meat's just falling apart tenderly.
01:05:23.000And you just know when to do it just based on how many times you've done it in the past.
01:07:12.000When you think about doing that, and you think about cooking over oak fires, this has got to be something that's been done here for a long, long time, right?
01:07:38.000An abundant animal over an abundant wood would make the most sense.
01:07:42.000And there's something about fire and cooking over fire, too, that it just taps into some weird ancient memories or something.
01:07:51.000It's very satisfying and exciting to cook straight over a fire.
01:07:55.000It's a very different feeling than putting something on a frying pan over a burner or a gas burner, which is all nice and everything, but there's a feeling that you get when you're cooking something over fire.
01:08:06.000I mean, you said it, but I mean, I don't know how to address it without just tapping into something that we don't understand, but it's there.
01:08:41.000It's one of the most satisfying things I think I've ever done in my life.
01:08:44.000Remember, that's one of the things that got me hooked on hunting to begin with is when I went with Rinella, we shot a mule deer and then we cooked the liver over the campfire.
01:08:54.000And, you know, he had these little grates that he could just sort of like sit things down to cook meat over.
01:08:59.000And then he cooked, I forget like what kind of container he cooked the liver in, but just so like liver and sauteed it in some grease.
01:09:32.000When we were talking to the architect, I was like, this is what I want someone to see when they walk in the door.
01:09:39.000We have a rail, a butchery rail, where they can bring carcasses down to the table, which is wide open.
01:09:45.000There is no prep area in the whole restaurant that you can't see.
01:09:48.000You can see everything except for the walk-in and the office.
01:09:52.000And so I wanted people to be able to see what was happening on that table, whether it's on one side they're making breads and cakes, and on the other side there's a feral hog getting broken down, and then there's a fire.
01:10:04.000And if you walk in, and it's the same thing you're talking about, you walk in the door, you see those two things, and you're like, I got the concept.
01:10:33.000And it's so self-explanatory and simple, but also like exciting.
01:10:39.000You know, you go to a place and they have that kind of, do you have like one of those Argentine style things where you raise it lower on a wheel?
01:11:34.000If you just want to go to a restaurant and just want to eat some food that tastes good, that's great.
01:11:38.000But if you want to go to a restaurant where someone is cooking over fire and you've got the fruit ripening and you've got all this whole experience, there's something more to it.
01:11:56.000I had this experience one time when I was down in the front and I was prepping and I looked up and there was this old guy, old Texan, very much so.
01:12:07.000He had pearl snap, long sleeve shirt, he had on his hat, he had on his jeans, and he was just watching.
01:12:15.000And I looked over at him and I kind of just, you know, eye contact.
01:12:18.000I nodded at him and then he was still watching and I just, you know, then I looked up again.
01:13:23.000We have, I mean, I think if you split it between new hunters and experienced hunters, we're right at about 50%.
01:13:28.000You know, we have people that have never hunted before or maybe went hunting once and didn't, you know, succeed or get an animal or whatever.
01:13:38.000And then we have a lot of people that come because they want to learn more about the butchery side of it.
01:13:44.000And a lot of times they're just like, yeah, I don't really care if I kill a deer.
01:14:02.000It's not as divergent as I'd like to see it.
01:14:07.000I really wish that there was more seats at the table for people.
01:14:13.000I mean, if your grandfather or great-grandfather wasn't allowed to own a gun, you know, the likelihood that you've gotten into hunting now is greatly diminished, I think.
01:14:25.000And I really want to see hunting available to everybody.
01:14:30.000I think that it gets people involved in responsible gun ownership, resource management, appreciation of meat and animal management.
01:14:45.000From across a more diverse background, too.
01:14:48.000And so, no, I mean, frankly, it's not as diverse as I'd like it to be.
01:14:56.000And we're trying to do some things that mitigate that.
01:14:59.000And we're just trying to get more different people in there.
01:15:23.000And that was a lot of fun, you know, introducing them.
01:15:26.000We'd have women guides come in and kind of to help just kind of decrease any kind of feelings that they'd have about what our preconceptions of what that situation would be like.
01:15:36.000And, you know, it was really rewarding.
01:15:42.000And I think that as we Move forward and we're educators and and I think it helps, you know, and there's a lot of debate about like recruitment and things like that about like do we have enough resources for everybody in the country to hunt and things like that but at the end of the day it's like I want anybody that that wants to to be able to to do it get their foot in the door somehow and so I'll work with some organizations like Texas Parks and Wildlife,
01:16:12.000Parks and Wildlife Foundation, Stewards of the Wild, TWA, Texas Wildlife Association, because they've got some really good outreach programs, a lot of youth programs, you know, and just trying to just get more people involved in the outdoors because it's something they need to be aware of.
01:16:29.000If they don't pursue it for the rest of their lives, that's fine.
01:16:32.000But I think even that one experience can be very formative.
01:16:37.000And pigs have got to be like the best thing to do that too.
01:17:32.000And because I was buying chickens or tomatoes or whatever from this farm and that farm, you can just randomly ask, hey, do you have a pig problem?
01:17:43.000And most of the time they're going to be like, not always but sometimes.
01:17:46.000And next thing you know, you probably have a place to hunt pigs or at least try.
01:17:51.000And I always urge people to start there if they want.
01:17:55.000I mean, this is kind of a Texas-specific topic right now, but maybe not.
01:18:00.000You've got to make those connections and get out there.
01:18:02.000And hogs being the most undervalued Yeah.
01:18:29.000And when you take a pig and you hunt it with someone, when you break it down, what is the first thing you do as far as like, do you bring coolers with you?
01:19:29.000But the two words that I want to drive home with people to improve their experiences with game meats in general, and hogs specifically, is cold and dry.
01:19:40.000When you put a hog on ice and then coat it with ice, then it starts to soak into the meat.
01:20:24.000Bring them to me iced down like that and after I would make some lynx sausage and put them on a tray there's a bunch of water on that tray and I guarantee you that's because it was soaked and there was just a lot more water in that meat.
01:20:38.000Now Obviously, you're like, well then how do you get it cold?
01:20:46.000We take unscented contractor bags and wrap that animal up really well and we face it so the cavity is pointing down and then we ice the hell out of it and open the drain plug.
01:20:55.000We're doing virtually the same thing that everybody else is doing except we're avoiding that direct contact between the ice and the meat.
01:21:02.000You wouldn't go to the store and buy a ribeye.
01:21:46.000And that's not really how it's working, you know?
01:21:51.000I feel like you're doing more damage than good.
01:21:54.000I mean, and to carry the point a little more, I had a guy bring me an axis once and it had been iced and the water had pooled and the beautiful loin on that axis had half been submerged in water and so half of it was just like this pure,
01:22:46.000Of course, do whatever you want out there.
01:22:49.000But I also deal with people that have negative experiences with hogs a lot, or game in general.
01:22:56.000And while I can't knowingly say that that's where that...
01:23:02.000That result came from is from improper handling right there, but maybe.
01:23:06.000If it's a consistent problem and that's a consistent way that they're being handled, then it's suspect to me.
01:23:13.000And what do you think about like when people put coolers in and then they put like frozen milk jugs filled with water and they use that to cool a cooler down?
01:23:26.000Yeah, I don't think you're going to get it as cold.
01:23:28.000I mean, you've got plastics and insulator, and so you're not going to have it as cold as if you just iced it.
01:23:35.000I mean, fill it a third of the way up with ice, put your pig in there, like I said, cavity down so no water can pool in there, and then cover that thing as much as that cooler will hold with ice and pop the drain plug so that any liquid's coming out.
01:23:52.000I mean, it's going to be right at 32, 34 degrees.
01:23:55.000And you can come back to that eight days later and pull it out and it'll be almost dry to the touch minus a little bit of condensation and a real pleasure to cut on the board, you know, for me.
01:24:06.000I mean, cutting is fun to me, but when I get this floppy, wet, you know, big quarter, I'm like, oh, no good.
01:25:16.000I once had a guy tell me that the only way to make a large adult boar palatable, and you only had 20 minutes to execute this after you killed it, and his ranch manager insisted upon this,
01:25:37.000was to get it back and, let's say, manually stimulate the dead pig.
01:26:24.000I know some folks, I don't know if they still do this, but there was a product that was for sale that they were actually advertising on MeatEater that was, you would hook it up to game and electrocute it afterwards.
01:26:43.000But there's a company that we buy a lot of game from that is incredibly progressive in their methodology in getting wild game into the commercial food system.
01:26:55.000It's called Broken Arrow Ranch, and they're in Ingram, Texas.
01:26:58.000And they will drive around with shooters.
01:27:29.000Electrostimulation is a process that involves connecting cables from a special electrical current generating device to a freshly killed deer or antelope carcass and applying a surge of electricity to the carcass for about one minute.
01:27:40.000Electrical current is alternately switched on and off during the stimulation process.
01:27:45.000During this process, the muscles of the carcass contract as a result of the electrical stimulation and relax each time as the electrical current is switched off.
01:27:57.000Meat muscle must be cut away from the bone while the carcass is in rigor mortis, the stiffening of the carcass after death.
01:28:05.000Muscles cut away from the bone during rigor mortis will contract and compact The meat fibers tightly together resulting in toughening of the meat.
01:28:14.000Electrostimulation causes electrochemical reactions which avoid this stiffening.
01:28:19.000There are three beneficial effects of electrostimulation.
01:28:23.000Improved flavor, improved shelf life, and tenderization.
01:28:29.000Tenderization is subjective, whether or not it's improved, right?
01:28:32.000Because there's something about an elk steak or something like that or a game animal.
01:30:55.000Well, especially with pigs, I like to be able to have a fully fleshed out carcass that I can do a very good job of retaining as much fat as I can and then just come back and do the gutting process.
01:31:08.000We typically get it done pretty quick.
01:31:10.000But other than that, nothing controversial like my ranch manager story.
01:31:15.000And are you using entrails, anything of the pigs?
01:31:19.000Are you using that for sausage casing?
01:31:33.000But we do often use liver, heart, kidneys, and call fat out of hogs.
01:31:40.000You know, just your real basic offal, you know, like the big four out of there.
01:31:46.000Now, when it comes to pigs, one of the things that you have to think about because they're omnivores is trichinosis and things along those lines, right?
01:31:54.000One of the things that I've heard about sous vide is that you can take a pig and as long as you cook it for a certain amount of time, you could cook it at like 140 degrees and it's still like as long as you do it for enough time, it'll kill everything in there.
01:32:09.000It'll render this trichinae larvae inert.
01:32:13.000And if you couple that with freezing below 5 degrees, you know, a couple weeks of freezing, and then you hit that temperature and, you know, there's like a gradation, you know, at 145, it's pretty quick.
01:32:25.000And then when you get down from there, it'll take longer.
01:32:53.000Because when you're in contact with their reproductive and digestive organs, specifically, if you have any cuts or anything on your hands, that's when you can expose yourself to brucellosis.
01:33:03.000And so it's just, I mean, it's an easy thing.
01:33:05.000I mean, I have in my truck in the parking lot right now, I got boxes of gloves, you know, just in case I kill a pig on the way home.
01:33:11.000But just always have those, and I insist that everybody else wears gloves.
01:33:14.000Now on the butchery table, once I get all that stuff out of there, I, you know, gloves off.
01:33:19.000But if you're concerned about that with hogs, which is a lucid concern, I'd say just like go with all the slow cooking methods where you're taking them to 190 for four hours.
01:33:31.000So you don't have to worry about anything like that.
01:33:49.000Yeah, but trichinosis is just one of many things you're going to have to deal with, as you're saying.
01:33:53.000Do you prefer like a meat, like a game meat that you can cook medium rare or like an axis or something like that to pigs in terms of like what your own taste buds are or does it vary?
01:34:07.000I've got to stay on brand for this one.
01:34:23.000I mean, they're invasive as well and need to be controlled, but they kind of, like where they live, is in kind of the pricier parts of the state.
01:34:31.000So it's really hard to gain access to hunt axis deer, even though they need to be controlled, although that freeze did a real good job of it.
01:34:39.000Yeah, the freeze killed thousands of them, right?
01:35:48.000And I think he got the recipe from an old book, an old book about like mountain men and how they used to like to take mule deer heads and cook them underground.
01:37:34.000And then you can get a Mixta, which is going to be everything together.
01:37:37.000But if you're at a really good, like, real deal, South Texas, Potawakoa place, you're going to be able to order.
01:37:44.000And you've got to get there early in the morning because all the old guys show up and get the eyes first, if that's what you're looking for.
01:39:17.000It's like, this is a thing that I want to do that, I mean, I was excited about the day before opening season, and I really wanted to get out there and do that.
01:39:28.000I drove, you know, two and a half hours overall.
01:39:31.000And then I took five minutes to breast the birds out.
01:39:34.000And then when it was suggested that I might want to pluck the entire bird, which takes about four minutes per bird, I'm like, you know, I don't got time for that shit.
01:40:16.000I mean, you can eat two doves as a meal per person.
01:40:22.000I mean, cooked right and served with a few other things, you know, versus, you know, eight dove breasts, you know, and it's like you can really stretch them a lot.
01:40:30.000And there's a lot of meat, a lot of meat on the legs, but you know what I mean?
01:40:43.000And I don't think it takes that much longer, but it speaks a lot to the amount of time that we value and to that part of the process.
01:40:51.000And we'll sit in the stand for five hours, but, you know, like cleaning up the call fat off that deer is, you know, five minutes we just don't have anymore.
01:41:03.000Eating doves, for a lot of people, just saying dove hunting, there's a lot of people that don't hunt that are listening to this right now.
01:41:09.000They're like, what are you talking about?
01:41:12.000I don't know if they've made it this far.
01:41:15.000They probably have because up until now it's been like acceptable hunting.
01:41:18.000But now you're talking about the bird of peace.
01:41:21.000That doesn't seem to a lot of folks to be food.
01:41:44.000I mean, if you've ever been, just get outside of a suburb in any town in Texas on September 1st at around 4 in the afternoon.
01:41:53.000And if you don't know what's happening, which is pretty hilarious because this happens every year, you'll think that it's World War III because it's just boom, [...
01:42:26.000It's very casual in that you don't need a lot of equipment or time, but I highly value the food from that.
01:42:34.000If I go out with a friend and we manage to get eight doves, if we're clever about it, we're both going to feed our families for at least one meal off of that.
01:42:44.000Even if you slow cook them and peel all the meat off and make some flautas or...
01:42:50.000Or manicotti or something like that out of that mean.
01:43:36.000You can eat them medium rare, just like you would any...
01:43:38.000I want to hunt sandhill cranes, because I can't believe what those things look like when you cook a breast, that it literally looks like a beefsteak.
01:44:03.000I mean, you know, and also just make sure we're differentiating.
01:44:08.000We're not talking about whooping cranes here.
01:44:10.000You know, you've got to be very clear on that because there is a mode of response that people will have about sandhills.
01:44:15.000And it's also pretty interesting, too, that as migration patterns change with geese, particularly in mostly eastern and coastal Texas, Where goose hunting used to be huge.
01:44:28.000There's a town in Texas, Eagle Lake, is the goose hunting capital of the world.
01:44:32.000It's where Andy Griffith used to go, you know, and shoot like 50 snow geese, you know.
01:44:37.000And they don't come down here so much anymore.
01:44:40.000I mean, it's just like the populations are kind of hanging up north of us now.
01:44:44.000And as that's happened, what you've seen is a proliferation of sandhill cranes coming down.
01:44:50.000And they will devastate some agricultural fields as well.
01:44:53.000And so the hunting for those has increased a lot.
01:47:33.000But no, most of the time, turkeys pound the breasts, make little cutlets out of those.
01:47:40.000I'll make a lot of sausage with the breast.
01:47:41.000But like real mild sausages, like not just anything, but, you know, like a really light, delicately spiced sausage, like a Boudin Blanc or something out of Turkey where it really shines.
01:47:54.000You know what I saw that people are doing that's really kind of interesting?
01:47:56.000I got into a rabbit hole the other day where I was Googling something and I started watching videos about people hunting iguanas in Florida.
01:48:06.000So apparently like with fishing bows, like bow fishing setups, Mm-hmm.
01:48:30.000With like sort of a brown teriyaki or some kind of sauce and shallots and I was watching these guys cook this and I was like, that is fascinating.
01:48:43.000And if you cook them well, you know what you're doing and it's got a very distinct kind of almost chickeny flavor to it but with just a little bit of extra robustness.
01:49:50.000These people that live by canals, in particular, they're all around their lawns, just destroying...
01:49:56.000If they have a garden, they destroy everything in the garden, eat all the plants, eat all the food, and they're these big-ass, weird, fucking invasive lizards.
01:53:24.000I mean, I could probably be talked into it, but I really would rather go with somebody that was doing it and help with the whole processing side of it.
01:57:10.000Now, one of the things that I noticed when you guys did that hunt down in South Texas with Rinella on the meat eater show for Neil Guy is you wanted the meat to hang overnight and get a crust on it.
01:57:55.000That's just the two best things I can think of for Getting an animal from carcass to butchering and start cutting on it as I want it to be very cold and very dry.
01:58:09.000Now, it would have been optimal to have let it hang for, I mean, a few days at a nice temperature, but we just didn't have it, which is, I mean, commonplace when you're processing animals.
01:58:21.000You've got to deal with whatever you've got, the situation.
01:58:23.000And so we'd let it go overnight, and then we started cutting the next day.
01:58:27.000And when it has that crust on it, that sort of dry outer crust, what is going on with that?
01:58:32.000You can't eat that once it has that, right?
01:58:45.000I mean, like, if you've got a couple days where it's, like, hard and black, just overnight, once that vax sealed...
01:58:51.000I mean, funny, those guys, the meat-eater guys...
01:58:55.000We literally can't enjoy eating meat more than those guys.
01:58:59.000We spent hours just frantically vac-sealing stuff so that every member on that crew could pack two soft Yeti coolers full of all the meat and fish that they could possibly carry.
01:59:11.000And it wasn't like, I imagine on another show, they're like, I can't wait to get that buck home.
02:00:12.000And it's also one of the things that I love about that show and particularly loved about, well really both episodes you did down there, the fishing one and the hunting one, is you cook afterwards.
02:00:24.000And the fishing one, man, God, those fish look delicious.
02:00:30.000And we had such an incredible variety of fish that night.
02:00:35.000I had never – when we were gigging, I've never seen a pompano and come into the bay like that.
02:00:39.000I mean I had to do like a legality check real quick.
02:00:42.000I mean it was like pompano and I'm like, well – and he's like, yes, stab.
02:00:46.000I mean, it was so out of character for those to be in there, but to catch pompano, trout, flounder...
02:00:52.000Is there certain fish that you're not allowed to spear?
02:01:57.000And they started catching breeding-sized female redfish in these huge nets.
02:02:07.000And within a couple years, the population was getting decimated.
02:02:10.000And so conservation organizations came in, notably CCA, which is the Coastal Conservation Association, came in and got them designated as a game fish.
02:02:22.000And at that point, you're not going to be able to stab them anymore.
02:05:23.000I mean, making really good fish and chips is hard, and I hope that we get it right all the time, because it's a hard balance to achieve with the lightness of the batter and being super crispy and that fish being cooked really nicely.
02:05:35.000But yeah, I mean, that's a British deal, as far as I know.
02:06:20.000We get a lot of these little cherry bomb peppers, which are like round, spicy peppers, and we pickle those.
02:06:26.000Instead of your traditional cucumber pickle, which would be chopped and put into a tartar sauce or capers or anything like that, we put that pickled cherry bomb pepper.
02:06:34.000So it's got a little spice, a little heat.
02:06:36.000Yeah, but still that acid and that crunch, and it's still mayonnaise-based, which is, you know, fried fish and mayonnaise.
02:06:43.000And are you using locally sourced potatoes when you're doing the chips?
02:06:49.000You know, as of pre-COVID, I can honestly say that 100% of our products, out of our vegetables, meat, dairy, things like that, I mean, almost everything was sourced locally.
02:07:01.000Once we got into COVID and had to—I mean, there's really boring reasons behind it, but, you know, like, we needed some consistency and we needed some comforting foods because people were like—they really wanted mashed—for the first three months,
02:07:16.000it was like mashed potatoes and french fries.
02:07:19.000And we made a shift, a conscientious shift to organic potatoes that aren't necessarily from Texas.
02:07:26.000And it was the first time in the life of the business that we had purposely sourced from outside of Texas.
02:07:33.000And I think we're going to continue it.
02:07:35.000You know, I'm really strict about the organic because potatoes can be like little chemical bombs.
02:07:40.000But, you know, in season we buy a lot of potatoes.
02:08:20.000Like make potato, like french fries, like fish and chip style steak fries?
02:08:25.000Not for that dish, but we have done lots of fried sweet potatoes, lots of thin cut chips.
02:08:30.000We do a lot of raw venison with sweet potato chips because I love sweet potatoes and venison together.
02:08:37.000And a crispy sweet potato is a really good vehicle for like some venison tartare or venison ceviche or parisa or anything like that, like raw venison.
02:08:49.000Because I love sweet potatoes and game in general.
02:08:52.000And what do you prefer to, like, if you're gonna make potato chips or fries, what do you prefer?
02:08:57.000Do you prefer, like, duck fat or what kind of fat do you like to cook them in?
02:09:00.000Well, I mean, we have a fryer now, and, like, using animal fats in the fryer is not a possible thing anymore.
02:09:07.000We used to fry stovetop in pure beef fat, and it was tough to manage that in a big Dutch oven, just rolling with beef fat.
02:10:01.000And that's another big step that we took, you know, in that the viability of the restaurant kind of came down to...
02:10:11.000We'd made so many very strict choices over the years, and then we...
02:10:16.000We're like, we need crispy things for the people, you know?
02:10:19.000And it's like, people like fried foods.
02:10:21.000And we weren't, it was very difficult to manage that in a pot, you know, for a busy ass restaurant.
02:10:28.000And so we finally, and that's funny, you've totally like nailed me on like these two changes, these two minor changes that we made at the restaurant.
02:10:37.000I'm really, I'm so happy to like talk about it though, because it's like, if there's anything about our restaurant, it's like transparency.
02:10:44.000And it's like, but those are two things that we have definitely become flexible on over the years because of just like the dining public.
02:10:56.000And then to have a whole fryer full of locally sourced beef fat, not viable, not to mention outrageously expensive to get all that beef fat.
02:11:05.000And so we finally went with a fryer and then started sourcing organic potatoes.
02:11:11.000Did it make a difference in the taste?
02:11:48.000Rather, I mean, because if it broke it down into the price of an order of fries, it would just, I mean, it would be, you know, it was $9, you know.
02:11:59.000It's food, like the prices around foods are just, are like so unknown to the public.
02:12:05.000And we still, I mean, our sourcing is so good.
02:12:10.000But, you know, we had to make that concession almost to be like, well, we need a fryer because we do fried chicken.
02:12:18.000And as volumes were going up, it's just like we just can't handle this pot and this poor guy over here just like trying to manage the flame under it.
02:12:49.000And how do you, like, when you have a cook, like if someone, if you hire someone as a cook, like how much experience does that person have to have?
02:13:41.000I would think that if I was a kid who wanted to learn how to cook or I was someone who wanted to get into, you know, cooking and being a chef someday, I would gravitate towards your place immediately.
02:13:55.000Maybe I'm not choosing that word wisely, but you come there to learn very simple methods.
02:14:03.000But if you can't perfectly cook that pork chop, then you don't really need to move on to the next thing, like tweezing microgreens onto a foam or whatever.
02:14:20.000But it's like, if I had to choose between a really well-cooked piece of meat and some potatoes and some vegetables versus that, I would take the really well-cooked piece of meat every time.
02:14:34.000But, you know, maybe a young cook doesn't see it the same way.
02:14:40.000And that has to be something that they're into, you know, and coming and knowing the story behind all the food and being like, you know, don't throw out those beet greens.
02:14:50.000We need those bad, you know, or this is how you have to treat these tomatoes.
02:14:53.000They need to be sorted through daily, if not twice daily.
02:19:29.000And so, those fall in a very low, I don't want to say unregulated, but less regulated level than feral hogs do.
02:19:42.000And so that's why your company like Broken Arrow Ranch is out there field harvesting, electro-stimulating, and then bringing that stuff to us.
02:19:52.000Otherwise, we can get that stuff that's been trapped, you know, in a trap and then loaded onto a trailer and processed at a slaughtering facility.
02:20:52.000They're slaughtered, processed, and then he takes another look at them and then they get a blue stamp on them and they're good to go.
02:20:57.000And they're feral swine and they're treated basically the same as a domestic pig.
02:21:04.000I mean, they get a little more scrutiny on them because they're wild.
02:21:08.000He's checking livers and kidneys and stuff like that on the carcass.
02:21:11.000And when they trap them, how do they keep that effect that you were talking about when that one hog got caught in the loop, whatever they call it?
02:21:26.000But the best way I can describe it, and we'll never really know...
02:21:30.000Because we don't experience a lot of that flavor, you know, that off-putting, like, gaminess from the trapped pigs.
02:21:39.000And I've discussed this with our processor.
02:21:41.000What we think is that there's a spike in stress and then kind of a plateau.
02:21:47.000Now, they're going to be stressed, but that initial stress is probably like an adrenaline rush.
02:21:52.000And I'm totally speaking out of my ass right now.
02:21:54.000But this is what we perceive it to be because the feral hog meat that we get in is never gamey like that experience I had with the snared pig or have randomly experienced with other hogs.
02:22:09.000And so we think that it plateaus because they're kept in captivity for maybe a couple days, you know, at the facility, and then they're run through.
02:22:17.000But so, I mean, there is a high degree of stress.
02:22:19.000And it also begs the question, it was like, you know, like, one of our things is the stress on animals, you know, and then when you have a wild animal, the stress is out of control.
02:22:50.000We have to deal with a certain system with hogs because the oversight on them is fairly strenuous because they are more likely to carry diseases than that elk or that Psyche deer.
02:24:50.000It's going to be really tricky, but I think that...
02:24:53.000The conversations need to start, and that's key, is how do we safely integrate hogs into the food chain also without monetizing them?
02:25:05.000Because once you monetize them, the impetus to getting rid of them is gone.
02:25:12.000So, I mean, for instance, you have all of a sudden this burgeoning market for feral hog meat and, you know, pork is getting $3.50 a pound but a feral hog is at $6.50.
02:25:25.000People are going to be like, wait a minute.
02:25:26.000Why do we want to kill all these things?
02:25:28.000Why don't we capture a couple of them and breed them?
02:25:32.000And this is – I was actually talking about this the other day because this happened.
02:25:38.000I knew a couple of people that were selling wild boar, but what they had done is they had captured, trapped a couple years before and were just breeding them and then just selling the meat as wild boar.
02:25:51.000And I'm like, it goes back to one of the first things that we talked about.
02:25:54.000It was like, what side of the fence is that pig on?
02:26:03.000Do they retract back to domestic looking?
02:26:06.000Does their nose shrink and does their fur change texture?
02:26:08.000Whenever I'd see pictures of these pigs, I never saw them in person, but they were shaggy and black, just like your kind of cut rate average feral hog.
02:26:18.000And there is a darkening of the flesh that you're getting from a wild hog, right?
02:27:37.000There's, I think, a few in East Texas, but the one that I saw a picture of one near Carrizo Springs, which is, I mean, almost to the border.
02:28:37.000And reintroduction of predators is not on the table.
02:28:41.000Yeah, we were looking up mountain lions and mountain lions here are not protected at all, which is really interesting because it's so different than California where there's zero hunting of mountain lions allowed ever.
02:28:51.000And even if you have a depredation tag, it's dangerous.
02:28:55.000Like people that have had animals, like there was a woman that had an alpaca farm and she had this one particular mountain lion that was thrill killing.
02:29:06.000So it was climbing into the thing with alpacas and it just couldn't resist.
02:29:09.000It was just whacking like, you know, fucking ten of them at a time.
02:29:12.000And she got a depredation permit to kill this mountain lion and the death threats that she started receiving were so terrifying to her that she abandoned the idea and just took the loss because all these people were furious at her for wanting to kill a mountain lion that was clearly just targeting these imprisoned alpacas and slaughtering them.
02:29:35.000And it's kind of interesting, the cultural differences, because here, it would be like a no-brainer.
02:29:40.000Like, you don't even have to have a tag.
02:29:41.000Just shoot that mountain lion that's trying to kill all your livestock.
02:29:46.000But in California, they're like, let it live, man.
02:29:59.000There's a silliness to California that is just, it's really apparent when you get out of there.
02:30:06.000I'm like, oh, that's what everybody's always talking about.
02:30:08.000And it was sort of accentuated by COVID, by the way people reacted and still react.
02:30:13.000There's a lot of folks that just, they don't want it to be better.
02:30:17.000They don't want the pandemic to be over.
02:30:20.000They seem to be enjoying the chaos of the uprooting of society and everybody being terrified and forced to wear three masks and stay indoors no matter what.
02:31:20.000I remember a long time ago I compared through the lens of food the cuisine of California to the cuisine of Texas, where if you look at the natives in Napa Valley, it's just like,
02:31:40.000A Comanche, you know, opening up a vein on his horse, drinking some blood so he can just make it a couple more days on a raid or maybe he's getting chased by rangers.
02:31:52.000I mean, it's like, how does that formative mentality translate to huge geographic areas?
02:32:10.000You know, one of the things that Bourdain told me, he said, the most disgusting food he ever ate was pickled shark from, like, Iceland, I think it was.
02:32:20.000It's like there's some sort of fermented...
02:32:21.000Fermented shark, they bury it for a long time.
02:32:23.000He said it is so un-fucking-believably disgusting that you can't believe that these people enjoy it as a delicacy.
02:36:15.000And so we show up and they had, just to be safe, they had had the hog and they had trapped it and they kept it in the pen for like, I want to say like a month.
02:36:24.000And they did nothing but feed it deer corn, which is just a very cheap feed corn.
02:36:30.000It's like a GMO corn and they just fed it nothing but corn, which is, I'm sure the pig was happy.
02:37:36.000I mean, it was about eight or nine inches of pure fat on top of it because just after one month of only eating corn, and I don't think it stopped.
02:38:10.000But we were, I will never forget that day, we were sliding around on the floor just because it almost aerosolized while we were doing the butchery demo.
02:38:20.000I was having trouble gripping my knives, everything.
02:38:23.000The fat was just, it was just in the air.
02:39:02.000Whereas corn, when you touch it, even when it's cold, it comes off on your fingers and it's a little bit, I hate the word greasy, but it is.
02:43:59.000And particularly after they've harvested the corn, you know, after they've cut it all down with the combines, all the stuff that's left on the ground, I mean, you just see deer everywhere out there.
02:44:08.000But those deer, that's a big part of their diet is corn, and it's a really mild-tasting, like, soft, kind of tenderish meat.
02:44:57.000Because I definitely don't like doing it as much as like elk hunting where you're going into the mountains trying to find them, make sure you don't get winded.
02:45:03.000If you could just sit in front of a place that you know an animal's going to come by and have lunch, you know, it's kind of fucked up.
02:46:15.000They can hear you, and they can see you.
02:46:18.000But if they hear you or see you and don't confirm with smell, they kind of like – they're either like just don't care and kind of go about their business or they'll kind of do a slow walk in another direction, things like that.
02:46:31.000If they smell you, they turn around and run away.
02:46:34.000That's my experience generally is that they have – that sense of smell is so acute.
02:46:40.000That's really – What you have to play to get in front of them.
02:46:45.000That said, I will get people really close to pigs.
02:46:50.000We can get 20, 30 yards if we're dead downwind on them.
02:47:21.000I was walking with a friend and we were in this beautiful high point in East Texas and there was acorns all over the ground and the wind was just ripping.
02:47:31.000We happened to have the wind in our faces and I came around.
02:48:55.000And then I don't know what the hunting situations are over there either.
02:48:58.000There's feral hog problems around the world.
02:49:01.000China, you know, definitely in Europe.
02:49:04.000And here, I mean, probably bleeding into Mexico a little bit.
02:49:07.000It's interesting how countries that don't have a cultural history of hunting have a very different take on people hunting, even if they're eating a lot of meat.
02:49:16.000You really see that from places like England.
02:49:20.000They have a very different take on hunting, for the most part, than we do.
02:49:25.000Well, it's been, in England particularly, just the space and the system that they've set up over so long is hunting is not available to everybody.
02:51:33.000Jim Harrison, the author, he said that tournament fishing for bass—I think he was speaking specifically about this—is like playing tennis with living balls.
02:51:53.000I mean, it's just like crank it in as fast as you can, sling it into the boat, grab it, hold on to it, and then put it in the live well and you're screaming because you just won $25,000.
02:52:05.000And then you drive it to another part of the lake and then you let it go.
02:52:16.000It doesn't make any sense to me at all.
02:52:18.000I mean, you're really inconveniencing that fish.
02:52:21.000It was a Mitch Hedberg joke, I think, right?
02:52:23.000It's like, just made it late for something.
02:53:43.000You're just stabbing them in the face with a hook, pulling them in, freaking them out, and then letting them go.
02:53:48.000Yeah, so geographically, I'd like to take this opportunity to pretty much piss off the entire nation and agree.
02:53:54.000If I, you know, am visiting New Mexico and I want to do a little fishing and I roll up to a trout stream and it says catch and release only, I keep driving.
02:55:31.000It must be the tournament thing that's making people not want to eat them because, like, they're thinking that you, by eating them, you're lessening the population, lessening the opportunities.
02:55:43.000But also, like, a trophy-sized bass or a trophy-sized pretty much anything I'm putting back.
02:55:49.000Like, if I catch, you know, an 18-pound catfish, I'm putting it back in the water.
02:55:54.000I mean, I don't think the eating qualities are going to be good, and I also think that I want that thing to go back out there and repopulate.
02:56:00.000I'm going to take the two, three, four pounders out.
02:56:04.000And that goes for most fish that I'm going to catch.
02:58:10.000He does duck and goose hunts up there in Arkansas, and he also offers this class where you can go and learn how to limb-line and trot-line catfish in these swamps.
02:58:23.000You know, you're just basically tying these cords to trees with hooks and baiting them and then coming back the next day and you're just weaving your way through these swamps and catching these old catfish.
02:58:34.000It was really incredible because of the I mean, the cultural weight of it, too.
02:58:41.000You know, he's African American, and he knows the history of this area and what it's like to exist up there.
02:58:48.000And also, it's just great for me to go and take a class, you know, and not be on the other end of it.
02:59:16.000If I am remembered for anything, I want to go down in history as the person who let the world know that catfish is the finest eating fish out there.
02:59:37.000I was watching this video the other day of catfish in England.
02:59:41.000Apparently there's an invasive catfish that they put in some area in England, and they've decimated the population of everything else in that, because they're a predatory catfish.
03:01:29.000I mean, there's plenty of footage out there of, like, little ducklings getting eaten by, I mean, catfish, too.
03:01:35.000You know, like I said, they get a bad rap for bottom feeders.
03:01:38.000But, I mean, when we were in Arkansas, we were fishing literally a couple inches below.
03:01:41.000The baits were just suspended right below the surface, and those fish were coming all the way up there to eat, which shows you that they're just, I mean, they're the hogs of the creek.
03:01:50.000You know, they're going to eat all over the place.
03:01:53.000And it was just so eye-opening to see that you're in this crazy swamp and we're using soap as bait.
03:03:23.000I mean, most of it in the last two years, but it really took a long time.
03:03:29.000And I'm glad because what it gave me is the data.
03:03:33.000Of, you know, dozens of hunting schools and then hog butchery classes of people asking questions.
03:03:40.000You know, being like, hey, I mean, this is the situation I was in.
03:03:43.000You know, the hog looked like this or can you eat a pig or can you eat the boar, you know, that's over 200 pounds or 180, 120 or 80, whatever it is.
03:03:50.000And like, so getting fed those questions and then able to go through and just really curate the answers to all those questions and then gave us time to kind of To coalesce this approach that we have to butchering and processing pigs,
03:04:06.000which is, like I mentioned earlier, it's like four sizes.
03:04:10.000You have a big boar, a big sow, a medium hog, and a small hog.
03:04:13.000And then how to butcher each one of those in the most efficient way.
03:04:17.000And then the recipes, the subsequent recipes that you can prepare from that specific size.
03:04:26.000Trying to not overcomplicate it, but give somebody a really good reference as to avoid that one-size-fits-all approach to hogs, which you find so much.
03:04:36.000How did wild pigs get gendered in terms of food value?
03:04:42.000Like when you go to a restaurant, you always get wild boar.
03:04:45.000It's always wild boar, which is horseshit.
03:05:06.000You change that to wild boar and then people want it.
03:05:10.000And I addressed that because it's like I know that not every pig is a boar, but You know, well, also, I mean, you could say, like, Russian boar is that, like, subspecies.
03:05:23.000And you say Russian boar even if it's a sow?
03:06:15.000You want a little more adventure in your menu descriptor, the wild boar.
03:06:20.000I love that you made this book, though, because I think that if somebody wants to get involved in hunting and they're thinking about starting out, like, there's no better animal to start out with than pigs, rather.