Pork Rillettes from a recipe by Nigel Slater

On Saturday I picked up a 2lb piece of belly pork from the Reynold’s van in the street market to try out Nigel Slater’s recipe for Pork Rillettes. I am a fan of Mr Slater and have been wanting to try this for quite some time.

Here is the pork just before I covered it and put it in the oven. The herbs were from the garden. There wasn’t much thyme about but I managed to find enough.

Oven ready belly pork

And here it is 3 hours later.

Cooked belly pork

The meat fell apart easily when I took it out of the oven. But, oh dear, there was very little fat. I poured what there was over the shredded meat and left it to cool a bit before I put it into the fridge. I feared we were going to end up with little piles of shredded meat on our plates rather than rillettes. I needn’t have worried because the pork firmed up nicely.

Pork Rillettes

As you can see from the photo there isn’t a good covering of fat so it probably won’t keep for weeks. We’ll just have to eat it soon! Rillettes for breakfast anyone?

When I make this dish next time I will plan ahead and save some rendered fat from any pork joint I’ve cooked so that I will have enough fat to give a good covering even if there isn’t much from the belly pork itself.

Pork Rillettes is typically eaten with crusty bread. Not an option for us primal/paleo folks – time to check out some grain free bread recipes…

p.s. Waitrose online is currently selling 110g pots of Rillettes for £1.66 (on offer from £2.49). My piece of belly pork cost £3.50 and I have 8 good portions. Allowing a few pence for the garlic and some more for the fuel each portion cost between 50 and 60 pence. Eating primal needn’t be expensive.