Pizza made from a whole pig

The Portuguese video documents the creation of the revolting Porco Pizza, a pizza whose crust is an entire, flattened suckling pig.

Campo e Lavoura: Porco Pizza (Thanks, Rodolfo!)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Just to nitpick the nitpick, but Brazilians speak Portuguese, not Brazilian. I got that on good authority from a friend who speaks Quebecian.
IronyElemental

My only hope is that there’s a meat-lover’s version.
noahpoah

If you eat meat and you find this revolting, you should probably stop eating meat.
Talia

Wow, the self-righteousness in these thread comments is staggering. Who are you to decide what people should or shouldnt be revolted by?

Anyway, I thought this was gross, but it was FAR, FAR outgrossed by the linked spider pizza thread. I somehow missed it when it was originally posted, and I made the mistake of reading it now (although the comments are far, far worse than the article… I am traumatized).
Anonymous

Unicorn Chaser! Hmmm, wait a minute…maybe better not
Anonymous

next week: pizza-stuffed pig.
Anonymous

Hmm… But is it atkin’s safe, is what I want to know?
Anonymous

yummy!!!
twmbmf

One magical animal…
Chuck

Alright, I admit it. So I may have, years ago, started developing a fictional story universe involving an alternate-reality Denver which had a ‘Nothing But Pig’ Pizza over on Colfax and Clarkson (a GoodTimes, a Pizza Hut, and an apartment building would have to be torn down to support the venture), but that doesn’t mean I’m responsible for bringing this thing into our real world.

If a certain parking lot turns uncivilized and populated by hunched over things that have lost all their humanity, it’s not my fault.
LolaWalser

As a person who happily and gratefully ate suckling pigs, frogs, snails, grasshoppers, sashimi, tripe, lamb, fawn, veal, heart, liver, kidneys, bull testes, rooster crests, chicken feet, seal fat, sheep eyes, fish cheeks, camel and horse meat, cow brains etc., I am revolted by the use of “revolting” to describe this dish. You know what’s revolting? The size of meals served to North Americans, out and in the home. The pseudo-food sold in North American groceries, from plastic cheese and un-bread to hormone-bursting sliced, diced and otherwise camouflaged meat. The doughy abomination that is American pizza. The neon-coloured toxic candy and soda, the corn-fed beef, the artificial-looking, bland, tasteless vegs and waxed fruit. The fact that you can now order DINNER in many American multiplex cinemas, tub-sized popcorn and cola servings not being enough for North American appetites anymore, while out watching movies. THAT, my friends, is revolting.

Our Father*, give me a flattened carcass of a Brasilian piglet over the American diet any hour of the day, thank you and amen.

(*Just funning, not really religious–except in matters gastronomical.)
- dculberson
  
  “doughy abomination that is American pizza”
  
  Which kind of “American” pizza would that be? Chicago deep dish? Chicago thin crust? New-york style? New haven style? Detroit style? Greek style? California style? St. Louis style? Oh! You’re generalizing! I see. Generalizing “American food” is just like generalizing American citizens – it doesn’t work and is unfailingly inaccurate. There’s everything from pseudofood to some of the best food on the planet here, and you can pretty much find it in any city in the country.
ikegently

ah, moralizing food. such a worthy pursuit.
Anonymous

Where can I get one? I might even go to Brazil on my next vacation just for this!!
aelfscine

…Just look at it.
compassion2.0

They are mere infants. Please go vegan. Humanity can do better than this.
Baldhead

Yeah, the pig- pre- topping looks like it cam from a Cronenberg film. Not making me hungry.

And I’m think Ham and Bacon as toppings would be overkill.
Tzctlp

“Revolting” is not an absolute adjective, so it would have helped enormously if Cory (and all the others agreeing with him) would have pointed out what they find revolting about the video.

I have still to reach the point where counting too many calories in a dish makes me qualify it as revolting, and frankly I could not give a toss about what vegans, vegetarians and other loonies have to say about the matter (these people should look at some videos of chimps hunting, perhaps they would realize how ingrained meat eating is in our very own raise as the most successful species).

And as for those of you fretting about eating young animals: get a grip.

Apart from recent ecological considerations and the normal health concerns about eating meat, all these idiotic don’t kill the baby pig nonsense is frankly contemptible.
mcgaren

I live in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, the region where this show airs. When RBS got it on their website, a week ago, it went viral instantly. If you are curious about the ingredients, they are:

1 can of Tomato sauce
Peas and corn
1/2kg of chicken hearts (and, yes, they are delicious)
2 calabrese sausages
2kg chicken breasts
400g cream cheese mixed with ground cheese
EVEN MORE ground cheese
bell peppers
tomatoes

I found the roasting video, the first part:
http://mediacenter.clicrbs.com.br/templates/player.aspx?uf=1&contentID=88146&channel=47

And also I found a fish pizza: http://video.globo.com/Videos/Player/Noticias/0,,GIM1101298-7823-APRENDA%20A%20PREPARAR%20A%20PIZZA%20DE%20PEIXE,00.html
Drew from Zhrodague

Not too long ago, I used another pizza as a topping for a pizza I made:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drewzhrodague/3989043466/
MrZikl

The language is Portuguese but this isn’t one “Portuguese video”, it is a Brazilian video.
Other thing: If you want the best suckling pig do it here:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/travel/25head.html

Cheers! ;)
Anonymous

You call it “revolting”, why? because it’s pork skin with cheese and what not on top? How is that any different than eating pork rinds with the same toppings? The use of that word alone brings to mind ignorant people who make comments about foods from other cultures as being “gross” or “weird”.

That post just rubs me the wrong way, I’m going to go eat some pork rinds dipped in ranch sauce.
Anonymous

Revolting? That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?
- Anonymous
  
  No, the meat and very tender and tasty.
Razzabeth

Dude, that is way disgusting. Can we have that picture behind a link? It’s really disturbing.
TariAkpodiete

ok, FINALLY something might have put me off bacon…
aarrgghh

hotpepperman @ 31: “I love ‘Urban Man’. The sight of a meal cooked ‘properly’ (i.e. the way these have been cooked for thousands of years) and it is classified as ‘revolting’.”

i can only speak for myself, but even as a so-called “urban man”, i have no problem with this particular culinary technique. and as an omnivore, i have no problem eating slaughtered sentient beasts.

however … any chef (or photographer) will tell you that presentation is half the experience of a good meal. the wrong lighting, the wrong angle can turn what might be the most delicious tasting dish on earth into the thing from beyond the galaxy, killing even the healthiest of appetites.

so, yes, i think this thing, as filmed, looks pretty damn revolting.
greengestalt

Reminds me of from Gahan Wilson’s “A Paranoid’s guide to New York” where he had “Exotic restaurants often serve disgusting food to tourists to amuse themselves.” showing a guy at a (weird kinda oriental) restaurant with the food looking just like this although smaller, except it also has 6 legs and an anguished face looking up at him!
aarrgghh

i think the presentation needs a little work …
Anonymous

I don’t speak Portuguese, so maybe I’m off base here, but was anyone else weirded out by how they only spent about 30 seconds spotlighting the whole dead-pig crust thing, and then spent the next four minutes showing us how to put stuff on a pizza? Guys, we’ve seen a pizza before. We’ve even made a few in our time. We *know* about toppings. But how about this dead-pig crust? Perhaps we could talk more about that?
- Anonymous
  
  It is the second program….
- Anonymous
  
  This is a Brazilian tv programm. How to prepare the pig was presented in the previous programm.
  
  In Brazil we have delicious meals made with pig. Try looking for “leitÃ£o a pururuca” it is a crispy pig – it takes almost a day to be prepared once is cooked over low heat before crispy and is simply fantastic.
  
  Before judging by appearance, I strongly recommend taste it. Not only the “porco-pizza” but also all different meal of all cultures.
  
  Regularly they are a good surprise!
- Anonymous
  
  For people complaining about the lack of quality of the presentation, yeah you’re absolutely right… But the video was made in a place not very “technological”, per say…ChapecÃ³ is in the countryside of Santa Catarina (a marvelous place), and the top quality news presenters and video journalists are in SÃ£o Paulo or Rio… Try to imagina a video made in the middle of Arkansas being watched by George Lucas in California and you’ll get the picture… by the way, the s**t is f*****g disgusting…
- Anonymous
  
  This pig preparation (leitoa Ã ChapecÃ³ / leitoa Ã pururuca – piglet a la ChapecÃ³) is a famous recipe in Brazil and every skilled cooker knows how to do it so they focused on the idea of turning it into a “pizza”.
  
  I do agree it’s disgusting though. Have you seen the ingredients? Cheese, curd, pieces of chicken heart and smoked sausage… on top of a pig. Tell me about a fat-based diet!!
  
  All of the ingredients are very good, and are among my favourite. But all together is disgusting.
- Anonymous
  
  There’s a video in the program before that explains how to do the whole pig.
- Anonymous
  
  Maybe you wanna try http://mediacenter.clicrbs.com.br/templates/player.aspx?uf=2&contentID=88146&channel=47 to see how they made the pig.
benher

Well, they get a zero for presentation.

Still, as a meat eater I feel like it’s irresponsible to partake of animal protein with no knowledge of what it used to look like.
Randki

Wow, this makes me want to give up eating meat forever.. and thats saying a lot.
Antinous / Moderator

I love pork, but that looks like it just fell off John Hurt’s face.
Anonymous

The video is spoken in Portuguese, yes, but it is not a “Portuguese video,” since it is not from Portugal. It comes from Brazil. Portugal does have a number of recipes using pork, but this one is not the case.
Mitch

We like our animal corpse foods in a form that makes it less obvious where they came from.

I bet that tastes good but it looks so rich I think I would fall asleep after once slice. If I ate the whole pie there would surely be an enem-ergency within two days.
RichardP

What is the matter with all you people? This is beautiful. I grew up on a 5000 acre farm in Australia where we raised, inter alia, domestic pigs on a free range basis, and they are wonderful, clever, cooperative (with each other) animals and they taste great. The pig pizza base looks terrific, but why on earth put silly old pizza on such a lovely little porker?

There is a dish in a celebrated and a bit edgy Greek restaurant in sydney which is, I think, slightly weirder – Perama at Petersham serves up pork belly baklava. and it tastes terrific.

NOT at all revolting
- mreddy1
  
  Are you serious? “Beautiful?” what circle-jerk world are you from where they take entire animals, hollow them out, throw cheese and shit on them, and eat them? this is a heart attack waiting to happen, and you think it’s beautiful? you disgust me more than the pizza.
HotPepperMan

The chicken hearts are ‘higaditos’ or higados’ I believe. They are truly delicious fried with olive oil, garlic, onion and perhaps some finely cubed potato. Topped with fresh cilantro of course.

We mainly feed them to our dogs on occasion. The Spanish here in the mountains of Southern Spain think we are crazy for doing so… the flavour and goodness is incredible.
- Tzctlp
  
  “Higaditos” would be livers, not hearts.
aarrgghh

richardp @ 12: “… wonderful, clever, cooperative (with each other) animals and they taste great.”

i hope you don’t have any children …
PatrickHall

Holly ate, eat, wait, stick!!!!
http://www.maakies.com Anonymous

That animal looks DELICIOUS. I’ll leave it to future generations to spare the souls of animals, I’m not that fully conscious yet.
Rita Carapinha

I’m pretty certain that “wonderful” recipe is indeed Brazilian. Although we share the portuguese language our accents are distinct, as is our culinary culture… But fear not, we have equally strange dishes on our menu here in Portugal.
darren

Delicious! I’ve had an increased taste for pork ever since I got vaccinated for H1N1. Mmm, pork.
Anonymous

Just a quickie to let you all now this is Brazilian and not Portuguese…

And for the weirded out anonymous poster, this is apparently a follow-up recipe. They showed how to prepare the pig in the previous episode.
mermaid

if you eat carnitas, its pretty much the same thing without the chips
lmonast

I am sorry to say that this was shot in Brazil.
Here you can also eat: sushi pizza, barbecue pizza, and fondue pizza. They are all equally revolting.
- Anonymous
  
  sushi pizza? MELDELS!
dargaud

Revolting ? Just for a different way to show pork ?!? Well, I had that same feeling when I first discovered ‘porchetta’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porchetta) in Rome. You see a small booth with an entire roasted pig in it, and they give you a slice (including the skin which is actually the best part) on toast. I held off trying it for years, then I kicked myself for not having had it sooner.
Anonymous

This isn’t a Portuguese video, it’s Brazilian, RBS TV is a station from the southern part of the country, a very meat-oriented culture there, in the Pampas, with a huge influence from German and Italian immigrants.
PrettyBoyTim

Revolting? How can any dish made from pig be revolting? It’s the most delicious animal known to man!
Bakaness

Just to nitpick, that seems to be Brasillian, not Portuguese. And it looks *delicious*. If you can’t deal with the fact that an animal died so that you can eat, become vegetarian.
Ugly Canuck

Talk about going the whole hog!
Mark

Sorry, I’m not seeing the revolting part here. Barbecued whole hogs are a de riguer here in the southern USA (yes, I just used “whole hog” and “de riguer” in the same sentence; I’m cosmopolitan like that). Hell, we’re so dedicated, we even have certification programs in order to become a barbecue judge.

Usually, I’d say that a good piece of pork should be able to stand on it’s own, but Porco Pizza? Pure genius!
Anonymous

I’m Portuguese. Abd that’s revolting and brazilian! We roast pigs not turn them into pizzas.
Anonymous

I love porc + pizza. don`t be blinded by the looks. It`s really good
Boeotian

This IS Brazilian, as some people are pointing out, and NOT Portuguese. The accent shows right from the start. It is from South of Brazil, in a state know for its european colonies, mostly German, Italian and Polish.

The recipe seems quite Gaucho, from the Pampas, to me.
johnpspeno

I find wheat revolting due to is deleterious affect on human health, so any pizza with a meat crust instead is an improvement. Meatza is yummy!
adodge

Fuck “revolting.” That looks glorious.
blueelm

I happen not to eat pork, but I don’t see what’s revolting about this.

I wish I understood better what was being said though, was that heart meat they were putting on there?
- Anonymous
  
  the guy puts chicken hearts (i’m not sure if you have a proper name for that in english), chicken meat and pork sausage on the porco pizza.
  there’s also requeijÃ£o, which is a sort of typical brazilian cream cheese (= delicious fat), mozzarella and tomato sauce.
HotPepperMan

I love ‘Urban Man’. The sight of a meal cooked ‘properly’ (i.e. the way these have been cooked for thousands of years) and it is classified as ‘revolting’. Clearly, many people are totally unaware of the true ‘revulsion’ of a visit to a factory farm or perhaps a bacon factory – where you get to see the delights of food being ‘manicured’ to present it to the public. What that means is the inclusion of a brine solution with anti-oxidants. How is this used? Injected directly into the meat with hundreds of needles. Why? To increase the bulk and weight of the meat and therefore profit.

Sadly, most people have moved away from an awareness of food and how it is and should be prepared. Rather than use ‘good’ fat (which this pig clearly has an abundance of), the typical processed food has a variety of processed fats – hydrogenated being just one of them.

I look at this and see ‘pig with vegetables and cheeses’ rather than a list of ingredients that I am unable to pronounce and a collection of chemicals that are added to ‘improve my eating experience’.

It could only be revolting to a none meat eater perhaps. What IS revolting is trying to call this a pizza. There is the confusion. Again, were people to disassemble the ingredients (plus the extra handling) of a standard pizza (or most preprocessed foods) they would wonder why and how the manufacturer is able to call ‘Product X’ a ‘cheese’ pizza or even a ‘meat’ pizza e.g. Bacon Bits as a product actually contain no bacon and are (I believe) suitable for vegetarians.

Talking of pronunciation, in Portugal they speak Portuguese (and regional variant dialects). In Brazil they also speak a variant of Portuguese along with a multitude of regional specific languages and dialects.
Anonymous

Revolting? I don’t eat pork, but YOU created Turducken!
dculberson

It is revolting and has nothing to do with the fact that it’s meat or a dead animal.
Anonymous

Certainly *not* revolting! (Maybe slight ignorance though…)

I’m from Australia and travelled all the way to Segovia in Spain just to try their specialty roast suckling pig. I would also request the same if I was ever given a choice for my last meal on earth.

Would love to try this pizza version as well but the suckling pig on it’s own was enough to blow my mind – I didn’t feel the need to add anything to it or eat anything else with it. It just melts in your mouth like syrup!
PaulR

A few anecdotes:

1) At a dinner party I gave some time ago, one of the guests couldn’t bring herself to eat the lobster on her plate. Why? Because the lobster was whole. Sitting there, with its (dead and cooked) beady little black eyes staring back up at her, the lobster stymied any plans to eat its delicious, sweet flesh – even despite my repeated urgings that “Pinchy would’ve wanted it this way”.

After she explained why, I reached over, took her lobster, ripped the tail off the body and plopped the two halves back onto her plate (after draining the juice into the ‘bone yard’ bowl in the middle of the table).

Now she could eat it.

2) Years ago, when I still lived in Montreal, one of my every-once-in-a-while haunts was the Rotisserie Italienne, on Ste-Catherine at the corner of Towers, for a little something and a “fresca Brio Chinotto”. You can see the restaurant on Google Maps here, pan leftwards a little:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ycjze6c

As you entered the restaurant, the suckling pig was there, behind the glass, in plain view, daring you to order it. Like dargaud, I’d held off ordering a porchetta sandwich – I loved their fettuccine frutti di mare too much – until my sixth visit or so. What a revelation!

3) ‘Au Pied de Cochon’ http://www.restaurantaupieddecochon.ca/, one of Montreal’s, nay, the world’s finest restaurants, is run by chefs Martin Picard and trusty sidekick Hughe Dufour. Its signature Poutine au Foie Gras well reflects their irreverent and inventive approach to food. Picard and Dufour also host a truly remarkable food show called ‘Martin sur la route’.

To quote from Radio-Canada’s website:
“Dynamique et brute, parfois sophistiquÃ©e et impressionnante, souvent excessive et un brin mal Ã©levÃ©e, mais toujours humoristique, attachante et jouissive, la sÃ©rie Martin sur la route est Ã l’image des chefs du restaurant Au Pied de cochon, Martin Picard et Hugue Dufour, de bons vivants dont le plaisir de bien vivre et de bien manger est communicatif.”

My translation: “Energetic and coarse, sometimes sophisticated and impressive, often excessive and a little impolite, but always funny, lovable and joyous, ‘Martin sur la route’ reflects the Au Pied de cochon’s chefs: bons vivants, whose joy in living well and eating well is infectious.”

It’s slated to be offered in English on The Food Network. I urge the foodies here to catch it when it airs.
http://www.foodnetwork.ca/ontv/shows/show.html?titleid=120384

One of the show’s emphasis is a holistic approach to food: production/capture, cooking, and eating. He follows Richard Feyman’s final instructions to his students: http://preview.tinyurl.com/ye5tsmf – for the record, I have no idea whether Picard or Dufour studied quantum physics.

In one remarkable episode, broadcast in early January 2008, they spent a Fall weekend on a farm butchering and cooking/preparing a whole pig.

For a nascent colony, such as was New France, pigs were a good/handy source of protein: they ate anything, and sows could throw large litters yearly which could be culled (Oops, I mean eaten). In the Fall, the pigs’ numbers had to be reduced, otherwise the pig herd wouldn’t make it through winter when less food was available to feed them.

Hence, the traditional French-Canadian annual slaughter of the family’s pig(s). Every once in while, my grandfather used to keep a pig for this purpose, despite running a gas/service station for a living.

For this episode, they showed the whole process: the modern-style killing (which was preceded by a short explanation by Picard that they weren’t going to hide the reality of the process from the viewer), the butchering, and the feast. The whole animal was processed, from the nose to the tail: blood pudding, brined pig’s feet, ‘ragout de boulettes’, smoked ham, head cheese, etc.

By now, you’ve surely guessed that, no, I don’t find this pizza revolting.

You don’t eat meat because it’s energy/carbon/environmentally wasteful/inefficient/unsustainable? Because your religion forbids it? Because you’re allergic, somehow, to animal protein? Because eating meat contradicts what you do for a living (say, you’re a veterinarian)? Fine, though I may not agree, I respect that.

But not eating meat because it’s icky? You’ve just lost me.
Anonymous

And, as someone pointed out, this Recipe is southern-brazilian – i.e, has lots of German and Eastern-European influences. South Brazil is almost another country, full of German, Polish and even some Russian colonies, who brought their culture and mixed with the Italians and Portugueses. This can be proved by this “Porco Pizza”
GoodBlood

For those of you wondering why they’re not explaining how to cook the pig in detail, it’s because they gave that recipe in the previous week.

The show is called “Campo e Lavoura”, or “Field and Farming”, and everybody seems to have a lovely countryside Brazilian Southern accent. There’s no sense of irony, but there’s plenty of humour in it, me thinks.

Of course it’s not revolting, but it’s fun all the same to call it “revolting.” In that there’s irony.
Anonymous

People, I’m Brazilian, I fish for pig feet, tails, snouts and ears when I’m eating feijoada at a restaurant (yep, all that and more piggylicious stuff goes in it), I LOVE crackling sucking pig, but… there’s only so much concentrated cholesterol a heart can take.

Not to mention that the idea of ruining a perfectly great pig by sprinkling it with chicken and drowning it in cheese is, to me, revolting. I’d much rather have the pig turned glorious crackling skin side up, with no toppings, some lemon juice, farofa, some rice and beans, or grits and braised greens.

As to the “OMG it’s just a baby pig, don’t eat it” enthusiasts, raising farm animals has been an excellent evolutionary move – for THEM. If pigs were to be left alone in the wild, they’d hardly be as successful as a species as they are. The same goes for cows, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys… nothing protects a species’s survival as well as being tamed and useful to mankind, especially as food.
Robert

After seeing things like this, plus carcasses hanging out in the meat locker, I finally decided to go veg a year ago. I guess I finally made the visceral (heh) connection between the unidentifiable slab of protein on my plate and a flayed body.
Gloria

Why is everyone so up in arms about finding something excessive?

I eat animal fat, and though I don’t always like the texture, offal. I *grew up* eating animals with eyes, faces, heads, and whole bodies (limbs, feet, etc.). I regularly eat at Chinese restaurants where whole poultry and pigs hang in the window (which out-of-towners like to snap pictures of), and we often serve whole ducks, chickens, and fish at dinner. Am I edgy and enlightened enough for you?

This doesn’t mean I like shoving pizza made of PORK into my face. Oh yes, I have my moments of indulgence — frequent moments — and yet, miraculously, I can still feel nauseated by what looks to me like excessively rich and fatty food, when I’m not in the mood for it. Is that hypocrisy, or a bit of common sense and moderation?

I’m amazed by how many people here are making huge assumptions of what Cory thinks here is “revolting.” It’s almost laughable what long, furious diatribes some of you go into when Cory’s original expression of disgust was so vague. He never points to exactly what he means.

As others have pointed out, it’s entirely possible — and quite reasonable — that the revolting aspects here is not the meat itself, or the concept of a roast pig, but the slapdash presentation and the sheer excess (substituting meat for dough!).

Some of you need to grow thicker skins.
Viadd

I’ll have one with veggie toppings and not so much cheese. I’m on a diet.
Sethum

@RichardP
I know I sure like to eat things that are as clever as I am. Sometimes I dream of making a maze full of mental challenges and the reward at the finish line is a quick trip to the chopping block and onto my plate. The smarter, the tastier, I always say…