Anyone eat wild boar feet?

[FrontSight]

I am not ashamed to admit that I love pig's feet...boiled and then served with lots of salt & lots of lemon will make your tounge come out and slap the back of your neck!

Anyways, anyone try the wild boars' feet? Wondering if they taste just as good...

[Dragon55]

Well...

I've eat chitlins and barbecued possum and mud turtle so I don't have a weak stomach but I've never been able to eat swine feet ... at least while it looked like a foot.
I've eat potted meat, vienna sausage, and bologna so I guess I have eat pigs feet... just not while it still looked like a foot.
My grandpa loved them. I remember my granny always bought a jar of pickled ones when she got groceries............ he also ate chicken feet.

[2damnold4this]

I'll have to try them. Do you need to simmer them for a long time to get them tender enough to eat.

[FrontSight]

he also ate chicken feet.

Oh yes, one of life's true delicacies! Lightly steamed or flash boiled first to remove the outer tough skin & claws, then fried with salt....stupendous!

I'll have to try them. Do you need to simmer them for a long time to get them tender enough to eat.

Regular pig's feet need about an hour or so, so I think wild boar need even longer? The ligaments are just sooooo good! I know that sounds gross, but wow are they ever tasty!

[2damnold4this]

I suspect they have a lot of connective tissue so a long and slow cooking process may turn some of the connective proteins into gelatin making for a tasty dish. I think that wild pigs may also have a higher fat content in the muscle tissue than domestic pigs which have been bred to be lean.

[hogdogs]

I have seen where farm animals roam so I don't gnaw on feet... :barf: I have a yard full of dogs that get the "treats"...
Brent

[hogdogs]

2old... No actually farm pigs are intentionally fattened for higher weight on the sale barn scale and juicier meat. Wild swine is VERY lean and will dry out and toughen if over cooked even the least little bit...
Hardly any fat.
Brent

[FrontSight]

I have seen where farm animals roam so I don't gnaw on feet... I have a yard full of dogs that get the "treats"...

Yep, I know it's gross....but oh man is it worth it! You'd be amazed at what a good scrubbing and scouring can bring forth...

[bswiv]

Strange you should pose the question only a couple of days after we had "pig foot sausage" sent to us by one of the chefs.

Part of our seafood business is selling cut fish to restaurants, mostly country clubs and fancy places that use FRESH stuff. And many of these places have REAL chefs. One guy in particular loves to mess with cured & smoked meats of all sorts.

Over the years he's done everything from cured wild hams that you can not believe to gator sausage. Most of it has been interesting if not outright GREAT. The pig foot sausage, and yes you could see the cartelidge in it, was what I would rate as good but not great. It was kind of odd in that there was way less actual meat in it and more congealed stuff. That said the spices in it made it worth eating.

Way back my grandfather, he still had a Italian accent!, would add pigs feet and pigs tail to the sauce when he started to cook it on Sunday mornings. After simmering in that sauce for most of the day they were well worth sucking the meat off of.

I don't see any reason wild pig feet should not be just as good.

What I am wondering is if the proper cleaning method should be to skin them or to scald and scrape? I don't remember there ever being hooves on the ones my grandfather cooked so I'm guessing they get trimmed off?

Obviously your post has me thinking about trying it..........

[FrontSight]

bswiv: Yes, this is definitely BIG in Italian households!

The pigs feet sausage makes me break down & cry...ligaments, skin, cartilage, lots of it is also from the ears; very easy to process those.

Just add 2 grams each of salt and black pepper per pound of "meat", and also red pepper to your liking (I like it spicy)...

I like it best prepared by simply frying whole in a skillet, the slicing the sausage open when it is about 1/2 cooked so that the insides get all crispy, but yet still retain the gooey-ness.

Really amazing & simple to make, had it last night and that got me wondering about you guys...

Another great way is to cook them in the Sunday tomato sauce for the ziti...

I'm torturing myself here! lol

Oh, and the "hooves" definitely get pulled off, but the toes are kept; vey tender skin there...

[2rugers]

Pickled pigs feet I believe is still sold around the south in jars at many gas stations.

[Dragon55]

2rugers.........

It must be an Appalachian thing......... pickled pigs feet can be found at my Ingle's, my Food City, and my bar........... but I still opt for the pickled eggs at my bar.

[FrontSight]

What do pickled eggs taste like? Are they in vinegar, or salty water, or what?

[Dragon55]

Scrap.......... actually vinegar..... I have a jar in fridge now. Used red wine vinegar, a couple of jalepenos and 2 or three bay leafs.

I guess they taste kinda like really sour and spicy hot boiled eggs... I'm not tryin' to be smart just can't really describe taste.

[FrontSight]

No offense taken at all; not easy to describe a unique taste. I always saw them in movies, never in real life, and always wondered what kind of liquid they were in...

[SavageSniper]

I LOVE pickled eggs. But my wife forbids me from eating them so I have to save them for when I am away for a day or so. If you have ever had any, you know what I mean (whew!)

[Dragon55]

Oh yeah... so we can get some firearm references in this thread.......

I can CCW in my Ingle's and Food City but not in my bar .... even though I'm in Tennessee where we supposedly passed the 'guns in bars' law..... my bar mostly sells beer and whiskey...... the only food is in jars and cellophane on the bar and I doubt they sell enough of that stuff to constitute 51% of their total sales..... which is part of the law............. which really means the law should be nicknamed 'guns in restaurants that sell a lot of alcohol but not more than 50% of everything they sell' but I guess that was too long huh?

[FrontSight]

You are still way better off than NYC...we can't even CCW or open carry

[Dragon55]

Pickled eggs + pickled hot sausage + beer = A dangerous man

First you look like this
then you look liked this
then you look like this
then you look like this

and all your buddies look like this

but you look like this

[Dragon55]

With all the silly topics that I see on this forum that seem to never go away we cannot let a thread with an illustrious title like

"Anyone eat wild boar feet?" die. We just can't.

And on the topic of carry... open or concealed. It seems to me the good folks who need to carry the least live in places that have the least restrictions... like me

Then the good folks who need to carry the most live in places that have the most restrictions.

[2damnold4this]

2old... No actually farm pigs are intentionally fattened for higher weight on the sale barn scale and juicier meat. Wild swine is VERY lean and will dry out and toughen if over cooked even the least little bit...
Hardly any fat.

All pork dries out if it's over cooked.

Until recently, breeds of hogs called lard hogs were favored by Americans with meat hogs and bacon hogs coming second and third respectively. Lard hogs had the most fat, bacon hogs the second most and meat hogs the least. Most hogs in the US today are the Hampshire breed of meat hog, the pig with the lowest fat content. I'd expect that most feral hogs would be interbreeds of lard hogs, meat hogs and bacon hogs that escaped over the years and would have a higher fat content in the muscle tissue than the pure bred meat hog though they might not have as much fat in other areas of their body due to poor nutrition.

[hogdogs]

Dragon, So long as we are speaking of hunting or hunted prey we are good to go... The only forum on TFL not requiring firearm talk Ain't we killers a lucky lot
Brent

[FrontSight]

All pork dries out if it's over cooked.

I think there might be some exceptions to that, tho, such as when you boil it in water or sauce?

Then it will just eventually dissolve into a scrumptious jelly-like mini super-nova of flavor...

we cannot let a thread with an illustrious title like "Anyone eat wild boar feet?" die. We just can't.

I am humbly honored! lol

[hogdogs]

Would you try to post links to the breeds that make up these descriptions? When i was a boy raising feeder pigs, we also raised for ourselves... we made the various types from any breed or cross with diet and pen size...
The wild hog is always moving. If I pen the live caught wild hogs, they can be fattened in a month. As for all pork drying if over cooked, I agree but a fat ham has much more leeway than a lean wild hog ham. These wild hogs can run for miles at 25-30 mph. Some will have some fat but the only ones remotely as fat as a farm hog is one feeding on crops or livestock feed and hunter placed deer corn etc. We do often catch a young boar and castrate them making them a "barr" (barrow) and turn him loose to grow, then if he got enuff to eat, we will actually have a decent fat layer and some bacon.
Brent

[Dragon55]

hogdogs... great good to know

So, I don't know about boars in other parts of the country but .... FWIW the boar in the Smokies here have crossed with escaped domestic farm hogs over the years.
At least according to our University of Tennessee extension office.
They say that is the reason so many very large specimens have been taken during the season. We keep hearing they are gonna open it up more because they are doing so much damage to the park.... well the sooner the better.

Many of the guys here take these boar with scoped .44's while up in tree stands. The woods are so thick where they are located it's the most practical method.