The Joe Rogan Experience - #1676 - Jesse Griffiths

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

Jesse Griffiths is a butcher, hunter, author, and restauranteur. He is the co-owner of Dai Due Supper Club and The New School of Traditional Cookery. His new book "The Hog Book: a Chef's Guide to Hunting, Butchering and Cooking Wild Pigs" is available now only at TheHogBook.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. What's up, Jesse? How are you, man? Doing really well. You are one of the many people that are cool as fuck that I've met because of Steve Rinella. I need to give that guy like a gift just for introducing me to cool people. I've met at least a dozen really cool people because of Steve Rinella.

Yeah, I can believe that. He's a powerful person, and I'm honored to be included in that group. I really am. He's done a lot for us. His ability to get out there and support people and his, his knowledge of his reach, um, and, and, and just wanting to get out there and be, uh, like promote people. It's very, very kind. He's a very generous person. He is. And he's, he's so smart and he's so important to that, to that world, the world of

wild foods, you know, and,, and I heard you on the podcast, on his podcast, a few years back, when you were talking, you guys were talking about cooking and Dai Due, your restaurant here in Austin, and you could tell right away that what you're doing is very much like a passion project. Like, you're a guy, like, when'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. When I hear you talk about Dai Dui, when I hear you talk about cooking in general, and of course you got a new book out. It's out right now, The Hog Book. Go get it. Chef's Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Pigs. But it's very inspiring.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I love food. And most of my life revolves around gathering it in some way or another. I mean, I like to go pick blackberries a lot. And that translates to a lot of other things. I mean, I obviously to go pick blackberries a lot. And that translates to a lot of other things. I mean, I obviously like to kill pigs. I also like to buy carrots, things like that.

I like to serve food. And it's honest work. And I'm glad that you appreciate that. Yeah, it's, you know, I learned from Anthony Bourdain that what food really is, it's like it's an art form that's temporary. You know, I used to think of food as just being delicious. And then I watched that No Reservation show and I'm like, oh, these are artists. Oh, it was like a shift in my head. I had to like rethink what it meant to be a chef. Right. I don't know. Sometimes 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. Like

we're more craftsmen than artists. Now there's some chefs that are artists that are out there that way smarter than me and they can make a foam or they can compose a dish with things that just like will blow your mind. You're like, I don't think that's going to be good. And then they put it together and it is really good. I think of being a chef got really hip. I don't know. I mean, Bourdain had a lot to do with that too. But I like to tell our staff particularly just to kind of keep everybody's, you know, egos within limit that we're more craftsmen, you know, that we're like plumbers.

You know, we do something that's needed on a daily basis because, you know, you eat a really good meal and you're hungry the next day. And so I think that some chefs are certainly artists, and I really admire them. I, however, am not one of those. You're being humble. I get it, though. And I like what you're saying about keeping the other people in check. Good move. Very smart. Tell them they're plumbers. Right, right. I mean, no them they're plumbers. Right.

I mean, no offense to plumbers either. I mean, they make a hell of a lot more money than cooks do. Well, yeah. And you're fucking, you know, when your sink's broken or your toilet's backed up, you need them. The thing about it is, though, like there is an art to cooking food correctly. It's not simple. And there's also an art to being like a carpenter, right? You know, there's a lot of craftsmen that you, for sure, a Finnish carpenter, that's an artist.

But 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. Now I think they do. I think a lot of folks do. 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. You're like, wow, this is... There's strange little projects that these people are doing,

and they're composing these foods, these dishes, based on local ingredients and everything. It just gets you excited about what you're eating. It's a different way of looking at food. At least it was for me. Right. And it changes every day, especially if that's how you're sourcing your food. Everything is a little bit different. The tomatoes are, they're blowing up because there's been too much rain or there's no tomatoes because it's too hot or something like that. You're dealing with things like that every day and you can deal that in a positive or a negative. You can look at that as an advantage.

And so I do, yeah, I'll concede that yes, there is a bit of an art to dealing with food like that too. How long have you owned Dai Dua for? As a brick and mortar restaurant, seven years. Now 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. We called it a supper club and we would serve at our heyday. We're serving 80 people every week, once a week, and just sourcing everything locally. A lot of times just from one farm. And then, you know, getting fish out of the Gulf or freshwater fish, local olive oil, local dairy, local cheeses, local fruit, everything.

And whatever was available, that's what we'd do. Now, these days, I don't think that's entirely novel. But in 2006 to 2010, it was still a little bit novel. Not to say that eating like that is a groundbreaking idea because it's probably the second oldest idea known to humans. But to kind of do it... Well, I would say doing it in Texas was harder. And no one had ever really attempted that with ingredients here because it is such a rough space.

It can be. I mean the weather is very extreme and the growing seasons can be great or terrible. We have weather events, things like that. So when you started out in 2006, were you coming right out of culinary school? Like what were you, what were you doing before then? I had just been working in restaurants. I never went to culinary school or any school beyond high school. And just, I just loved cooking and I'd always worked in restaurants. But I did start to grow a little bit tired of this disconnection with food that I saw in restaurants. I traveled to Mexico and I traveled to Europe.

And I saw in those two places that their cuisine was based on their local ingredients. And to put it in a really extreme way, northern Mexico the food was wonderful but it was very much austere we were looking at onions and chilies and beans I'm talking about the high desert meat I mean no seafood whatsoever obviously they're a couple hours from the coast and they were still able to pull off this really beautiful food there and that was just it was meaningful and 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. And you saw what they were doing. You know,

here we use walnut oil and duck fat as our primary cooking fats. And they base a whole cuisine on that region of France off of that. And what I saw where I'm from is that we had nothing like that. Whenever we wanted asparagus, we would order it. Whenever we wanted a beef tenderloin, we ordered it. And we get in these boxes full of, you know, random nameless animals and out of season produce from across the world. And I just thought that what if we could represent the bounty of this area a little better? And I saw what you could do with an austere space like in northern Mexico. And I'm like, certainly we can do that in central Texas because we are very uniquely poised between the coasts and north Texas.

We have prairies. We have hill country full of game. South Texas full of citrus and mangoes, things like that. We have everything we need here. I don't know what austere means. Do you? Not bountiful. Do you know what it means? Like a very- I was pretending I knew what it meant for a while. I was like, I better ask a question. Yeah. Not necessarily poor, but not an enriched environment. Oh, God. Severe or strict in manner, attitude, or appearance.

An austere man, okay, of living conditions or way of life, having no comforts or luxuries, harsh or aesthetic. Ascetic? Is that a word? Ascetic? How do you say that? Conditions in the prison could hardly be more astute. Having an extremely plain and simple style or appearance, unadorned. The cathedral is impressive in its austere simplicity. There you go. Okay. So when you, did you get out of high school and then immediately start working in restaurants?

I worked in restaurants all through high school. Did you always know that you wanted to be a cook? No, I mean, I worked in the front of the house. I was a waiter and a bartender. It was just a good way to make cash. Cash, you know, I loved it, you know, as a young man. And I, you know, I spent it on, I tithed most of it. No, I did not.

But 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? Yes, yes. And I mean, I think it can be great. It really depends on the person. I've known a lot of people that came out of culinary schools that are, that have done a wonderful job in their career. And also a lot of people that, you know, they,

it didn't work and, you know, they're, they're onto massage school next. Right. Right. Well, that's like with everything, right? It's hard for people to like stick to a path and just grind it out. And I think the chef world is a lot of grinding, huh? Yeah. It's, it's tough. You 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. You still do. Don't get me wrong.

I mean, it's a lot of hard work. But, you know, working your way through that will really let you know if that's what you want to do for the rest of your life. And I, I knew that it was, I just, something about food just took me. So when you first started working, just took the pay cut and went to the kitchen, you knew right away. Yes. And I stayed in the kitchen from there on. I never, I never left. And then, um, when I started traveling, that's when I really got excited about it and just saw food in its real way. I think a formative meal for me would be in Venice. I was able to travel there, but I was also able to work in a kitchen. It was in the off season. Nobody was there because it was between like the sunny season and carnival.

And so the chef took me literally on a gondola. Like, I mean, you can't get more romanticized than that. He's like, we have to go to the seafood market. Well, how do you get to the seafood market? You get on a gondola. And the guy takes you across the canal. And then we went and bought the most beautiful sole, you know, little miniature flounder this tiny little flatfish and then we go back to his kitchen and he's got a reach-in cooler and it's it's the depths they're all off season so

there's not much going on vegetable wise and he's got three sizes of arugula in there he's got small like medium and large and then he's got some lemons and he's got some olive oil. And this guy takes this soul and he cooks it on a, on a flat top. And he's like, don't put any salt on it. It's still salty from the lagoon. And I'm like, yeah, you're full of shit, man. Like really? I'm like, okay. And then he cuts a lemon in half cause it's winter. And so lemons are in season. It's this beautiful lemon. And he puts that on the plate and then he picks the small arugula and puts that on the plate because it's delicate. And 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. And I just remember thinking, like, how is that? We could not get away with that in the United States, like serving food like that. Here's a chef who's extremely talented. He's been working in these hotels all over Europe his whole life. a chef who's extremely talented. He's been working in these hotels all over Europe his whole life. And he has the ego, a lack of, to just put a perfectly cooked piece of fish, some raw greens, some beautiful olive oil, and a perfect lemon on a plate and send it out in the dining room. So it's to not fuck with it. Exactly. To know exactly when it's,

this is all you need. Right. And not think that you, you don't have to do anything to it. And it's, it's up here. It's, I mean, I mean, I want to do stuff to, you know, I want to manipulate it all the time, of course. But when I saw that, I was like, that's food and that's cooking and that's, that's hospitality and that's nourishing right there. I thought that was really cool. And it was all ingredient-based and it was all hyper-local. And there's got to be something satisfying about being able to respect the simplicity of a dish, right? Certainly.

To not get your fingerprints all over it and just to know that as it stands, it's amazing. You don't really have to fuck with it. Yeah. And at that point, to fuck with it. Yeah. And at that point, your skill is really sourcing. You know, it's relationships that you've made with, you know, a fishmonger or a farmer or a rancher or somebody that's, you know, pressing olive oil. It's things like that that I think are really exciting because, I mean,

once you have those base ingredients, you really don't need to do that much. I mean, you can. You can get there and play with it all you want. My style is certainly to not play with it. And also, I mean, there's so much wisdom in leaving stuff alone. When you see someone do that and you know that that's all it needs, it's like it's exciting. There's something exciting about something that really hasn't been fucked with right in that way like as a dish

Yeah, just if it works out cuz there's like a wisdom in creating something like that There's a craft in in of itself and just leaving shit alone. Yeah, right. I yeah, I think so Yeah, it's like a perfectly cooked piece of meat. It's not requiring a lot. It's just time and understanding what you're doing with it and salt and meat. I mean, it's about as primitive as you get. But 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, the effort of the people that have put this dish together

comes through as you're eating it. And when it's done really well, it's like you're excited about the skill of the person who put this together. If 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.

There's so much going on there. I'm excited about the relationship we have with the rancher, too, and the story that they tell. It's just like, oh, the ribeye 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. Right, right, right. And how that, I mean, how it computes the whole system. And, 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. a cow in the field, catch a fish, kill a deer, things like that.

I 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. Now you've been, you 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. Right. When did you start doing that? That was in 2008, so shortly after. We started doing classes on butchery of domestic pork, which was kind of my wheelhouse. I'd learned that in restaurant work.

I'd been a prep cook and a butcher in a restaurant. learned that in restaurant work. I've been a prep cook and a butcher in a restaurant. And 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 opportunity to really kind of tie the two together. You know, I knew how to butcher before I knew how to hunt. And 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. And 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. Because if you can 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, you know, rotting at a grocery store because they haven't been sold or they're not, they don't look good enough to sell anymore. That's also sad to me. And, and, you know, a lot of work went into that and, and, and so much it's immeasurable. And so being able to tie

food, uh, with the, with the source like that with hunting or fishing or whatever, I think was really important. So we started doing classes where we were taking people out and we would, it's guided hunts. And then you learn how to butcher, cook, and then you eat game throughout the weekend too. And we still do that to this day. And when you do this, how many times a year do you do this? You know, well, you know, in season, it's Texas, so it's hot. Our season typically runs, if we have a couple dove hunts or something in there, from mid-September till maybe April. So just basically the cooler and cool and cold months of the year. So about six,

seven months. And when you do it, would you do it on weekends? Like when do you? Yeah, they're typically weekend classes. We used to do a lot of private events and now I've just gone to, we work with one ranch. We 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. They come back. We have a pretty high return rate on those. We're about to release our schedule of those, but there's going to be very, very little seats available to those. They fill up. We do eight classes a year for four people.

very little seats available to those. They fill up. We do eight classes a year for four people. You kind of would, if you're hunting too, you're going to need small groups, right? You really can't. Yeah, and it's got to be very intimate. You know, we want everybody to see everything and put their hands on it.

So it's really necessary. We have a team of guides. So everybody, if you've never been hunting before, you have a guide. We walk you through the whole series of events, like from sighting in the gun to, you know, it's this constant barrage of like learning this, like, this is how you put your heel down, you know, this is the way the wind is blowing, this is the way we're going to walk to

do this, you know, this is what time of day we expect deer to move, when we expect hogs to move, why we're sitting right here, all kinds of, you know, we're constantly feeding information. And then once that animal is taken, we're feeding, you know, more information about how you skin, this is how you gut, this is how you use the liver, this is gall fat, this is a shank, this is best for grind, this is best for slow cooking, things like that. And then we teach them how to butcher it, break it down. And then we really want them to be able to do it on their own. And the whole time we feed them game to kind of really keep it in context. Because a lot of times people have been told, oh, you know, you can't eat that. You know, deer liver is no good or venison tastes gamey to me.

I'm not going to touch the hog topic yet. But, you know, people are very opinionated about hogs. And we try to just kind of dispel those myths and empower and educate people and to be able to do it on their own. And whether or not they go and do it in the future, I don't really know, but I do think that it gives them some very good connectivity. I mean, I know people that came on a trip 12 years ago that still talk about it to me. I think it was important. And I mean, I know people that came on a trip 12 years ago that still talk about it to me. I think it was important. And 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. That 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, you know, they all had lives. They all had deaths, everything. You know, it's like and I think it teaches you just to appreciate resources. And once you start to appreciate that resource, maybe you'll start to appreciate all resources, you know? Right. You appreciate the vegetables, everything else. You might appreciate where your clothes are made or do we need a leaf blower, you know, things like that. Yeah. We are really disconnected from so many things that are

critical for life. I mean, there's very few people that have ever sourced any of their food. They've never grown it. They've never hunted it. They've never fished it. They just go buy food, and they think of food as something that you need to sustain yourself.

Whenever I talk to someone, they go, oh, I don't give a shit about food. I just need to eat. I always get so sad. Like, you're missing out on... It's real fun. It's like people saying they don't like music. Oh, I don't like music.

Like how? What? Yeah. How do you not like music? How do you not appreciate really good food? The 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.

And I've talked to people that go helicopter hunting. And I go, well, what do you do with all the pigs? And they're like, you leave them there. And I'm like, what? Yeah. I'm like, that doesn't seem, that seems not just wasteful, but. Well, you know, I mean, there's a lot to that. You have to, right?

Because of the, you have to eradicate a certain amount of those pigs. But isn't there like a lot of food that you're just letting rot? There is. So, I mean, this is the Pandora's box topic for me. I'm very vested in it. I just wrote a book about feral hogs. Steve Rinella, to come full circle on that, he called me the hog apologist. And it's true. But to your point, I think that we'll start there with a feral hog.

Let's explain the numbers too, because people need to know how fucking crazy it is here in Texas. And of course, these numbers are not going to be clearly defined. It's hard to get a census on hogs. So the estimate in the United States is around 6 million. The estimate here in Texas is between 2 and 4 million. So probably somewhere in the middle of that, maybe 2.6. That's a number that you'll see a lot, maybe around 3 million, but whatever. So literally more than the entire population of Austin. In hogs. In hogs. Spread out around the state.

And in the time we've been talking about them, you know, how many have been born. Yeah. Boink, boink, boink, boink. So they have no breeding season. They can breed at a very young age. You know, let's say five or six months is very conceivable. And then they have a gestation period of three months, three weeks, three days. And then they can drop a litter of, you know. Always three days? So you can just plan it out? Yeah. I mean,

it's pretty precise like that. I bet women are very jealous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll be giving birth on Wednesday. Yeah. Got it timed in. And after that, I mean, they're able to go back into estrus pretty quickly after that. And their litter size can be anywhere from, you know, 2 to 12. But, you know, let's just say it's, you know, even 6 is a lot. So you've got a 10-month-old animal dropping six babies. And they can do it three times a year.

Well, twice. You 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. It might be 23 days. I can't remember the number right now. After they give birth and they're back in estrus. And if they're living in an area that's got a high population of boars, they're probably going to get bred pretty quick. And so that's when you see this explosion that has happened. And so they're not indigenous to this country.

So they came here in the mid-1500s. Columbus brought some to, I mean, just the Caribbean islands. to, I mean, just the Caribbean islands. But the mainland was, it's usually attributed to Hernando de Soto, who dropped off a bunch of pigs on his way before he died in Arkansas. And 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. And so what we saw was this real slow build in pig populations. There was also some Pacific Islanders that dropped them off in Hawaii way before that.

So if you're talking about the technical United States- When did they drop them off in Hawaii? It's food source. No, no. When? When? Oh, it was, I couldn't give you a number. It's way previous to the 1500s. Wow. That's wild. So that's a weird debate in Hawaii, right? Because a lot of people are saying they're an invasive species.

Yeah. And then some folks are like, well, so are people. Sure. Because if you think about it, the hogs have been there as long as the people almost. There's going to be a lot of parallels. Yeah. Yeah. There's a very destructive European animal arrives on our shores.

Yeah. And now there's a lot of them. So, you know, you've got these populations exploding throughout time, but really kind of concentrated in the late, you know, 1900s, you know, like the 80s. And then you saw people, you know, you've got a guy that loves to hunt on his ranch in West Texas. And he says to his friend in East Texas, he's like, sure as hell like to be able to shoot something out here year round. Buddy in East Texas is like, wow, man, I got some pigs. And then, you know, traps a couple, throws them on a trailer. And, you know, traps a couple, throws them on a trailer.

And now you have 253 out of 254 counties in Texas have hogs, feral hogs. Wow. And they're spreading all across the country too, right? Yeah. There's a downward migration from Saskatchewan, you know. Really? And those are escaped domestic hogs. But, I mean, let's also define what a feral hog is.

It's a pig that's just on the wrong side of a fence. I mean, once they get out, that's a feral pig. So I like to say it's a domestic pig or a feral hog is just a pig without an address. You know, they just, as soon as they get out of that pen, they're feral. And I will readily admit, I mean, not even on purpose, but we have shot while hunting pigs that had ear tags, meaning that at one point that was a farm pig. It's not anymore. And what it's doing is it's breeding like crazy out there with a feral boar, and it's just creating more feral pigs. So like I said, once they're on the wrong side of the fence, they're fair game.

Well, we should explain to people what happens to pigs, right? I'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. So when you're saying that these are pigs, they're wild pigs, people are like, wait, but they're boars. Boars are different than pigs. They're not. It's all called sues grafa, right? Correct.

Correct. And once they escape, within months, their hair can become shaggier. And we're talking about the same pig, not its offspring. Their 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. I 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 and and so once they get out they go feral quick they can they get street smarts too i mean they go nocturnal i mean they're smart smart animals and so you add all this

together you know the the the herds that were initially brought here for food, and then further domestic herds, and then you have escapees over hundreds of years of, you know, settling in this country, and you've got escaped domestic hogs. Then you've got hogs specifically brought in for hunting, namely your Russian boars, your Eurasian boars, which are kind of the big hairy razorbacks. How much different are those? Is it all, it's still the same species, right? Yes, it is. And I mean, it's like I believe, and I don't want to stand by it,

but I believe it's just like a subspecies. There's one more Latin name after Suscrophia for the Eurasian, but freely interbreeding. It's not like, I mean. They're not hybrids where they're not. Well, they make hybrids. Right, but the hybrids are viable. Absolutely. Yeah, so it's not like a hybrid, like a liger hybrids where they're not. Well, they make hybrids. Right. But the hybrids are viable. Absolutely.

Yes. It's not like a hybrid, like a liger where they can't. No, no, no, no, no. Nothing like that. And so then you've got some some kind of specific areas. California had a lot of Russian boars brought in and there's certain areas in Texas. The Powderhorn Ranch down near Port O'Connor was one that had some brought in specifically and deposited there. Is the difference in the flavor or the way they look like the flesh? It would be really hard to determine that now because most of them over the years have interbred with your standard feral pig. And so purebred populations of those hogs are very hard to find.

It's debatable whether the powder horn ranch population is purebred Russian boar. I've read different things about it. Some say that it's not. Some say that it is. It's a high fence? It's got a high fence around it and has had one since the 1920s, I believe. Oh, wow. And so whenever they brought in the boars, those are the same breeding population. Right. They think.

But, you know, a fence doesn't mean shit to a pig. You know, they go under it, you know, any way around it that they can flood. Waters come up, they can swim, you know. So it's not known. But there is one sequestered population of feral hogs in the United States, and that's on Osaba Island off the coast of Georgia. And so that was an Iberico hog brought over here by the Spanish.

You know, pointy hats, long brown robes. They dropped some hogs on that island, and that island has sustained a population of purebred Iberico hogs to this day. And it's called Osaba Island. And they have an Osaba Island hog, which is a purebred Iberico hog, which is the same hog that produces the $150 a pound Serrano ham. Yeah. I've seen Iberico.

I've seen that name before, jamon. Jamon Iberico. Yeah. So these Osaba hogs are a purebred descendant of that. They're smaller because they suffer from insular dwarfism. Yeah. So because they're on a small area that doesn't give them a lot of space to forage that they have to make themselves smaller generationally. Yeah. And they've exported those hogs now. I mean, we had a farmer, I mean, just north of Austin for a while that had a pair of Osaba

hogs and was raising them because, I mean, purportedly, I mean, for their incredible quality, you know, they are purebred Ibericos. People pay top dollar for that. Have you had one of those before? Yeah, we had some hybrids. Like they were part Osaba and part other hog. I mean, they were great.aba and part other hog. I mean, they were great. I'm not going to say like it was mind blowing, but I mean, we get a lot of

really high grade domestic pork in also. So they were small. They were like a medium sized pig that put on a lot of fat. So yeah, it was very good. But I wouldn't say it was the best pork I'd ever had. Is the difference in the way domestic pork versus wild pork, the way it tastes, just primarily diet? Or 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? And does it change the flavor? I would imagine some hormonal changes are happening in their bodies, right?

Certainly. You're going to see, as far as flavor goes, you can have diet. And also, most domestic hogs are castrated. And what that does is it prevents something called boar taint. And it is a, you know, some people don't like cilantro. You know, there's maybe 7% of the people don't like cilantro. It's like a genetic thing, right? Yeah. Well, boar taint is offensive to something like 96%. I mean, like a lot of people,

it's a very strong, musty odor. And we deal with it randomly. I mean, when you're hunting wild pigs, you know, very, very, very few of them have been caught and castrated, the boars. So you're going to have that hormonal influence on them. You're also going to have diet, which is huge to me. Like, I mean, a pig that's foraging along the coast and potentially just eating, you know, in marshes or in South Texas and like mesquite scrub where there's not a lot to eat versus a hog that's, you know, lives just, you know, 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. One of those is gonna be really good. And it's that last one, you know,

they're going to put on a lot of fat and be very, very good. So one of the things that we address constantly is the disparity in quality for wild pigs. But, I mean, to your question of the difference between a domestic hog and a wild pig is 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. Now, some of them might bully their way to the front of the line and eat a little bit more, they're pigs, you know, versus a feral hog that from the same property, you know, but it's not getting fed a pig ration. So you will see a lot of difference. Feral hogs are typically a lot leaner, and they can be anywhere from like identical in flavor to a domestic pig to very, very different. And 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.

Or a live deer. Yeah. I saw one, there's a photo of one running away with a fawn in its mouth. Yeah, I've seen that photo. Oh, any picture of a pig doing anything naughty immediately gets sent to me. Yeah, so they will go and hunt fawns. Any picture of a pig doing anything naughty immediately gets sent to me. Yeah. So they will go and hunt fawns? Or they just see them?

In my book, I call them opportunistic omnivores. I think I call them woodland vacuums with shitty manners also. It's what they come across. I mean, you know about the great rattlesnake debate what's the great rattlesnake debate okay so this is this is a good one you're saying like everyone would know well of course the great rattlesnake lived here do you know the great rattlesnake debate young jamie no it does not so um there's a sizable chunk of of 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, it alerts a hog and a hog will kill and eat a rattlesnake pretty much with impunity. Really? Yeah. I mean, they've got really thick hides. They don't need to worry about it. They're going to get in there and they'll just tear up a snake. I mean, have you seen Lonesome Dove? The restaurant? No, the movie. The movie. Yeah. One of the first scenes in there is just like he's watching these two pigs eat a rattlesnake.

I have an... What year is that movie from? Year? Yeah. Oh, God. 80s? I mean, that's probably like... It's based on the book, right? The novel? Larry McMurtry. Yeah. I mean, classic. You've got to see that.

Well, it's a lot of things I have to do. I know. Put it on the list. So that's a thing. Pigs always eat rattlesnakes. Well, okay. So people think that because any rattlesnake that rattles gets eaten by a pig, that the rattlesnakes that survives are like the quiet ones the non rattlers and so rattlesnakes aren't rattlingling as

much as they used to and so there's kind of an uptick in bites I personally don't subscribe to this I don't I mean like I don't know some rattlesnakes rattle when you go walk by on some of them don't but there's there's a I mean a very vibrant debate on whether rattlesnakes have stopped rattling because of hogs. Doesn't it make sense to you that that would be kind of maybe in transition? Like if the hog problem is getting bigger, right, and it is, and then the rattlesnakes are getting eaten by the hogs, which they are, doesn't it seem like that would like sort of naturally happen? I mean, I don't know.

I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I would imagine. I don't know. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I would imagine. I don't know. I 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 timeframe for this too, according to the folklore of it, is like maybe the last 20 years. So in 20 years, rattlesnakes are now just, I don't know, what do you call them now just snakes you know like they just stop rattling but they still have the rattle yeah they just don't use it there's a there was a moth in um in england in the late 1800s when england was becoming industrialized and let me see if i get this right the moth was white right and then as the smokestacks went up everything got sooty and black

and the white moth stood out really vividly against the black soot and birds started eating it but like one in you know there was like a you know genetic anomaly where one of the moths might be black. And 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. And so it's, I mean, I don't know if it's the same. There's scientists out there just laughing at me right now. But, you know, I guess it's plausible.

But there is a great debate. I personally, I'm like, I don't know about that. I think it's, what happens to animals when they adapt and change to environment, it's really spectacular. Like if you see like a chameleon, how the fuck did that happen? Or even, let's get even crazier, a cuttlefish. Oh, what? Yeah. You can become your environment?

Like when you see an octopus become a coral reef, like what the fuck is happening there? How did you figure that out? Yeah. How long did that take? Yeah. Took a minute. Well, 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. And like, oh, it adapted to its environment. But how quickly and how much adaption?

When you see that, when 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 snatches it up right like that's that's crazy like how did that happen how did how do these animals blend how did a mule deer literally become the color of the grass that it exists in or a coos deer which is even more blended but even more so at the time of day that they get really active. It's like, ah, I think it's kind of gray. The grass isn't gray. And then the sun goes down a little bit, and boom, the grass turns the same color as the

deer. Jamie put this up. Cuttlefish, 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. Yeah, well, that's even crazier then. So how the fuck do they become the color of a... They change color. Yeah, and they can't even appreciate it.

They can't see it. Yeah. But how do they know that they can't see it? Probably because they've dissected the protein that makes you see. Right. That I don't know. How crazy is that? That they're becoming a color that they can't even see?

Yeah. Have 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. You ever seen that? No. See if we can find that. It's so weird.

It's trying to figure it out. Oh. So it's trying to figure out how to emulate this super bizarre pattern. But in color. Yeah. Well, I guess that's black and white technically. Yeah. Unreal.

But what is it seeing? See, watch how it settles down and then just becomes black and white. It's trying to figure out. See, it's black and white whatever it can generate it seems like it can only generate things that are similar to the environment in which it lives like there like it looks like a throw rug yeah yeah let me see if it's better here it's definitely not it's not yeah yeah it not figuring. It's trying to figure it out, though. Look how it's changing colors, like trying to work out.

And where is it seeing this? Is it using its eyes? Because it seems like once its body lays down, its body tries to emulate the colors around it. Yeah, like how does it sense its environment when it doesn't even seem like it can view it? Yeah, like see there, you can tell it's trying to do like it can it can view it yeah like see there you can tell it's trying to do like squares fucking weird animal they're weird the octopuses and cuttlefishes

and this is so they're so strange they're so uh it's such a alien creature like if you went to another planet and they had things like that they could just sort of blend in with their environment like wow we don't have anything like that here we do it's just in the ocean yeah yeah so maybe you are on team team rattlesnake i'm leaning towards that i feel like they would adapt if especially if these goddamn pigs just keep eating their buddies right you know after a while they're like, hey, I think we're going to stop this rattling. Yeah. Let's cut the shit. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, maybe we'll see in another 20 years, and we'll have a little more data to back it up. But right now, it's very, it's almost an emotive response that people have. Snakes, stop rattling. That's why. You've got to be more careful out there. It's because of the pigs.

But it's also seemingly another way to blame the pigs for something right well there's a lot of like room to blame pigs there's so many of them and they do so much what is the number of the the amount of money they do in damage every year in texas it's something really crazy ridiculous i mean in nationwide i believe it's in the billions um and and I have to be real careful about that, too, in my staunch defense of respecting the pigs is that like if you go up in a helicopter and you want to shoot a bunch of pigs and you to encourage people to eat more of the dead ones. Simultaneously, I'd like to see people kill more of them. I love pigs. I think they're great. I love hunting them.

I think they're cool. I respect them. I don't want them to suffer. And I kill them very regularly too. And I don't feel necessarily – I don't feel really bad about it, but I also, I want them to die quickly. And I know that we need to get behind that wholesale in order to control this problem. But I would just like to see them utilize this food more. Well, it seems like a perfect food source if you think about it.

It's an invasive species. You have to control the population of them. They're very nutritious, really good for you. They're delicious. And they're also gross looking, so people don't feel as bad about shooting them. Yeah. Yeah. There's that. I mean, I think the debatable thing is if they're delicious. Not on my part. I mean, that's my role in this is to convince people because of the mythology that's out there about them. I 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, if they're under 80, 100. It goes in 20-pound increments, at least, to make it seem a little more scientific. But I've eaten 300-pound boars that had testicles the size of cantaloupes,

and they were absolutely delicious. They were that big? The nuts were that big? Oh, they get big. They get real big. Do you make Rocky Mountain oysters out of their nuts? There's a recipe in the book for them. So just convincing people to try them. I i mean it really it doesn't i 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 there's a lot of like

generational mythology you know you can't eat that pig because it's too big you can't eat any boar you know you'll hear that too and it's like that. You can't eat any boar. You know, you'll hear that too. And it's like, that's just not true. I eat them all the time. And either I have a really terrible palate or that's wrong. You know? Well, is it a prep? It's certainly, it has, there has to be some sort of impact on whatever their diet is. Right. But it also, it's a preparation issue. And that's where your classes come in and stress stress on them stress on the animal it's a bigger animal takes longer to kill um anecdotally and i i i talk about this one in the book too and this i mean i think this was this is a really like cut and dry example of the impact that stress has on the flavor of an animal. And then I, I was tasked

with taking, uh, someone from LA who was in the movies to go hunting. He'd never been hunting before. And I was a little worried about him being able to seal the deal as well as the production crew. And so what I did, so you're filming it, we're filming it. And that's, I mean, that's also, that's hard when you're like trying to, you know know hunt an animal that's got a very cute sense of smell and you've got seven people with you yeah um so we ran snares on a fence line where the hogs would would cut under there and we ran these wire snares on there i ran four snares and then i took him and we went and sat in a blind. Sure enough, we got lucky. A pig walked out and we got luckier. He shot it and dropped it right there. I mean, just a nice, like, 120-yard shot.

Pig went down. Great. So we go and we get the pig. It's about an 80-pound sow. Throw it in the truck. Drive to check the snares. And when we pull up, there's another hog caught in one of the snares. And it's still alive.

I mean, it just catches it around the torso. Basically, it holds it. But hogs, once they go through something like that, they go nuts. I mean, they are really aggressive animals. But this thing just laid on the ground. It was so tired. And I just felt bad. The crew was like, let's get set up for a shot.

And I said no. And I just walked over and i shot it and killed it um because i just i was like it's done it's done you know and we took that animal and the other animal and they were both sows they were almost identical they were probably about 80 80 ish pounds each and we we uh scanned and gutted them and then we butchered them both We ate some of the one that he shot that night. No, it was the next night. We had some chops and some other stuff off of it, and it was great. It was lean, you know, South Texas pig. We took the rest of the one that we'd caught in the snare home,

and it was, to this day, the worst feral hog I've ever had. And it was pretty much inedible. And it had that extremely gamey flavor to it. And I can only attribute that to stress. I've never tasted another sow in that weight category that tasted anything like that. And you've eaten probably hundreds of them. Hundreds. Hundreds.

And so, I mean, I think that that's a very clear-cut example of what stress can do. I think that that's a very clear cut, you know, example of what stress can do. And then also, you know, if you think about a big boar, which gets the, they get the bad rap for tasting really bad and said, you know, they're, they're really large animals that are hard to bring down if you're rifle hunting or bow hunting, it takes longer for them to die. Right. And then, I mean, there are the hormonal things and, and, and those big pigs, they can be very strongly flavored. I'm not here to argue that.

But what we try to do is approach hogs, and forgive me if I'm getting off topic, but in a way where we kind of categorize them where they're not all treated the same way. But, you know, like a big boar and a big sow, and then there's a medium hog and a small hog. And you're going to cook all those a little bit differently. You 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, they're not in, you can't treat them the same way. And what is the difference in what you would do with a 300 pound boar, how you would cook it? You know, that's going to be a lot of sausage, you know,

things like that. Some very simple approach to it, something that's probably going to be highly spiced. Maybe you're going to have to add some fat into it if it's lean. Typically, you know, out of the same litter, if you have a sow and a boar next to each other the same age, the sow will probably have a little more fat on her, typically. Also, it will depend on where she's at in her pregnancy cycles. So 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.

You wouldn't cook a ham off of it or anything like that? If it was particularly fatty and looked really good then i would but i'm saying like generally so you would take the whole thing and turn it into sausage good yeah yeah and what do you like how many pounds is a 300 pound boar when you dress it out uh you know it's going to lose about 45-ish percent of its weight in offal and hair, things like that, hide. And then take off probably another 45, 50 percent off of that once you get all the bones out of it.

So you're probably yielding, you know. 100-ish pounds? Yeah, probably a little bit less, you know, maybe like 80 pounds, something like that of, of just pure meat. And depending on how lean they are to some, I mean, if they got a ton of fat, you know, they might be more bulked out or they might be, you know, just real thin. Sometimes you can see through their ribs. Sometimes there's, you know, bacon. Right. And so normally when you process a sausage like that, so you have your cuts. And then do you have like standard recipes where you add X amount of fat, X amount of spices?

And then you do it all yourself, right? Yes. All the blending. Yes. So I'm usually a 20, 25% fat in the sausage. So we'll, if it's a very lean hog, we simply just package that into four-pound packages and freeze that. And when you say fat, are you talking about domestic fat? Yes.

So you get domestic pork fat, or do you use any other kind of fat? Generally, I'll use pork fat if I'm making specifically burgers. I mean for like burgers, cheeseburgers. I like to add in beef fat. Or I'll do like 10% beef fat and 10% bacon. Would you do a pork burger? Absolutely. Really? Yeah. It's really good.

Really good. How come nobody does that? I don't know. That's an interesting thing. You're saying pork burger. I'm like, this is madness. But I mean, it makes sense, right? You have elk burgers, moose burgers. Yeah. But I mean, it makes sense, right? You have elk burgers, moose burgers. Why not pork? I don't think I've ever heard of a pork burger.

Yeah. Especially if you're going to like do a nice thin, you know, like charred patty. Right. Really well cooked. And you mix it with some nice fat, like beef fat and bacon. And I think it's excellent. What are your thoughts on sous vide? I've got two turkey legs back at the house. I mean, I'm gonna have to run here in like three hours that are, that are cooking for 24 hours. I don't

use it a lot, but I think there's some applications that it works really well for, especially with game. You know, your, your, your steakish cuts can, can be really good. I think you do that a lot, right? I used to, yeah. I haven't sous-vided in a long time. I don't often, like, take a backstrap and sous-vie it. I prefer to just cook it on the grill. I will sous-vie 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. So then I can usually I like to put them on the grill afterwards.

Yeah, I was watching a YouTube video yesterday where this guy was cooked an inexpensive chuck steak and he sous vide it for 24 hours and then grilled it. So he sous vide it. I think it uh i think he did it at 125 degrees for 24 hours and it just like broke down all of the collagen and all of the like the the hard stiff stuff that's in that kind of a hard you know like a more firm cut of meat and then afterwards he grilled it so he grilled the outside of it got a nice sear on that nice crust and was cutting through it. It was like, this is literally better than a ribeye. He was like, because you get all the flavor from all this fat

and all this gristle and everything breaking down slowly over the course of 24 hours. So all that tough stuff becomes very tender and then seared it on the outside. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's a great tool. And what I like also about it is that it's an empowering tool because sometimes people, they get into something.

You know, they're like kind of technologically, they just like to nerd out on something. And sous vide is a classic way for somebody to do that. And if 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. Or I mean, hell, a crock pot. For me, the crock pot is like one of the coolest kitchen tools ever if you're a game cook. Because what it does is it enables you to cook for a very long time at a precise temperature with no flame you can go to bed you can go to work whatever yeah and you come back

and it's cooked you know it's like oh that elk shank that i had it was tough you undercooked it essentially you know so but a crock pot is just a really simple way for people to achieve that and then sous vide is kind of the the modern of a tool like that. So I always appreciate anything that helps people, you know, just want to get more out of their game or its food in general. You know, just get excited about cooking, I think, is just so beneficial to everyone. The only thing that would worry me about sous vide is the plastic. Yeah. Like leaching plastic, leaching chemicals. We had this woman, Dr. Shanna Swan.

Is that correct how to say her name? She was on the podcast talking about the issue with chemicals from plastic affecting people's endocrine systems. And the fact that it's a thing called phthalates. It's spelled with a P. P-T-H-P-thalates. I think I've seen that before. And phthalates, when they're introduced into mammals in utero, they're showing that they have a profound effect

on their sexual reproductive systems. And they think the same thing is happening to people and there's a direct correlation here what is her book called again we should probably pull up her book so she could sorry I pre-googled phthalates and sous vide and it says it's okay oh really how come they know they're free of phthalates and BPA okay so zip okay in this case testosterone phthalates in large doses like BPA can compete, 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, and sous vide bags are free of phthalates and BPA.

The change from polyvinylidene chloride to polyethylene was for safety, but it did make the cling wrap cling less. Okay. I didn't even know there was specifically sous vide bags. I've only used Ziploc. Oh, yeah. Those vacuum sealed bags. And I don't do it. That's your book.

And I have always been opposed. We don't do it at the restaurant. This is her book, Countdown, How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. Yeah. Shanna Swan. You don't use it at your restaurant? Suvi? No.

No? No, we don't. I mean, maybe it is BPA-free, but there's still something about just cooking in plastic to me. And it's a once every two or three month deal for me. I 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, you know? And it's a, it's something that I don't like to make a habit out of without knowing the science behind it other than I don't like plastic. Right. You know, it's just something about it creeps me out. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. It's also, if you're thinking about what you're doing is so back to the world, back to the earth.

You're hunting and then gathering up fresh local ingredients and cooking it. It's putting it in a plastic bag and then you use a thermometer that's got a digital thing and you're boiling the water kind of like that. Now you're in this weird sort of modern – Yeah. Seems a bit disingenuous. Yeah. Well, it's just – maybe it's just a perception thing. I mean if it's the best way to cook something, it's the best way to cook something, right? I think there's a couple way – like these turkey legs.

I'm really excited about them. You seem really excited about your turkey legs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean – How do you do that? What do you do? You cook them and then you grill after you're done? Yeah.

You achieve a certain temperature? Put a little fat in there, you know, whatever kind of saucy type stuff. You know, there's some garlic floating around in there, salt and pepper and some spices, things like that. And then they're just going to come out and just get slowly cooked and crisped up on the grill. things like that. And then they're just going to come out and just get slowly cooked and crisped up on the grill. And I think that that method is something we use in the restaurant just extensively is to cook things beforehand until they're tender. And then we'd let them cool. And then like to order, we're cooking them over a hot grill. We do that with ribs. We do, you know, beef ribs with, with wild boar ribs, pork ribs. We do that with chicken hearts. We do that with, you know, beef ribs with wild boar ribs, pork ribs. We do that with chicken hearts. We do that with,

you know, 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. I mean, you can 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. And 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. It's a very Mexican technique right there where so many meats are slow cooked

and then when you get a taco on the street, it's just been cooked forever and then it's just hit on this flat, this plancha that just like sears it and reheats it. And that's where you get that crust and that Maillard reaction and everything. And 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 a really good trick. And when you do that in terms of like cooking it and then refrigerating it, what temperature do you like to bring it back up to before you sear it on the outside? I usually like to go cold.

Really? Because if it is really tender, let's say some elk ribs. And you cook them until – in whatever method. Like maybe you wrap them up real well and you put them in the oven and cook them until they're tender, or you braise them in pure fat, like a confit. Um, and then they're, they're pretty tender. I'm not saying like 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. If you go cold onto the grill and start to manage that crust on there,

they'll be a lot easier to handle. So I typically will go cold onto the grill. Really? And it is because there's not a thick amount of meat on those ribs too, right? So you don't have to worry about it being really cold in the center if you're charring the outside, it'll heat up the whole thing. Yeah. I mean, and just give it ample time, you know, and not a, it doesn't have to be a ripping hot grill necessarily. It kind of depends on what you're doing, but you know, you can like, you know, you could take 30 minutes to kind of get a nice crust on a rack of ribs. And I do it with, with, uh, hog ribs all the time because they're so variable, you know, they could have two inches of meat on them, or you could like

be able to read a book through them sometimes. I mean, they can just be so thin. So if you want to par-cook them and then throw them on the grill afterwards, it's just a really good, simple way to make that happen. And do you like to use a meat thermometer, or are you doing it all by touch and feel? Yeah, I mean, these things are cooked to shred. You know, these things are at 190 plus for multiple, yeah, almost all these things that I'm describing.

These are well done pieces of meat. I mean, not like. Because it's hog. Yes. Well, or the cuts that I'm talking about. I particularly like to do this on your slow cooking cuts, your shanks, your ribs, you know, like pieces of shoulder. Things that have to cook for a very long time anyway. Not necessarily like your backstrap or your loin that you're cooking medium rare.

I'm applying this more to things that I want to cook until they're like almost falling apart. But, you know, just a little bit shy of that. And then they don't have any crust on the outside. Because, I mean, one method would be to just simply poach hog ribs in water. Like there's a method for that in that book. Really? Poaching them? Sure. Or it works really well with venison ribs too.

If they're particularly lean, you just put them in water. You season the water really heavily with onions and spices and garlic and whatever, ginger, whatever. And then cook them until they're almost done. And then you pull them out, cool 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. And they're excellent, and it gets them very tender, and then you go in and get them crispy and add that smoke component at the very end.

And is this how you've always done it, or is this something like you figured out along the way? Yeah, it's kind of twofold. You know, we've always done that for many years with hog and venison ribs specifically. But then, you know, in a restaurant setting, it's got some big advantages. Like we do a whole beef rib and the thing can weigh, depending on the cow, three and a half pounds raw. So it's a whole beef rib. And the thing can weigh, depending on the cow, three and a half pounds raw. So it's a whole beef rib. And 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. And

then to order, I mean, because that process takes four or five hours. And 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. And so you get a little bit of smoke and some texture on the outside and the meat's just falling apart tender. And you just know when to do it just based on how many times you've done it in the past? Are you timing things? Yeah, we're timing that. Definitely there's an amount of time that that beef rib is going to need to cook. But also you have to get in there because animals are different.

Each one is a little different. It might take a little longer, a little shorter amount of time. We want it to be tender. You just make sure it's tender. Then we actually cool it in the fat and then reheat the fat and pull it out. And when you're grilling things, are you cooking over wood? Like what do you – is that what you're doing? Yeah.

Oak coals. So we use post oak. And do you – like you use lump charcoal or are you actually using the wood itself? We're using – well, in the restaurant, we're using just wood, no charcoal. Why do you do that? What's the benefits of using wood? We just like wood. We just like the smoke. We cook over hot fires there, so very hot fires. So we need a lot of heat. Charcoal pops a lot too, and just have always preferred just post oak, just a nice rip in fire, spread some coals out, and then we're grilling steaks and things over that bread. Everything gets cooked over that.

And it's just because the flavor imparts? Yeah. I mean, there's some cultural value to that, too. I mean, we live in an oak-rich area, and everything, you know, like barbecue in this specific area has always been smoked over oak maybe a little bit of con if you go west you're going to start to see more mesquite more in south you're going to see mesquite and you go east you start to see things like hickory and so i mean you're you're the wood you're burning i think also has some cultural import too and so it all kind of factors into the, the, the whole,

just the dish in the end, you know, it's just like how you made that and what, what tree you cooked it over. Right. When you think about doing that and you think about like, uh, cooking over, uh, Oak fires and, and, and it's, is this, I mean, this has got to be something that's been done here for a long, long time, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, this has got to be something that's been done here for a long, long time, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's like, I mean, cooking concepts, I mean, as far as that goes. I mean, an animal over burning wood that's abundant, both of those things, hopefully,

an abundant animal over abundant wood would make the most sense. And there's something about fire and cooking over fire too. That's, it just taps into some weird, uh, ancient memories or something. It's like, it's very satisfying and exciting to cook straight over a fire. It'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 cook it, something over fire. Yeah. I mean, I can't even speak to it. I mean, you, you said it, but I mean, I don't know how to get out of address it without just, you know, tapping into something that we don't understand, but it's

there. And it's why we all stare at fires. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you can't, you just stare at fires. And then you, I mean, also you want to cook things over fires. And when you have a fire, you want to cook everything over a fire. Yeah, they're beautiful. There's something about it. It's like this crazy nature, like this reaction that you can sort of help and manipulate. You start moving the logs around and, you know, adding logs. Cooking over a campfire is one of the most satisfying things

I think I've ever done in my life. Absolutely. Remember, that's one of the things that got me hooked on hunting to begin with. When I went with Ronella, we shot a mule deer and then we cooked the liver over the campfire. And he had these little grates that he could just sort of sit things down to cook meat over. And then he cooked, I forget what kind of container he cooked the liver in, but just liver and sauteed it in some grease. And I was like, this is so sad.

Something about cooking over a fire. Like you make a fire, you sit there, you just shot an animal, you're cooking. It seems so much different than any other kind of food you ever have. Yeah. I mean, agreed. I mean, we set up our restaurant. It's very open on the inside, and we have a big table where all the butchery happens. And then there's just a hearth where there's a big fire. And it's, I think that, I mean, I know that. I mean, when we were talking to the architect, I was like, this is what I want someone to see when they walk in the door is we have a rail, you know, a butchery rail that where they can bring carcasses down to the table, which is wide open. I mean, there is no prep area in the whole restaurant that you can't see. You can see everything except for the walk-in and the office. And 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, you know, and cakes. And on the other side, there's a feral hog getting broken down and then there's a fire. And if you walk in and it's the same thing you're talking about, you walk in the door, you see those two things. You're like, I got that. I got the concept. You know, like, I understand what's happening here. There's, there's a meat and there's like, you know, trays full of ripening tomatoes and peaches and everything out there right now. Because that's the only place we have to ripen them. So I mean, you see all all these components and then you see a fire and it's like bet you got the concept down right now you don't even need to ask your server so what's this

place all about? Right you see it right in front of you and it's so self-explanatory and simple and but also like exciting. Yeah. You 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 and lower on a wheel? Yeah, it's a crank. Yeah, a crank style, you know, which to me is just the best. You just adjust it over the heat.

We have two. One's a flat top and one's just a grill grate, although they're both interchangeable too. We can put different grill surfaces in there as needed. So when you say one's a flat top, but like a frying, like a flat? Like a flat top plancha style, just a solid piece of metal that you sear things on.

But there's still a little, I mean, there's smoke everywhere. There's a little bit of smoke to it, but you're still cooking over a campfire. It's probably incredibly inefficient to toast bread over a fire, but fuck it. But isn't that kind of like part of what you're doing? It's like it doesn't have to be efficient. There's something cool about the fact that you are doing it over just wood, oak fire. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. It's more fun. Yeah. And it's appealing. Like if you just want to go to a restaurant and just want to eat some food that tastes good, that's great. But if you want to go to a restaurant where someone is cooking over fire and you've got the the fruit ripening and you've got all this this whole experience there's something more to it and it's like it's it's tangible like you could see you feel different about the experience right yeah i think the i had this

experience one time when i was i was down in the front and i was I was prepping and I looked up and there was this old guy, you know, old Texan, very much so, you know, he had pearl snap, long sleeve shirt. He had on his hat, he had on his jeans and he was just watching. And I looked over at him and I kind of just, you know, eye contact and I nodded at him and then he was still watching. And I just, you know, then I looked up again, I was like, hi, how are you? And he looked at me and he goes, I know what you're doing here. And he turned around and walked away. And I, I just, I almost cried. I was like, you know, cause that's like, I mean, he, he, I knew what he meant. He was like, I know what you're doing here. And it wasn't like, I know you're trying to get away with something. He's like, I see what you're doing here because, you know, I mean, he was probably in his 70s.

And he probably, hopefully, was thinking about the way his grandparents ate. And those words were just, they were very powerful. And I'll never forget that. It was really cool. Just, I know what you're doing here. And he smiled and walked off. Yes, sir. If you know, you're doing here and he smiled and walked off yes sir if you know you know yeah right um these people that come and uh take your classes uh is there like a

demographic that is is it is it wide open is it a bunch of large spectrum um yes and no we have i mean i think if you if you split it between new hunters and experienced hunters, we're, we're right at about 50%. You 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. And then we have a lot of people that come, uh, because they want to learn more about the butchery side of it. And a lot of times they're just like, yeah, I don't really care if I kill a deer, I've got a place to go kill deer. But, you know, they'll, they'll set it out and they're like, they're having fun, but what they're there

for is, is, is learning about utilization. And then you've got your brand new hunters. Demographically, no, it's not, it's not as divergent as I'd like to see it. I really wish that there was more seats at the table for people. I 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. And I really want to see hunting available to everybody, you know, if you're interested. And I think that it gets people involved in responsible gun ownership, resource management, appreciation of meat and animal management from across a more diverse background too. And so, no, I mean, frankly, it's not as diverse as I'd like it to be. And we're trying

to do some things that mitigate that. And we're just, we're trying to get more different people in there to these classes. But no, it's kind of what you think it would be. It's more mostly affluent, white males. Although we get a lot of women in there. We used to do a class for women, just a class, just women. And that was a lot of fun you know introducing them we'd have women guides come in and kind of to 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 and uh you know it it

was it was really rewarding and i think that as we as we move forward and we're educators, I think it helps. And there's a lot of debate about recruitment and things like that, about 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 wants to to be able to do it, get their foot in the door somehow. So I'll work with some organizations like Texas Parks and Wildlife, Parks 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, it's something they need to be aware of. If they don't pursue it for the rest of their lives, that's, that's fine. But I think even that one experience can be very formative. And pigs have got to be like the best thing to do that too. Yeah. Plentiful, easy to locate. Yeah. Um, but you know, we're, you know, you know, the stats behind private land in Texas, it's, it's a very privately owned state, which is in a lot of

ways. Great. I mean, we have a lot of land stewardship and a lot of these natural places that are, you know, just protected, uh, because they are privately held. But at the same time, it's, it's the most often asked question for me. If a new hunter comes and they're like, okay, great, we just, you know, did this course. You know, I got a deer and a pig. I'm going to go home. And then they're like, so where do I go next? And I'm like, well, I don't know.

You got to make friends, you know. And that's where the hogs come in, you know. And it's like because they're so invasive, it makes them a little more accessible to someone who just wants to hunt. And that's, you know, early on, that's what I did. I had connections with farmers. And because I, you know, was buying chickens or tomatoes or whatever from this farm and that farm, you know, you can just randomly ask, hey, do you have a pig problem? And most of the time, they're gonna be like, not always, but sometimes. And next thing you know you can just randomly ask hey do you have a pig problem and most of the time they're gonna be like not always but sometimes and next thing you know you probably have a place to hunt

pigs or at least try and i i always urge people to start there if they if they want i mean this is kind of a texas specific topic right now but but maybe not uh is to you got to make those connections and get out there and hogs being the most undervalued of all the game species, like hunting deer is, it's very profitable and it's going to be hard to just be like, Hey, do you guys shoot a big buck off your property? People are going to be like, yeah, no, that's, that's for my kids. But if you're like, Hey, do you mind if I help, you know, call this hog issue that you have, you're probably, hey, do you mind if I help, you know, cull this hog issue that you have? You're probably going to find people to be more amenable about that.

And 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 how do you – do you bring coolers with you? Do you cool it down immediately? Do you hang it? Yeah. you do you get do you cool it down immediately do you hang it yeah so this is i mean you probably didn't know that we're getting into like probably the most contentious thing that i'm going to say and how how you cool game down and like because i i get into this a lot with people because the way i i like to do it is is vastly different from the standard practice of it. I mean, this is like Davy Crockett surrendered at the Alamo Territory.

Really? Yeah. So I never put a pig or a deer or any game or any meat, for that matter, directly on ice. So we're in a hot place. And I understand the sheer necessity for getting something cold quickly. But 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. When you put a hog on ice and then coat it with ice, then that it's, it starts to soak into

the meat. You're getting water in there. So water can be a vector for bacteria. And so that can actually help it go off by, by adding in more moisture to the meat. And it also makes it very floppy. Um, like when you put it on a cutting board to cut it, there's just water coming everywhere. The meat is very wet. If you grind it, you will have some moisture come out of it. I can guarantee you if you bring some meat to me to process, and I've processed, you know, hundreds of animals for other people, and many times they'll bring them, well, they used to, they're not allowed to anymore, people. And many times they'll bring them, well, they used to, they're not allowed to anymore, bring them to me iced down like that. And after I would make some link 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. Now, obviously you're like, well, then how do you get

it cold? What we do is the same exact thing. We wrap it really well in trash bags. We 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. We're doing virtually the same thing that everybody else is doing, except we're avoiding that direct contact between the ice and the meat. You wouldn't go to the store and buy a ribeye. And, oh, it's a hot day. I'm going to keep it cold. I'm going to take it out of the package and stick it on some ice, you know. And, you know, just as humans, there's some sort of weird voodoo that we think happens. You know, we put, so we put this pig in there and, you know, somebody told us

you can't eat pigs. You know, they're dangerous. They carry diseases. It's stinky. It's mean looking. It had mud all over it. You get it all cleaned up and you put it in the cooler and you open that drain plug and this red water comes out. And what is that? You're like, that's all that bad shit, right? You know, that's all that.

You know, that's the gaminess. That's Satan, you know, just coming right out of there, you know, be gone. And that's not really how it's working. You know, you're, you're, I feel like you're doing more damage than good. I 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 pooled, and the beautiful loin on that axis had half been submerged in water. So half of it was just like this pure, beautiful magenta color. The other half was just a floppy gray, and it was trash. And there's no way to mitigate that?

There's no way to bring it back? Once it's soaked in there, it's soaked in there. It's just water-soaked meat, and industry does that. Right. And I mean, I get it. I mean, and it's also the most logical thing. I mean, how do you get a beer cold? You don't wrap it in an unscented contractor bag and dip it in some, some ice. You just throw it right on ice. That's the, that's the, the straightest line between hot and cold, but you'll get there if you do it this way. It really works well for me. You know, of course, do whatever you want out there. But I also deal with people that have

negative experiences with hogs a lot or game in general. And while I can't, you know, knowingly say that that's where that result came from is from improper handling right there. But maybe if it's a consistent problem and that's a consistent way that they're being handled, then it's suspect to me. And 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? Yeah, I don't think you're going to get it as cold. I mean, you've got plastics and insulator, and so you're not going to have it as cold as if you just iced it.

You know, I 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. And that thing is going to be cold. I mean, it's going to be right at 32, 34 degrees. And 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 i mean cutting is it's fun to me but when i get this floppy wet you know big quarter i'm like oh no good yeah no that makes sense um the the covering it in ice and the the contractor bags all that makes sense and that's but that's uh a lot of folks are just doing it the way you were talking about earlier just throwing it right on ice absolutely deer and hogs that's the way that it's mostly done i've even heard one of my one of my guides tells me that his family growing up they put bleach in the water they did they made ice water they put bleach in there what yeah i mean but that just i mean what that that is just purely it's so basic that you know that animal's dirty let's clean it oh my god and so

let's bleach it you know not like enough bleach to make us sick but you know enough bleach to just how much bleach is okay in a glass of water i don't know and so but that's it's the same mentality i think that's and then and that that red stream that's coming out of there, you know, our brains register that as the bad stuff coming out. Not really. Right. God, that's crazy. They use bleach.

I can't even believe that, but I can. I've heard, I've heard some crazy stories. Okay. So once had a guy tell me that the only, oh man, 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, was to get it back and, let's say, manually stimulate the dead pig post-mortem. The penis area of the dead pig? Correct. And I mean, my first thought. I was like looking for an excuse to jerk off a pig.

I was like, I think the problem is not with gamey boars, but I think your problem lies in ranch managers. So that's the spectrum of game care that I've heard. Is this like some superstitious thing? I think so. Wow. So all told- Imagine if that's the way you just got to just yank it out of them, just slowly. Take your time.

My unscented contractor bag seems a little tame now, right? You're like, okay, some merit. a little tame now, right? Like, you're like, okay, some merit. I 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 Meat Eater that was, you would hook it up to game and electrocute it afterwards. Like, did you ever use that? No, I've never used that that but there's a company that we buy a lot of game from that is um incredibly progressive in their methodology and in getting wild game into the like commercial food system it's called broken arrow ranch and they're in ingram texas and they will drive around with shooters and an inspector on site and a refrigerated trailer. And the shooters will kill non-game animals.

So no whitetail, but like axis and syca and fallow deer. No guy. And then they will process on site. But they use that. I believe they call it electrostimulation. And they use that process to bleed them out. There it is. shockingly better meat electrostimulation is a process 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 oh electrical current is alternately switched on and off during the stimulation process. During 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. And it says, what does it do to meat? Meat muscle must be cut away from the bone while the carcass is in rigor mortis. The stiffening of the carcass after death.

Muscles cut away from the bone during rigor mortis will contract and compact the meat fibers tightly together, resulting in toughening of the meat. Electrostimulation causes electrochemical reactions, which avoid this stiffening. There are three beneficial effects of electrostimulation. Improved flavor, improved shelf life, and tenderization. But tenderization is subjective whether or not it's improved, right? Because there's something about like an elk steak or something like that or a game animal. I like a chew to it.

I like it. I don't want it to taste like a filet mignon. I don't want it to be like butter where you can cut it with a spoon. Right. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, that company does that, and then they're able, they overnight game meats all over the country,

and it's super high quality. What's it called again? What's the name of it? Broken Arrow Ranch. I've heard of them. I've heard of them. Does Paul Saladino tell us about them? Probably.

Yeah. Do you use that electrical stimulation process have you ever used that on neil guy or anything else wow not personally but i mean we do get stuff at the restaurant that is from that company that does it but no i've never done it and i i mean i want to say i think i saw it on a video once it might be as simple as just like hooking it up to a 12 volt battery and yeah wow but it seems like it's hooking it up jolting it let it go jolt it let it go yeah probably there's like a a pulse to it right yeah i i don't know i i'd love to witness it but i mean it seems to have some merit yeah i've heard of people doing

with cows too right don't they do it with with cow meat i'm not sure about the um like the beef industry yeah it's uh i mean it makes sense have you ever had that done to you if you have an injury they do it with cow meat? I'm not sure about the, like the beef industry. Yeah. It's, I mean, it makes sense. Have you ever had that done to you, if you have an injury? No. I've had it done, what they call, it's called dry needling.

So they stick like these acupuncture style needles. I had like a back thing going on and they stuck these acupuncture needles all in my back and then connected these little clips to some sort of electrical device. And like, as you're lying there on this massage bed, it's like. And it's like your back is flexing and relaxing,

contracting and relaxing. And when it does that, it really loosens it up. Feels good. So it just makes sense. It would make food taste better too. Yeah, yeah, yeah muscles like working muscles is there any other like unusual preparation methods that you employ no no um other than the unscented contractor bags no that's yeah it's pretty lame uh no i'm pretty straightforward i

mean we i'm i i to, this is very technical. I mean, the non-hunters out there might be a little lost, but I skin and then gut almost universally. A lot of people do that in reverse. How come? Well, 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. Um, and then just come back and do the gutting process. We typically get it done pretty quick. Um, but other than that, nothing, nothing controversial like my ranch manager story. And when are you using, um, entrails and anything of the pigs are using that for sausage casing? No, no, I've never done that.

Um, and I get asked that a lot. I, and it's just sheer laz no, I've never done that. And I get asked that a lot. I, and it's just sheer laziness that I've never like flushed some casings out there. I buy them. It's a real boring story, but I, we buy our sausage casings, but we do often use liver, heart, kidneys, and call fat out of hogs. You know, just your, your real basic, Ophel, you know, like the big four out of there. Now, 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? One 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. Right. It'll render those trichinae larvae inert. And if you couple that with freezing below five degrees, you know, a couple of 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. And then when you get down from there, it'll take longer. Trichinosis is a concern.

Brucellosis, pseudorabies, tularemia. There's a lot of things that you could potentially get from a wild hog. But almost all of those are mitigated completely by that freezing and cooking process also wearing gloves while you're processing them and that's that's something that i'm very insistent on is wearing gloves why is that because when you're in contact with their reproductive and digestive organs specifically uh if you have any cuts or anything on your hands that's when you can expose yourself to brucellosis and so it's just i mean I mean, it's an easy thing. I 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,

but just always have those. And I insist that everybody else wears gloves. Now on the butchery table, once I get all that stuff out of there, I, you know, gloves off. But if you're concerned about that with hogs, which is a lucid concern, I'd say just go with all the slow cooking methods where you're taking them to 190 for four hours. So you don't have to worry about anything like that. Right. And the cases are very, very rare. The last study I read, particular to Texas, is that trichinosis was very low in the feral swine herd here in Texas. But it was higher in other places for some reason.

I have no idea why. Yeah, but trichinosis is just one of many things you're going to have to deal with, as you're saying. Certainly, certainly. Do you prefer 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 is it just does it vary i gotta stay on brand for this one it's hogs all the way

man uh i do love axis i mean it's like that i mean in texas that's just like that's the king you know and they're and axis is is like a is like a low impact hog i mean those are 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. So 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. Yeah, the freeze killed thousands of them, right? I love axis deer. You know, I like a very diverse freezer.

You know, I want to have some turkey in there and some pig and some whitetail and some axis and then a ton of fish. That's really what I'm going for. I don't really have a favorite. I'm not trying to cop out. But when it does come to pigs, I do prefer, like, slow like slow cooked and ground preparations anyway, normally. In ground? Like one of those whole pigs? No, no.

I mean like ground. Oh, ground. Oh, I thought you were talking about like luau. No, no. Do you ever do that? We've done some kind of versions of that. Well, I mean we'll do stuff for a long time in Dutch ovens buried in coals. I've never dug a pit.

I've done a lot of rotisserie hogs, like whole pigs on electric rotisseries and in the smokers too. One of the things he did when I went hunting with Rinella is we cooked a mule deer head under the ground. Like a barbacoa. Yeah. It was really wild. Yeah. It was delicious. It tasted like smoked pork. Yeah. It was really wild. Yeah. It was delicious. It tasted like smoked pork.

Yeah. It was really, it was interesting. And 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. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. It was pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean the head's got so much beautiful meat and if you just really cook it for a long time, but it's got to go a long time. Yeah. Do mean, the head's got so much beautiful meat, and if you just really cook it for a long time. But it's got to go a long time. Yeah. Do you ever eat the brains? No, not really.

I rarely will take the time to skin, like, a hog's head out, but I will sometimes. There's a few recipes in the book for heads. And usually don't go scooping brains out. I don't know why. I've had lamb's brains before. Have you ever had grilled lamb's brains? I've had poached and fried lamb's brains. And then also beef brains.

You know, sesos is a somewhat common taco. What's it called? Sesos? Sesos. It means brains in Spanish. Oh, really? Yeah. It's a somewhat common taco filling. Really? Especially further south you get.

Oh, you got to go to the legit spots. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not getting that at- Chipotle. No. Yeah, I mean, how much of a market is there for beef brains? I mean, somewhat. I mean, but the beef heads move.

You know, barbacoa is a big deal. Right. I mean, if you've ever had like real deal, amazing, like pit cook barbacoa is a big deal. Right. I mean, if you've ever had, like, real deal, amazing, like, pit-cooked barbacoa, it's, I mean, it's good stuff. Yeah, it's cheeks, right? It's, like, mostly. It's everything. Is it jaw? What are you eating?

If you're in a legit barbacoa place, you're going to get, there's going to be cuts. You're going to have ojo. You're going to have cachete, which is the cheek. You're going to have lengua, the tongue. You're going to have ojo. You're going to have cachete, which is the cheek. You're going to have lengua, the tongue. You're going to have paleta, which is the palate on top of the mouth.

I think that's everything. And then you can get a mixta, which is going to be everything together. But if you're at a really good, real deal South Texas barbacoa place, you're going to be able to order. And 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. Really? Yeah. Is that the thing?

Yeah I mean I don't know maybe they struggle with the vision problems. And so they think that I don't know I'm projecting that I don't want to be held to that but well also you got to think. I mean, there's only two per head. So they go quick.

Right. But I've never even heard of people eating cow's eyes other than when I was hosting Fear Factor. Yeah. I think we fed cow eyes to people then. Yeah. Definitely. Sheep's eyes, lamb's eyes. The head thing is, it's not a common thing, like, if you asked a normal person, like, do you eat an animal's head?

Right. Or even fish heads, right? Like, cheeks, fish cheeks are delicious. And the throats or the collars. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Often thrown away. Yeah. I mean, if the fish is big enough, just peel the cheek out. I mean, that goes to something that's just like, to me, if that's a fish that you caught, it's a very interesting stance to take.

Or a dove. Let's put it more in the context of a dove. And I mean the same thing. I'll be like, I like to pluck my dove whole. I'll take the dove and I'll pluck the entire thing. People are like, that takes too long. And I'm like, how long did it take you to drive to the spot that you dove hunted? You know, like an hour and 15 minutes.

I'm like, each way? And it's like, it's really notable. It'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. I want to shoot these doves. I got my new dove belt. I got my new gun. I got all this stuff.

I drove, you know, two and a half hours overall. And then I took five minutes to breast the birds out. And 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. You know, I's that's a little weird to me you know it's just like we we definitely like put our feet down and like at the processing of something so like you know pulling that fish cheek out it's like i you know i don't know if i have time for that it's just like man you spend a lot of time on everything else yeah and there and it's just for some reason we view the processing of animals in a real negative,

or it's like a chore, you know, like, oh, I got to do this. I'm not saying everybody, but when specifically to dove hunters, they're just like, I'm not doing that. It's not worth it. It's totally worth it. I mean, you can eat two doves as a meal per person. I 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. And there's a lot of meat, a lot of meat on the legs, but you know what I mean? Like relatively.

There's something, a couple bites. There's something. Yeah. And, and the little, the little hearts, the little lizards, not lizards, livers and gizzards in there, uh, totally worth it to me. And I don't think it takes that much longer longer but it speaks a lot to the amount of time that we value and to that part of the process and 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 now like eating doves for a lot of people like you just saying dove hunting there's a lot of

people that don't hunt that are listening to this right now they're like what are you talking about i don't know if they've made it this far they probably have because up until now it's been like acceptable hunting okay but now you're talking about the the bird of peace uh-huh you know like that doesn't seem to a lot of folks to be food. Yeah. Yeah. But it's probably the one animal. It's probably hunted more than any other bird in this country, right?

Is that true? I don't know the stats on that. I do know. Oh, I bet more people dove hunt than duck hunt. Really? Yeah. It's the biggest outdoor event that happens in Texas. It'll be September 1st. I mean, if you've ever been,

just get outside of a suburb in any town in Texas on September 1st at around four in the afternoon. And 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, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Really? Yeah. That's opening day of dove season yeah it's an event um it's it's a huge cultural event it has a lot of weight you know it's like this the kick out kick off for hunting season it's a lot of i mean there's people that i won't see all year and then i'll see them for opening day um if i get an invite to to be a guest at that field and um but for me dove hunting is um it's it's very casual in that you don't need a lot of equipment or time but i highly value the the food from that

and that if you if i go out with a friend and we manage to get eight doves we're gonna both if we're clever about it we're both gonna feed our families for at least one meal off of that. I mean, even if it's like you slow cook them and peel all the meat off and make some flautas or manicotti or something like that out of that meat, you can totally stretch that. What's a dove similar to in taste? Quail. Is it? Yeah. I mean, I think it's a little more, it has a little stronger flavor than quail, but I think they're very, very good. And it tastes just like a really profoundly birdie in a way.

Profoundly birdie? Yeah. Is that okay? All right. I'm trying to put a, I'm trying to figure out what that means. Profoundly birdie. Like chickeny. Yeah, I mean, we're trying to trying to i mean we're dancing around the

dance around the chicken um like a chicken thigh times but with a different yeah richness to it definitely a different texture i mean you know you want to eat the breasts you can eat a medium rare just like you would any i 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 yeah dinosaurs so strange yeah yeah but it's red meat very very and and probably one of the more beefy flavored birds and that's also ribeye in the sky right yeah it tastes anything like a ribeye why do they call it that because it rhymes i mean uh you know i also just make sure we're differentiating. We're not talking about whooping cranes here.

You've got to be very clear on that because there is a mode of response that people will have about sandhills. And 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. There's a town in Texas, Eagle Lake is the goose hunting capital of the world. It's where Andy Griffith used to go, you know, and shoot like 50 snow geese, you know. And they don't come down here so much anymore. I mean, it's just like the populations are kind of hanging up north of us now. And it's, and as that's happened, what you've seen is a proliferation of sandhill cranes coming down and they, they will devastate some agricultural fields as well. And so the hunting for those has increased a lot. Um, they're very beautiful birds too. You see what it looks like? Sandhill

crane? Very large. Um, they hunt them a lot in the panhandle and also towards the coast. And they're very good. They're very good to eat. Very beefy, you know, and very approachable. Oh, that looks like a dinosaur. Yeah, they're dinosaurs. Look at that freaky head. Wow, what a weird looking bird.

Yeah. And there's very sustainable numbers of them, too. How crazy is it that that thing gives off a red meat that literally looks like a steak? Yeah. Yeah, look at that. That's crazy. I mean, it's insane. I mean, I would never have imagined.

I'd say, well, it's maybe a deer or something like that. If you said, no, that's a crane, I'd say that you're out of your mind. Somebody lied to you. How weird is that? Is there any other bird that has that rich red of a flesh? Oh, a goose. Goose does too? Sure.

Really? Sure. Like that? Even wild ducks, I mean, are approaching that. It definitely has a richness to it, a little bit more than duck, but depending on the species and what a duck's eaten. And what does sandhill crane taste like? Like I said, it's beefy.

It has a very- But it doesn't taste like a ribeye. No. No. I mean, approachable. I would say like mild, probably leaning more towards mild venison than a bird. Makes sense. Would be my best guess at describing it.

It's funny because a turkey you would think would be just as dinosaur-y as that, but you shoot them, it looks like a turkey. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the breast meat on that is as white as a chicken breast in the store. Yeah. And just a couple notches up in flavor from there. I mean, it's got some really good flavor, but very mild, I think. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. Um, did you, uh, cook turkeys in peanut oil? Do you ever do that?

What do you mean? Like deep fry turkey and peanut oil? The whole thing? Yeah. No. You act like you've never heard of this before. Oh, you mean like, have you heard of that before? Frying a whole turkey. Yeah. I mean, not, we're not necessarily talking about a wild turkey. Well, I did it with a wild turkey. Oh, how was it? Yeah. It was really good. turkey. Yeah. I mean, we're not necessarily talking about a wild turkey. Well, I did it with a wild turkey. Oh, how was it? Yeah. It was really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I've done it, I always did it with turkeys. Yeah. I took half of it and I did it on a Traeger and then I took the other half and I did it in the deep fryer. They were both really good. The legs came out? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. That would be my fear in frying a wild turkey is because in my experience, those legs need a long time. And sometimes they don't break down even compared to a domestic turkey i mean frying a domestic turkey sure i mean it's huge brine it fry it uh but no i'm most of me most of the time turkeys pound the breasts make little cutlets out of those i'll make a lot of sausage with the breast but like real mild sausages like not not just anything but but, you know, like a really light, delicately spiced sausage, like a boudin blanc or something out of turkey where it really shines.

You know, when I saw that people were doing this really kind of interesting, I got into a rabbit hole the other day where I was Googling something and I started watching videos about people hunting iguanas in florida yeah so apparently like with fishing like fishing bows like bow fishing setups they're hunting iguanas on the land just whacking them and then just reeling them in it's so strange and then they they trim they really the only meat on them is really the legs, I guess. And they were cooking these legs like chicken legs, like a nice Asian dish with 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. And apparently it tastes really good. And if you cook them well, you know, you know what you're doing. And, you know, you do.

It's got a very distinct kind of almost chickeny flavor to it, but like with just a little bit of extra robustness. Have you ever seen that episode? I don't know where Bourdain was, but he ate an iguana and he just he he will not stop going off about how disgusting it is. Really? It's just highly entertaining, you know, because his ability to eat things was pretty profound. But he hated it, and he makes a really big deal out of it. It's fun watching, to watch him talk about iguana. That's weird because these people in these YouTube videos seem to be enjoying it. Yeah.

Especially this one guy that made it in, like, this Asian dish over rice. Like, he made wings, essentially. Yeah. You know, like some sort of a Chinese chicken wing dish. Yeah. I'll absolutely try it. And there's a million of them down there. Dude, some of them are so big.

This lady, there's this one lady that I follow on YouTube and she's shooting these iguanas that are five feet long. They're so big. She's holding this thing up and it's like a small dog. Like this is crazy how big a fucking iguana is. They're really big sometimes. And they're all, these people that live by canals in particular, they're all around their, their lawns just destroying. If they have a garden to destroy everything in the garden, eat all the plants, eat all the food. And they're these these big ass weird fucking invasive lizards like yeah

this is uh here's some people to catch them like yeah pull it like where she shows the one she walked look at the size of that fucking thing and you know you're you're really only i don't know if there's any back meat or whatever but they're uh mostly I think, just eating the legs. Yeah. But it's become a thing now because they're trying to kill them because they're all over the place in Florida, apparently. Oh. Yeah. Like, I mean, pythons, iguanas. Well, that's the thing they have to do, right?

Make pythons profitable. I know they're trying to eat pythons. They're trying to figure out whether or not pythons profitable like if they i know they're trying to eat pythons they're trying to figure out whether or not pythons are like good to eat have you ever heard of people eating a python what about rattlesnake sure sure you like rattlesnake yeah it's it's fine i mean it's not preferred yeah it's not something i'm going to go out of my way to kill i mean personally i have a little bit of a pact with them it's like i don't bite them they don't but i will definitely if somebody cooks them, I'll stay.

I'll eat it. What about bear? You know, it's nothing I've ever had. I haven't traveled. You've never had bear? No. Really? No.

I have not traveled to hunt, nor do I really, it's not very appealing to me. To hunt a bear or to travel to hunt? Both. Well, I mean, no, no, no. I would eat bear all day long if you served appealing to me, but to hunt a bear or to travel to hunt both. Well, I mean, no, no, no. I would eat bear all day long if you, if you served it to me, but, uh, I'm not, uh, I'm, I don't, I'm not, I don't mean to derail your question about bear, but, um, no, I mean, I'd have to go somewhere to hunt bears and I'm really like, I like to hunt here. This is like my zone.

So like if, I mean, I'm going to Utah to help, I've been brought up there to butcher an elk and they're like, do you want to shoot an elk? And I was like, I'm good. Really?

Yeah. Because they live in Utah and not in Texas. Yeah, it's not mine. You're very specific. Yeah. Well,

also, it's real big and I would rather hunt three or four white tails versus that one, and that's somebody else's elk. But yet you do like to hunt nilgai, which is elk-sized. No. Actually, I used to go on nilgai hunts. Oh, you don't like to hunt them personally?

I'd probably decline shooting a nilgai. I might shoot a little one. But really, i would go with someone and happily process it and hang out with them and everything that i don't want to pull the trigger on how come uh i i uh i like to manage my freezer very specifically i i i i like i like white tails and hogs and turkeys and and all things. I like to hunt as close to my house as possible, not out of laziness, but out of this, like, I get this, just this sense of locality and, like, how that is, that's my animal right there.

And no guy's invasive, but it's also, like I said, it's so big that it would just, it would fill my freezer and then I'd be done. Like, I stop when I'm done. Like I don't keep going. Like if I'm, if I've, once I've hit, you know, a number of deer that I think I need for the year, I'm done. Um, I know that I can come back to hogs and kind of fill in if there's an emergency. I don't, I haven't bought meat in 12 years or something. Um, but a no guy is just so big that, uh, I usually would pass. I mean, I could probably be talked into it, but I really would rather go with somebody that was doing it, you know, and help with the whole processing side of it.

But you do enjoy the meat. You were raving about how delicious they are. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I love it. But I don't personally feel like I need to fill up my freezer with just that one animal. I understand what you're saying. And you enjoy the hunting as well.

So you'd rather hunt small. For deer and pigs. Right. Yeah. And just kind of, you know, very specific numbers of all these animals that I know to get me through the year. Is there anything connected to it that's unsavory because of the fact that they're exotic? No. They're imported here?

No. No. I mean, so is a hog. Right. But a long fucking time ago. You can find a receipt on the Neil guy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're coming up right at 100 years on Neil guy.

That's when they were introduced. No, I have no problem with that. And we serve them widely in the restaurant because of those qualities. Because they are, first off, they're invasive. They don't like corn. So even if there is a corn feeder around there spitting out GMO corn, they're going to avoid it. And their feed is so natural, which is why we really like to serve those in the restaurant the most. Because highly renewable resource right there.

One animal is a ton of meat. And there's just a lot of really good qualities about the no guy and about eating no guy, but pulling the trigger on one probably pass. I get it. I understand what you're saying. And, um, do you like it because like also that deer and hogs and turkeys and stuff like these are kind of traditional Texas hunting fair. It's like, yeah, yeah, I think so.

Um, and I like it and then mean then yeah not to just come back to the size constantly but that is a thing um and i i really enjoy hunting white tail and hunting hogs and hunting turkeys and things like that that are that yeah maybe it is maybe it is more of a traditional what is neil guy similar to and taste um i would say elk venice i'm it's it's a little it's a little milder than most whitetail um and it's a it's almost a tenderness issue too because it for some reason that animal is just very tender really like even an older one that's crazy because they're so rough looking. Yeah. Yeah. And they have a very, the meat is very dark. Pull a photo of a Neil guy just so people can see how. Nobody ever believes it. Like, oh, they're blue. And they're like, they're not blue. I'm

like, they're blue. Yeah. It's really crazy. They're a wild looking thing with the horns too. They have crazy horns. Wait till you see them run. Yeah. This is the way they, they just kind of lope along and it's, it looks like it's slow, but it's very fast. I mean, they're really fast animals. Weird looking animal. Weird looking animal. So unique. And they're from Asia. Is that where they're from? India. India. And so when you're, uh, when you're looking at an animal like that, everything looks off. Like the head looks too small for the body. It doesn't look like the horns fit.

Like it looks like a fake animal. It looks like some animal in some weird novel. Yeah. I think the Latin name is like Bosephus something. That one in the left corner there, Jamie, that thing is blue as fuck. Yeah. Look how crazy blue that is. Blue bulls.

So weird. They're very cool. Do the females have antlers too? Yes. Or horns? I guess these are horns. These are horns. So they don't fall.

So it's a kind of antelope, right? Yes. Wow. Look at that thing. That looks fake. That looks like someone took a cow and they made some crazy like cgi rest of the body interesting animal now one of the things that i noticed when you guys did that hunt down in south texas with ranella on the media to show for neil guy is you wanted the meat to hang

overnight and get a crust on it what is that about well? Well, just to dry out a little bit. Um, and we, we hit a real, cause usually down there it's warm, even in December, it can, it can get pretty warm. And we got a random nice cold front where I dropped into the forties that night. Um, and I just wanted it to be dry to the touch, not necessarily a like deep dry aging crust on it, but just like a little bit of like I wanted it to be dry to the touch. So it goes back to what I was talking about earlier with, you know, keeping them cold in the cooler is cold and dry. That's, you know, that'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. And so we had, we left it out. It was hanging, it was in the forties that night. Now it would have been optimal to have let it hang for, I mean, a few days and at a nice

temperature, but we just didn't have it. Which is, I mean, commonplace when you're processing animals, you got to deal with whatever you've got, the situation. And so we'd let it go overnight and then we started cutting the next day. And when it has that crust on it, that sort of dry outer crust, what is going on with that? What is that? You can't eat that once it has that, right? You have to cut that off. It depends on the extent that it's gotten to. When you vac seal that, it'll usually go away. It'll rehydrate. Really? Yeah. So if you have that truck. If it's not too bad. I mean, like, if you've got a couple days where it's, like, hard and black, just overnight,

once that vac sealed, I mean, funny, those guys, the meat eater guys, literally can't enjoy meat, or eating meat more than those guys. Like, we 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 and it wasn't like i imagine on another show they're like i can't wait to get that buck home cut and they're like i don't care do whatever you want with it but those guys are like we're taking all of this home yeah like when we were fishing, the guy's like, this one? And the producer's like, kill it, kill it. I'm like, wow, guys. They are legitimately into eating that.

And so, yeah, when we were back sealing all that, we're cutting it into just big pieces and preserving it. But it's fine. It will rehydrate a little bit. Now, if you've got like a dry aging crust on it from a few days, you're probably going to need to trim it off, but you'll know. But like I said, once it vac seals, it tends to rehydrate a little bit. The attitude that those guys have on that crew is directly related

to the trickle-down effect from Rinella. Yeah. For sure. They're into it. Yeah. Well, he's established a real good sort of ideal and an ethic for that community. Yeah. Their crews are amazing.

Yeah. They're so fun. It's a fun show to do. Yeah. And it's also like 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. And the fishing one, man, God, those fish look delicious. And we had such an incredible variety of fish that night. I had never, when we were gigging, I've never seen a pompano come into the bay like that.

I mean, I had to do like a legality check real quick. I mean, it was like, pompano, and I'm like, well, and he's like, yes, stab. I mean, we had, I was like, it was so out of character for those to be in there. But to catch pompano, trout, flounder. Is there certain fish that you're not allowed to spear? Yeah, game fish. Right, like a bass. Like you can't spear a bass.

Correct, correct. Or a redfish. Like if you're in the bay and you see a red go by, hands off. But we can catch them on rod and reel. How odd is that? It's super complicated. Yeah. You get into redfish politics in Texas, it's a good thing.

Don't spear the redfish. Let them go. Okay. It's too easy to spear? No. I think it is a very valuable game fish. And the population, the sustainability of their populations is paramount. There's been problems in the past with overfishing of redfish specifically.

And their designation as a game fish came at great political cost. In the 1980s, Paul Prudhomme, who was a famous new orleans chef he started blackening redfish and at the time food trends could really take hold and this one did in every restaurant in the in the country started blackening redfish and the market for it skyrocketed and they started catching breeding sized female redfish in these huge nets. And within a couple of years, the population was getting decimated. And so conservation organizations came in, notably CCA, which is the Coastal Conservation Association,

came in and got them designated as a game fish. And at that point, you're not going to be able to stab them anymore. That makes sense. They're a very important fish down there. So you can't just net them either? No, no. You can't commercially fish them at all in Texas anymore, which is really interesting. Or serve a wild caught redfish in Texas. Really? So when you buy redfish in Texas, what are you buying?

Farm raised. Oh, and how do they do that? Do they do it in the ocean, like pens? So when you buy redfish in Texas, what are you buying? Farm-raised. Oh. And how do they do that? Do they do it in the ocean, like pens? No. Towards the coast, there's a lot of redfish farms down there. Where they just have a giant swimming pool? Yeah.

So redfish survive really well in brackish and fresh water. So there's lakes around San Antonio that have redfish in them, Calaveras and Bronnick. They live in completely fresh water and thrive. Yeah, they're real hardy. They can live in anything. And so they are raised on big fish farms. They took a hell of a hit in the freeze, those farms did. So from what I've heard, it's really hard to get farm-raised fish here. And my understanding is that if you have a wild-caught redfish on your menu here, that's not legal.

Interesting. And isn't that the fish you're using for fish and chips? Black drum. Black drum. Yeah. So kind of a cousin, a red drum and a black drum. And black drum is a huge commercial fishery here. Interestingly, they catch them on trot lines. So you're familiar with the trot line, which is one line with many hooks, probably 100 hooks hanging off of it. And they typically will bait the hook with a little piece of wood that's been soaked in fish oil. And they just put that on the hook, and then they catch black drum on that.

Why a little piece of wood? Because it's not dirty bait. They don't have to have a bunch of cut fish or whatever, shrimp or whatever it is that they would need to bait that line with. But instead they can just go through and have a little dowel with a hole in it and just bait all their eggs with that. Oh, wow. So they just smell it. Yeah. Yeah. They have little barbels on there, which indicates that they're using scent mostly. And so that's a highly sustainable, wild commercial fishery, or it is as of now. So we buy a lot of black drum because it's a good market fish.

And do you prefer that for fish and chips? Do you like doing that because it's a Texas fish? Yes, I do prefer it for fish and chips. I like the texture on that. Your fish and chips is off the charts, man. Oh, thank you. So good. Everything in your chips is off the charts, man. Oh, thank you. So good. Everything in your restaurant's great.

Thank you. But I've been having an itch for your fish and chips. Fried fish to me is like, I mean, you know, somebody asked me, like, fishing or hunting? I'm like, I'd be lying if I said hunting. Really? Yeah. I like eating fish a lot. Yeah.

But also right around fall when it starts to get cool, you probably ask me that question. I'd be like, let's go hunting. It's fine. There's something about fish and chips, though. Whoever figured that out. Oh, yeah. The batter and the fact that, you know, the fish stays kind of tender because the batter is really kind of protecting it, right? Steaming.

Yeah. Steaming in there. It's a tricky thing to get, too. I mean, making really good fish and chips is hard, and I hope that we get it right all the time because it is. It's a hard balance to achieve with the lightness of the batter and being super crispy and that fish being cooked really nicely. But, yeah, I mean, that's a British deal as far as I know. It seems like it. I mean, they're always talking about it.

Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, fried fish in general to me is kind of just i probably eat too much of it fish and chips is one of those things too where it's it seems quite simple right like you're just battering fish and then deep frying it but man there's a just just a wide range of quality and result when it comes to fish and chip. And then the sauce, like what are you dipping it in? Are you using tartar sauce?

Are you using something novel? Like what are you doing? I like, well, any kind of mayonnaise-based sauce that's got something picante in there, like a pickle. We do a pickled pepper. We get a lot of these little cherry bomb peppers, which like round spicy peppers and we pickle those and we instead of your traditional like cucumber pickle which would be chopped and put into a tartar sauce or capers or anything like that we put that that pickled cherry bomb pepper so it's got a little spice little heat yeah yeah but still that acid and that crunch and then still

mayonnaise based which is you know fried fish mayonnaise. And are you using locally sourced potatoes when you're doing the chips? You know, that's, that's a great question. You know, as of pre COVID, I can honestly say that a hundred percent of our products, a lot of our vegetables, meat, dairy, things like that. I mean, almost everything was sourced locally. Once we got into COVID and had to, I mean, it's really boring reasons behind it, but you know, like we needed some consistency and we want, we needed some comforting foods because people were like, they really wanted mash for the first three months. It was like

mashed potatoes and French fries. And we made a shift, a conscientious shift to organic potatoes that aren't necessarily from Texas. And it was the first time that, you know, in the life of the business that we had purposely sourced from outside of Texas. And I think we're going to continue it. You know, I'm really strict about the organic cause potatoes can be like little chemical bombs. Uh, but you know, in season, we buy a lot of potato and then we're in season right now. Potatoes are in season. But no. So, yeah, a little divulge something on this. Is there a particular place?

Is it like Idaho or whatever where you get the best potatoes? A lot of the organic growing happens in Colorado. Colorado? Yeah. Yeah. And do potatoes taste different when they come from different parts of the country? Not a russet in my experience. It's all the same.

Yeah. There's a lot of sugar content and consistent russets are just real easy potatoes to cook. What do you think about sweet potato chips? I love them. Personally, I love sweet potatoes. Do you ever do it that way? Like make potato, like French fries, like fish and chip style steak fries? Like make potato, like French fries, like fish and chip style steak fries?

Not for that dish, but we have done lots of fried sweet potatoes, lots of thin cut chips. We do a lot of raw venison with sweet potato chips because I love sweet potatoes and venison together. And a crispy sweet potato is a really good vehicle for like some venison tartare or venison ceviche or or parissa or anything like that like raw venison and because i love sweet potatoes and game in general and what do you prefer to like if you're going to make potato chips or or fries what do you prefer do you prefer like duck fat or what kind of fat do you like to cook them in well i mean we have a fryer now and in like using animal fats in the fryers is not a possible thing anymore. We 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. It's dangerous, very dangerous.

But, I mean, my preference would probably be I love beef fat for frying. Of course I love lard. I like the neutrality of it. But getting like duck fat in that volume is, you know, whenever I see like duck fat fries, I'm like, how are you doing that? You know, that's a lot of duck fat. Maybe they're like doing one blanch in duck fat and then coming back and finishing them in a peanut oil or canola oil. Is it just because it's hard to find that kind of volume of duck fat? That's a lot of duck fat.

Yeah. When you say that you have a fryer, are you using canola oil? We use a non-GMO canola oil. non-gmo canola oil and that's a that's another uh big step that we took you know in that the viability of the restaurant kind of came down to we'd made so many very strict choices over the years and then we were like we need crispy things for the people you know and it's like it's people like fried foods and we weren't it was very difficult to manage that in a pot, you know, for a busy-ass restaurant. And 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.

I'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. And 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, you know, they love French fries. And 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. Not viable, not to mention outrageously expensive to get all that beef fat. And so we finally went with a fryer and then started sourcing organic potatoes. Did it make a difference in the taste? It's just neutral.

Texturally, it can make some differences. We used to fry our donuts in beef fat, and I think that those could be a little – sometimes you'd get a little little chapsticky you know they'd be like I mean they were good damn that sounds good it is it's great I mean our in lard is excellent um and I think your body recognizes those fats so much better I'm not I'm not particularly excited about using canola oil at all and there's no other options that are viable for your? No, I mean, not cost wise, rather, 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? Really?

Yeah. Oh, I mean, it would be astronomical. It's food, like the prices around foods are just, are like so unknown to the public. And we still, I mean, our sourcing is so good. Um, but you know, we, we had to, to make that, that concession almost to be like, well, we need a fryer cause we do fried chicken. Um, and as volumes were going up, it's just, we just can't handle this pot and this poor guys over here, just like trying to manage the flame under it. Dangerous. were so lucky nobody ever got burnt or there was never a fire yeah because you overheat it oh really oh yeah and you're just using a gas burner too so

it's not like you can regulate for years oh wow like six years you know it's just a big old dutch oven full of rendered beef fat you know and chicken just ripping in there jesus yeah and 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 do you do you try to train people do you want them to have a certain amount of previous restaurant experience as a cook or as a line chef or something like that? You know, it's really beneficial, of course, for people to have experience. But at the same time, I do have kind of a soft spot for people that don't have a lot of experience and have really good attitudes. I mean, there's something really great about that.

You know, it's just like because our restaurant's not flashy and it's definitely not the cool place to work anymore. So we need somebody with that old mentality, you know, to walk in and be like, I do want to just cook pork chops over a burning fire all day long. That's not the cool place to work. I 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. I think it's a mature place to cook for lack. Maybe I'm not choosing that word wisely, but it's you come there to learn very simple methods, you know, but there is.

I mean, if you can't like perfectly cook that pork chop, then you don't really need to move on to the next thing. Right. Like, you know, tweezing micro greens onto a foam or whatever. Right, right, right. Which is not our style. That fussy shit doesn't not, that doesn't do anything to me. There's a place for it. I get it.

It's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. But 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. Yeah, me too. But I mean obviously. But maybe a young cook doesn't see it the same way and they they 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 we need those bad you know or this is how you have to treat these tomatoes they need to be sorted through daily if not twice daily to pick out all the ripe ones and um you know like you know why is jesse

so excited it's like oh the fucking blueberries are here you know, why is Jesse so excited? He's like, oh, the fucking blueberries are here, you know, for the first time. So it's like the little things like that. Or like, you know, why don't we have lemons in our iced teas? Because it's just not that time of year. Yeah, you're all about what's in season and what's available right now. Right. So how often are you changing your menu? We used to change it a lot more.

And these days we're trying to really like to kind of control waste more. We're just trying to lock in a menu for about a month at a time. And this great thing that has happened simultaneously as the business has grown is that the producers grow too. Like they've been scaling up, they've been learning distribution. And more importantly, you've seen farmers just get so smart, you know, with how they plant and how they rotate. And so in the past when, you know, you'd plan on seeing green beans, maybe in mid June, now we see them in early May, you know, because people are planting a different variety.

And so what that enables us to do is have a dish with green beans on it for maybe two months. And it's, I mean, a more competitive market has created these markets for farmers. You know, it's been great. You know, it's like, oh, well, if I want to go to the farmer's market and really shine, I need to have all this stuff. It needs to look really good.

And I need to have some consistency to it, too. I need all the radishes to be vaguely the same size. And so you start to see the whole system kind of step up in scale. And it's really exciting because you've had 10 years you've had you know 10 years ago very high quality organically grown food coming in and now you just have a lot more of it you know a lot more times of year too and it's it's very exciting time and the distribution's better like we don't have to go out and get all that stuff anymore they bring it to us it's wonderful is it difficult to find get relationships with ranchers and just like find the right people to work with?

I mean, no. We're locked in. We've been using our chicken farmer, our pork farmer, and cattle, I mean, our beef provider for years. I mean, we're not changing anything. It's just like those are the people we deal with. And, I mean, through better or worse, we have to raise our prices. I'm like, it's just like, those are the people we deal with. And I mean, through better or worse, we have to raise our prices. I'm like, it's cool. It's worth it to me because of mutual loyalties.

And I think that a lot of the food system exists on those relationships. And so we've been getting our chickens from the same lady for so long. Like, you know, every Wednesday, you know, Jane shows up. And I'm like, what's up, Jane? And she just brings us her chickens. And they're all perfect and best chicken you've ever had. And is she a free-range lady? Do other chickens wander around?

Yeah, they do rotational pasturing. Like Joel Salatin style? Yeah, but they don't range anything behind it like Salatin. It's just chickens, but they're moving everything around. It's very high quality. We also get a very young bird at a specific size. So, you know, we're looking at like around two pounds, maybe a little bit, two and a quarter per bird. So relatively small chickens.

And so she's able to do that. And, yeah, it's a very good quality. The processing is very good. You know, she knows how to rotate that pasture, and then she also knows how to process that bird, chill it, and transport it, everything. Now, what is the deal with wild game in Texas in terms of whether or not you could,

is it only invasives that you can sell on menus? Is that how it works? So there's going to be two categories with that. One is going to be non-game, you know, antelope and deer, and the other one's going to be feral swine. When you say non-game, it's just because it's invasive. It's not listed as a game animal, which means that, simply put, it's not a white-tailed deer.

It's just not native to Texas. Right. So anything that's been exotic that's been imported here, and interestingly enough, that also applies to elk, right? Like elk is thought of almost as an invasive, which is weird because it used to be native. Right. Well, any elk that's here now has been brought in. Right.

And so ostensibly it's just been purchased as a livestock. And that's what it is. So anything but whitetail. And so those fall in a very low, I don't want to say unregulated, but less regulated level than feral hogs do. And so that's why your company like broken arrow ranch is out there field harvesting electro stimulating and then bring in that stuff to us otherwise we can get that stuff that's been trapped you know in a trap and then loaded

onto a trailer and processed at a at a slaughtering facility you know like we've we've had elk before you know like maybe some ranch is trying to cull out some of the elk that they brought in for hunting. And we'll, I see that as just like a, as a byproduct and, you know, a very, an animal that's been eating a wild diet. And so I'm like, yeah, we can bring that in. And then as far as the hogs go, those are trapped live and brought in. So there's trappers that are working with the processor that we use. And so they'll go out and they'll trap pigs and then they will bring those in and they get what's called an anti-mortem inspection. So there's a state inspector. It can be either state or federal. It can be USDA or a state. If it's not crossing

state lines, it can be state. And so we use a state inspector and our processor does rather. That animal looks healthy. Great. They'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. And they're feral swine and they're treated basically the same as a domestic pig. I mean, they get a little more scrutiny on them because they're wild. He's checking livers and kidneys and stuff like that on the carcass. And 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?

The snare. The snare. How do they keep the hogs from freaking out? Yeah, that's a really good question. So they do freak out. But the best way I can describe it, and we'll never really know because we don't experience a lot of that flavor, you know, that off-putting, like gaminess from the trapped pigs. And I've discussed this with our processor. What we think is that there's a spike in stress and then kind of a plateau of it. Now they're going to be stressed, but that initial stress, it's probably like an adrenaline rush. And I'm totally speaking out of my house right now, but this is what we perceive

it to be because the hog, 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. And so we think that it plateaus because they're kept in captivity for maybe a couple of days, you know, at the facility and then they're run through. But so, I mean, there is a high degree of stress. And 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 this stress is is out of control and so that at that point we are tacitly making a decision between eating the invasive and the only legal way that we have or not yeah you know and what we have to take with that is the stress on that trapped animal

and it's not something that i like and it would be something that I would like to be addressed. But at this point, it's like we have to deal with a certain system with hogs because the oversight on them is fairly strenuous because they are more likely to carry, you know, diseases than that elk or that psyched deer. Right. So when they capture them and they keep them for several days, what are they doing during those several days? Are they running tests on them? No. They're just feeding them?

They're just feeding them until it's their time. And then when it's their time, then they examine them? It's not an examination. It's a visual check. Okay. It's like they're standing. I mean, I'm sure they have. I mean, if it's obviously sick or injured or something, they're probably going to condemn it.

But why are they capturing it and then holding them for a few days and feeding them? It's mostly going to have to do with slaughtering schedules. Like, I mean, most of these small places that are willing to do it are running on a pretty strict, like Tuesdays. Trapper brings them in on Friday. They got to stay there until Tuesday when it's time. So you couldn't just do a helicopter hunt, blow out 20 pigs, and then bring them back to your restaurant and serve it.

Correct. I cannot do that. There is some sort of a protocol involved. The anti-mortem inspection is not happening. And so, I mean, that... Anti-mortem? A-N-T-E. Before. Before. Yeah. Okay.

So, I mean, that just, that brings up a much wider topic in how do we get feral hogs into the food system safely? And this is where, this is kind of the bottleneck. But also this level of inspection is not something I disagree with at all. Right. It seems like it's prudent it's very prudent yeah and so because it's so prudent that's where you know i kind of get stuck is like how do we how do we feed the poor you know how do we get feral hogs out there into the food system to feed as many people as we can because they're rotting in the field but we can't have inspectors flying around in another helicopter with binoculars like the brown spotted one on the left. You know, like, I mean, how are you going to,

how are you going to manage it? It's going to be really tricky, but I think that the conversations need to start. And, and that's key is how do we safely integrate hogs into the food chain also without monetizing them because once you monetize them the impetus to getting rid of them is gone so i mean for instance you have all of a sudden this burgeoning market for feral hog meat and you know pork is getting 350 a pound but a feral hog is at 650 people are gonna be like wait a minute why do we want to kill all these things why don't we And, you know, pork is getting 350 a pound, but a feral hog is at 650. People are going to be like, wait a minute. Why do we want to kill all these things?

Why don't we capture a couple of them and breed them? You know? Yeah. And this is, I was actually talking about this the other day because this happened. I knew a couple of people that were selling wild boar. But what they had done is they'd captured trapped a couple um a couple years before and we're just breeding them and then just selling the meat as wild boar and i'm like it goes back to like one of the first things that we talked about it's like what side of the fence is that pig on that is a domestic hawk right that is not a wild boar anymore uh they don't retract

though do they do they retract back to domestic looking? Does their nose shrink and does their fur change texture? Whenever 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. And there is a darkening of the flesh that you're getting from a wild hog right is that just a dietary thing yes uh you will also see like in i hate to use the word like heritage breed but like in a really good mix like the domestic pigs we get at the restaurant are uh used to be a large black red wattle mix.

They're typically, like if I see pork in a grocery store, it's like pale pink, and it's like, ours never looks like that. It's much deeper red. And then a feral hog can go way, almost to like beef red. Yeah, I've seen them really dark before. It really depends, and it's got to be a mixture of diet. Stress can also play into that too. But they, they will, they put on fat real well once you catch them, you know, and you keep

them. They'll, they're like street kids, you know, they're like, oh, I'm going to eat. I'm not going to miss a meal ever again. You know, they're, they're, they're into eating. And so they put on almost exorbitant amounts of fat when you capture them and feed them out. Are there bears in Texas? Not that many, right? There are. I saw a picture of one in south Texas a few days ago. You cannot hunt them.

You can't hunt any bears in Texas? Nope. Really? Interesting. Nope. Not enough. There'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. Wow. That's really pretty far South. Yeah. I mean, if I was down there hunting, I just, I hope that I'd know what

I was looking at. You know, if it was like low light, I'd be like, you know, that's a giant boar. So have they immigrated from somewhere else and made their way into Texas? I assume so. They, I mean, used to be native here, just like the elk. Right. Um, but that's what I was getting at. Like if somebody, they don't do that with bears though. This is the way they do that with elk. Like no, no, no, no, this, I mean, I feel, and I could definitely be wrong. I feel that this bear naturally made its way down there. Hmm. Yeah. Why, why is that? With predators, they don't reintroduce.

Is it because of the impact it'll have on local fawns and calves and things along those lines? I think calves being the key word there. This is a beef state, and reintroduction of predators is not on the table. Yeah, 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. And even if you have a depredation tag, it's dangerous. 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.

So it was climbing into the thing with alpacas and it just couldn't resist. It was just whacking like, you know, fucking 10 of them at a time. And 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. 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. And it's kind of interesting the cultural differences because here it would be like a no-brainer.

Like, you don't even have to have a tag. Just shoot that mountain lion that's trying to kill all your livestock. But in California, they're like, let it live, man. Yeah, it's complicated. And yeah, there's definitely a different mentality here. You've probably picked up on that. I have. I like it here.

Yeah, me too. There's a silliness to California that is just, it's really apparent when you get out of there. I'm like, oh, that's what everybody's always talking about. And it was sort of accentuated by COVID, by the way people reacted and still react. There's a lot of folks that just, they don't want it to be better. They don't want the pandemic to be over. They 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. And it's really interesting. It's a fascinating psychological experiment. Because I'll follow some people like on social media and I'll read like some of their panic porn posts. And then I'm like, okay, where's this person from? And you click and it's like almost always a blue city it's almost always someone who lives in some urban population in a you know some democrat run city and it's like wow like this is sort of a universal thing like they they seem there's a lot of folks that seem to be uh enjoying the fact that we're the things are scary and they were in a state of chaos they don't want to accept that things are better now than they were months ago

and what what shapes like geographic regions to have i mean almost a personality it's interesting right you know i remember a long time ago i compared in the lens of through the lens of of food like the the cuisine of california to the cuisine of texas where if you look at the natives and napa valley i mean it's just like oh i'm gonna pick this avocado and here you have a 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. I mean, it's like how does that formative mentality translate to huge geographic areas? And I think there's something to it. I mean, I always see it through food, of course. Of course. The food there and the food here is also very different.

Well, it's so defining. Food is so defining of a population. You 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. It's like there's some sort of fermented- Fermented shark, they bury it for a long time. He said it is so un-fucking-believably disgusting that you can't believe that these people enjoy it as a delicacy.

Have you had that? No. No. I'll pass. I know. I said I like fish. I want to try it. Yeah.

Just to know what the fuck is up. Yeah, I don't know if I could do that. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure of what that smells like. I mean, not sure, but I mean, I bet the i bet the level i mean you probably five feet away from it before you start retching dude i just uh was in salt lake city and i ate at this super legit mexican place and i bought i got menudo and it smelled like a barn my friend tony was next to me he's like what the fuck you're gonna eat that that smell it smell. It smelled so Barney. Yeah. It was good though, right?

It was good. Yeah. It was good, but it really smelled like innards. Yeah. You know, like animals. It smelled like a dirty animal's butt. Yeah. Yeah, I've had experiences.

I had a sausage in France one time. It was a Andouillette, and it was like, it came out, and I was, you know, I was going through that phase of try everything, cut into it, and I was like, I mean, it tastes like poo-poo and pee-pee. It's like it is vile, like terrible. But evidently it's like the more profound that is, the better that sausage is. And culturally that's what they're looking for. And I'm sure that translates into stuff that we eat too and find completely normal.

I wonder what that would be. I don't know. But maybe that said that our food is so bland and chicken breasty that maybe that doesn't translate in retrospect. I mean, like, is that really what we – I mean, when you think of American food, you do think of bland chicken breasty, chicken tenders, hot dogs. You think of bland food. But that's not really really it's like what is if you looked at the pie chart of the percentage of food that americans eat but what are we really crazy that we're eating that nobody else is eating i don't know nothing yeah right i can't think of

anything we got too lucky the bounty of food here yeah you know yeah i remember watching i watched a steak documentary i think it's called the steak revolution it's on some apple document it was on uh you know i movie or whatever and um i was uh watching how they figured out in other countries what people were doing differently in america in terms of growing their cows and that the cows were bigger and they were fatter and then they were going to places like, you know, like different steakhouses, different famous places. You know, like Peter Luger's in Brooklyn, which is like a famous steakhouse. And you go there and they're like, okay, what are you doing differently?

How are you getting your cow so fat? And then they were trying to change everything over in Europe to try to emulate some of these American steakhouses. to try to emulate some of these American steak houses. Because the idea of just eating a place where you only eat steak is like, I know that's an Italy thing. Yeah, I was about to say, like Bistecca Fiorentina. Yeah. It's huge, but have you seen those ribeyes?

They look nothing like a ribeye here in the States. Very small. Small and red and almost just devoid of marbling. Yeah, and it's particularly because of their diet their diet right because they're just eating grass only they're not eating corn yeah we like that corn fed fatty sweet yeah and it's almost like that animals you're eating a sick person you're eating a sick animal I mean like bloated them and got them all to the point where all that marbling like that's not good if you eat an elk

And it was marbled like that you'd be like what the fuck is wrong with this animal Mm-hmm, you know it's never like that, but a cow that's what you look for you look for a really sloppy lazy obese Castrated bull right that's what we're eating. That's what we prefer A castrated bull. Right. That's what we're eating.

That's what we prefer. We were brought in to do a class one time, a butchery class. And the guy who was hosting had a hog for us. He's like, no, I'll have a pig for you. I was like, great. And so we show up. And they had, just to be safe, they had had the hog and they trapped it. And they kept it in the pen for,, I want to say like a month. And they did nothing but feed it deer corn, which is just a, just a very cheap feed corn. It's like

a GMO corn and they just fed it nothing but corn, which is, I'm sure the pig was happy. I don't know. I can't, I can't, I can't say that with any knowledge of the pig's mood, but it got real fat. I mean, it got so fat that it's hard for me to convey how fat that pig got. But we had, we showed up and it was carcass at this point. It had been killed and skinned and gutted. But in front of us, what we were looking at, it was coated in so much fat that its eyes were basically almost swollen shut because the fat deposits around the eyes had almost closed its eyes. The loin on it, for the listeners, was probably about a two-inch loin or back strap, or basically, essentially, when you're looking at a pork chop, the meaty part, the meaty oval

part of the loin was about two inches, and it had about eight or nine inches of fat on top of that. And so if you're typically looking at a pork chop, it'll have like a little, I would say it'd be about, you know, 15 to 25% of the width of a pork chop. Typically this one had whatever. I 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 it was a pig they don't self-regulate and it just went to town on this uh and it and it was a real lesson you know and all first off it's like no you need to feed it some pig ration if you're gonna do that

um and secondly this is not good stuff to eat it didn't taste good it tasted great it did oh it was like i mean so you mean corn is not good stuff to eat is It didn't taste good? It tasted great. It did? It was like, I mean. So you mean corn is not good stuff to eat. Is that what you're saying? Corn, right. Sorry. Right. Sorry.

I mean, it's unhealthy. But 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. I was having trouble gripping my knives, everything. The fat was just, it was just in the air. Really? It was crazy.

And as we're dicing the meat, like this is for sausage, we had a pile like two feet high of just white, pure white fat on one side. And I'm like, man, I hope you like lard because that is what you are doing. You need to learn how to make soap or something because you are, you are rich with, with lard right now. And it was a very soft, and I can identify on a feral pig if it's been eating a lot of corn versus, you know, more natural like acorn diet. Cause acorns, they've got this beautiful, like ivory pinkish firm fat. Whereas 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. Yeah. The, um, I shot a wild pig with Steve. It was a sow and it was, uh, it was kind of a really crazy adventure. Actually

we, uh, we shot it on this hill. It was like, uh, on the side of a very steep hill and as i shot it it died and it rolled down this hill and as it rolled down this hill it got all the way to the bottom and we tried to pull it up we tried to but it was too steep and so we decided to try to take it down and then walk and then while we're doing this it's in the middle of the night and we're on a ranch it has mountain lions we're're carrying half a pig. Each guy's carrying a half a pig on their back, and we're stumbling through the woods in the bottom of this creek basin, and then we eventually wound up hanging it. We're like, we can't do this anymore.

We have to hang this thing because I was going to break my neck. We kept falling, carrying this. It was a big pig, too. And they're so specifically heavy specifically heavy in a weird way. They move around a lot. This one had thick acorn fat on it. It really tasted delicious, but it was the smell

to it. It had an acorny type smell. That's one thing that I've really never had and I really am interested in trying is blueberry bear. A bear that's been eating blueberries because Steve says that is never had and I really am interested in trying is blueberry bear like a bear that's been eating blueberries because Steve says that is like literally one of the very best meats you could ever eat yeah you were talking about that with

clay new yeah have you ever had that no no remember I've never tried bear oh that's right yeah and I remember no clay talking about that I mean he's just definitely the bear expert yeah how come you've never had but like a guy like you I would imagine you would try to seek that out oh sure I mean he's just definitely the bear expert yeah how come you've never had bit of it like a guy like you I would imagine you would try to seek that out oh sure I mean that's nobody who never ever gave me any I mean I've just eaten pretty much everything from around here and but never had bear and like I said you know just on a lot of the hunting travel right just very very specific to Texas it is I mean it's so obvious but it seems crazy that what an animal eats has that much of an impact on what it tastes like. And then it makes you think about your own diet.

Like, it's not just what tastes good. Like, what are you doing to the actual tissue of your body itself and how much of that is impacted by your diet? Right. Right. And what, I mean, and in the anarchy that's happening out there like what how do you select an animal to be the best too right so especially when it comes to pigs because it's just like who knows even when it comes to cows right there's a lot of folks who prefer grass-fed beef for the taste for the texture it's a more it's a chewier texture. And just for the fact that this is probably healthier to eat in that way.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a way more natural thing. It's grass-fed, grass-finished beef. And many people don't love that. We started off with a grass-fed, grass-finished steak program at the restaurant. And it was, I mean, in Texas, it was very difficult. You know, a lot of people just didn't like it. And when somebody doesn't

like their salad, it's one thing. And when you're in Texas and somebody doesn't like their steak, it's another thing. What was the thing about it? Because it's still delicious. Like, is it just not what they're accustomed to? It's texture and flavor. I mean, the gristly parts are harder. It's not as tender, and it doesn't have that sweetness. I mean, and it's got that grassy, almost game meat flavor to it. It's very robust beef, and not for everybody. And so eventually we had to go with a grass finished wagyu you know an animal that puts on more fat but also eats some grain in the field like a free choice grain never

goes to a feedlot which is i mean key for us i don't want that animal to be 90 days just on corn but it is has a free choice feed of grains while it's foraging grass. So it's a good middle ground. It's a great middle ground. And also the breed choice, you know, Wagyu. It's also a recognizable, very marketable word right there. Everybody knows Wagyu is synonymous with beef quality. But then we're able to deal with just one person one lady you

know she's awesome i mean she's so good at it mariana peeler i mean just just creating amazing beef um but just in a really good way that's more appealing to people have you uh met doug duran no uh you know doug uh yeah i know he's great guy guy. Shout out to Doug. But Doug has a farm in Wisconsin, and the deer that they hunt, they're basically corn-fed. They're eating this GMO corn that's everywhere. It's growing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's where you find them.

You find them in the cornfields. Yeah. And 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. But 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. It's big here, too.

I mean, think corn feeders. Corn feeders are omnipresent. That's how you hunt here. Not necessarily 100% of the time, but I mean, you know, if you say you're going deer hunting, you're probably going to be sitting in front of a corn feeder. That seems, it's, I mean, I don't knock it. Sure. It's a great way to hunt, you know, and if that's what your goal is, just gather up some

meat, it's a great way to do it. But there's something that's what your goal is, just gather up some meat. It's a great way to do it. But there's something about hunting that's supposed to be, like, difficult to find the animal. Like, it's supposed to be – like, I've hunted bears over bait, and it's – part of you just goes, hmm, I don't think I like doing this. Because 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. where you're going into the mountains trying to find them, make sure you don't get winded. If you could just sit in front of a place that you know an animal's going to come by to have lunch, you know, it's kind of fucked up. It's that time.

It's that time that we have and that we're able to give to this vocation in order to achieve success. It's like we don't have a week to spend trying to get that doe. I'm not saying we. I definitely prefer not to. And we, at our classes, we offer both. Like, I mean, if, if, if that's what you want to do, you can do that. We can also go take a walk and, you know, definitely prefer the walk. And I mean, if you're, if you're got your wits about you, you can usually make that walk pay off too. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's also you learn about what the animal, what senses the animal utilizes in terms of, like, sense of smell and sight. And the thing about pigs too is they don't see very well, right? So you can kind of freeze. Yeah. I mean, that's debatable. But in my mind, pigs don't see well at all. I, some people will say, yeah, they see.

I'm like, what I think about pigs and their senses is that, I mean, it's scent. They can smell you so far away. They can hear you and they can see you. But if they hear you or see you and don't confirm with smell, they kind of are like, they're either like either 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.

If they smell you, they turn around and run away. That's my experience generally, is that they have that sense of smell is so acute that that's really what you have to play to get in front of them. That said, I will get people really close to pigs. You know, like we can get 20, 30 yards if we're dead downwind on them. You could never do that on a deer.

I mean, it's just out of the question. But if you're, I mean, even kind of an open ground, I mean, I've gotten within maybe 15 yards just by just moving kind of slow. And if they've got their heads down and they're eating grass or they're just rooting or something, you can get really close to them if the wind's right. I think the closest I ever got to a pig that I shot was probably about five feet. What? Yeah. And it was the wind. I was walking with a friend and we were in this beautiful like high point in East Texas. And there was acorns all over the ground and the wind was just ripping.

We happened to have the wind in our faces. And I came around. We were walking. We didn't have a rifle or anything. Walked around a corner and there's a pig. Like, there's a pig right there. And I just backtracked. The wind was blowing at me.

I backtracked and I was like, you know, like, hey, Larry, we got to go get a rifle. He's like, what? I'm like, there's a pig right there. And I just backtracked. The wind was blowing at me. I backtracked. And I was like, hey, Larry, we've got to go get a rifle. He's like, what? I'm like, there's a pig right there. Went back, got the rifle, came back. The pig had moved and was facing me but had his head down. And there were so many acorns. I mean, I can just imagine just the crunch, crunch, crunch that was happening in that pig's jaw. He couldn't hear anything over the wind.

The wind was bad. And he seemed so excited about his acorns. And I couldn't even look through the scope. I mean, it was six feet. Wow. That's where he was. He was kind of on the edge of a big drop. And in fact, after I shot him, he dropped all the way down. But I mean, that really shows you what they're, not only their senses, but their dispositions.

Like when they get excited, particularly about two things, there's nothing that's going to pull them away from those two things. What a strange animal they are. What keeps their populations in check overseas? their populations in check overseas. Oh, I mean, you can see those videos of downtown Milan and Germany where these pigs are just running down the streets. I mean, they have far less predators over there. I don't know. And then I don't know what the hunting situations are over there either.

There's feral hog problems around the world. China, you know, definitely in Europe. And here, I mean, probably bleeding into Mexico a little bit. It'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. Like you really see that from places like England. Like they have a very different take on hunting for the most part than we do.

Well, it's been in England particularly, England, like they have a very different take on hunting for the most part than we do. Well, it's been in England particularly just the space and the system that they've set up over so long as hunting is not available to everybody. Right. It's a very tiered system. Yeah. Even fishing, you know, you're going to pay for it. And so I think that most people have, you know, of course they develop a different view of it. And also they prefer carp over there, which is so weird. They actually enjoy carp fishing.

Whereas carp for us are just thought to be like sort of a junky fish. Yeah. I mean, they're okay to eat. There's a lot better fish out there to eat than carp, I think. Well, you're a big fan of eating bass, right? Yeah. I eat bass. That's a controversial? I eat bass because it makes people mad. And I don't target bass.

If I catch one and it's like nice, perfect, you know, it's like 15 inches long and I can keep it, I'll keep it. Why does it make people mad? It's a, you know, we've made the largemouth bass a species. I mean, it's similar to elk, man. I mean, like elk has status. Big white-tailed deer have status.

On the coast, there's so many fish to eat on the coast. But on the coast, a big speckled trout has status. It has more status than a redfish. Why? I don't know. But in freshwater, the bass has it in the south, and in the north, it would be the walleye. That's the status. But the bass have it in a different way than the walleye do or any other, or certainly elk, in that people don't want you to eat them.

Right. And it's just silly because i mean like there's a lot of bass out there i mean there's a lot of them and they they've just decided that that species is off limit i mean parks and wildlife establishes rules about what you can keep what size you can keep on a bass um And those were determined by biologists. And I trust those more than... I mean, it's also highly monetized. So, I mean, you think about bass tournaments. I mean, you can win $50,000. You know, Jim Harrison, the author,

you know, he said that tournament fishing for bass, I think he was speaking specifically about this, is like playing tennis with living balls. You know? And to me, it's weird. If you ever see like a tournament bass fisherman, when he's reeling that fish in, there is no joy. I mean, it's just like crank it in as fast as you can, swing it into the boat, grab it, you know, hold onto it. And then, you know, and then put it in the live well, and you just, you're screaming cause you just won $25,000. Right.

And then you drive it to another part of the lake and then you let it go. And it's all, oh, man, I just dug myself a big fucking hole. No, no, no, no. You're making a lot of good points. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. Yeah. I mean, you're really inconveniencing that fish. It was a Mitch Hedberg joke, I think.

Right? It's like just made it late for something. I can't remember, but it's real weird to me. It is weird. That you would, there's so much value placed on that one species, you know, and it does have some qualities. It's aggressive. It's hard fighting. It jumps, it jumps out of the water. It hits lures. You can catch it in the summer months. There's a lot of qualities behind a largemouth bass, one of which is also pretty damn tasty. It's in the same family as a bluegill or a crappie. Do they basically taste the same as a bluegill or crappie? I mean,

I've had bass, but I haven't had it since I was a teenager. Yeah, it's very good. It has a larger flake than either of those fish. It is a sunfish. It's in the sunfish species or genus. I think it's great. Now, I don't keep them often and usually I'll just put them back. But every once in a while, I will keep bass. But why do you put them back when you put them back? I'm usually fishing for something else, and I have enough fish. But there are times where I do want to keep them. Well, there's like a situation with trout. Like people love to cast the fly fish for trout and release them. It's like almost entirely catch and release in some places, which is weird.

It's weird. You're just stabbing them in the face with a hook, pulling them in, freaking them out, and then letting them go. Yeah, so geographically I'd like to take this opportunity to pretty much piss off the entire nation and agree. If I 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.

Yeah. So there's stretches of land. Now, do they do that with catch and release only i keep driving yeah like so there's stretches of land now do they do that with catch and release only is it specifically because they want to maintain the numbers or is it because they want to establish sort of an ethic for the area maintaining numbers i mean you think about how the size of these streams and the amount of pressure they get i can talk all the shit I want because I'm here in Texas and there's reservoirs all around me. There's fishing opportunities on lakes and rivers and streams for me

where I can go and catch all the sunfish and catfish that I want and not harm the population at all. But in the mountain states, it's just like it's basically just trout. And then if everybody was hammering those fish, then there wouldn't be enough to go around. And I get that. But I'm just like, I'm going to leave them alone if I can't eat them. And if you can point me to a beaver pond full of brook trout that are like totally overpopulated, it's just like I'll go take care of business. I'll catch seven-inch brook trout all day long and be happy as a clam.

Yeah, people love those little tiny trout for like lunch. They're great for, is it, is it a flavor thing? Do they taste different when trout get larger? Little, little tender fish, you know,

and just, I mean, brook trout particularly, I love, and they're, they're of all the trout species in the mountain States. Typically they're the ones that are the most renewable. Yeah.

It's just interesting that there's not a shortage of bass. It must be the sport thing. It 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. Right. Yeah, but meanwhile, they're everywhere. It's weird.

Yeah. But also, like, a trophy-sized weird. But also like a trophy size bass or a trophy size, pretty much anything I'm putting back. Like if I catch a, you know, an 18 pound catfish, I'm putting it back in the water. I 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. I'm going to take the two, three, four pounders out. And that goes for most fish that I'm going to catch. Have you ever noodled? No, no.

I just don't see myself doing that. No, I'm good. I saw a dude's hand who got bit by a snapping turtle. He was noodling for catfish. I think Ronella might have had it on his Instagram. Probably does. He loves that gore. Missing fingers.

I would imagine. I was always thinking you can get caught by a snapping turtle, like a snake yeah oh yeah I'm good I'm good but these I follow a bunch of people on Instagram that are always noodling and they'll just get in there and let this goddamn thing bite their arm and then they pull it out and they have like Ryan Callahan was talking about it I would like bite marks over his arm yeah like they bite into your arm extreme you have to grab them by the gills like what what kind of nonsense is this i don't know i mean maybe you've experienced everything else i guess but they're not good to eat right a giant catfish like oh we're talking

about flatheads they're good they're really even the giant ones yeah what are you what's your general feeling on catfish i like catfish. You'd love flathead. Yeah? Is that a particularly delicious type of catfish? It is. Even when they're fairly big, they're excellent. Flathead is more of a hunter. I mean, they don't eat, like, the detritus or dead fish. I mean, if you're going to catch a flathead, you're probably going to have to be using live bait.

They're very predatory. And I think that's what translates into them being so delicious. But they're also very fatty and mild. For me, a flathead is the best tasting catfish out there. Really? Yeah. I love catfish too. I mean, I really do. I know that's kind of some people don't like them.

We were just in Arkansas. That's kind of some people don't like them. We were just in Arkansas. We had an incredible experience up there because I was able to go and be on the other side of a class where there's this guy that has started this thing. And it's just it's really incredible. He's taken this. He's moved to this old black church. And the business is called Black Duck Revival. It's a guy named Jonathan Wilkins.

And it's just really incredible. He does duck and goose hunts up there in Arkansas. And he also offers this class where you can go and learn how to, like, limb line and trot line catfish in these swamps. Very old methods. You know, you're just basically tying these, 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, these catfish. And I mean, it was just, it was really incredible because of the, I mean, the cultural weight of

it too. You know, he's African-Americanican and he's got he knows the history of this area and what it's like to exist up there and also it's just great for me to go and take a class you know and not be on the other end of it right the perspective was incredible but um just and what catfish is you know catfish is like it's the opposite of bass you know it's not this big flashy sport fish and nobody nobody has a big tournament for it but it's just it's a food fish and it's a very specific food fish too it's not it's not for everybody there's a great quote from willard scott i can't remember it's like if 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. You know, Willard Scott. Right, the weather guy. Yeah, was wishing the old 80s, the 100-year-old 80s, happy birthday. The other hill he wanted to die on was catfish. Wow, how weird. I was watching this video the other day

of catfish in England. Apparently 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. So now they start eating pigeons. Have you seen that? Yes, I think I saw a video of that. It's crazy. These catfish will like sneak up real close to these pigeons and then explode and jump on them and drag these pigeons down into the water. And it's so weird to see because you always think of catfish as like you were saying,

like they eat dead things. They eat anything. Yeah. Yeah. But I did not know that they would go get a pigeon. Watch this show. Oh, there you go. I've seen this. Look how sneaky they are.

Well, you know what we were using in bait in Arkansas? What? Soap. What we were using in bait in Arkansas was soap. There's a certain brand of soap that is made with pork lard. But it's still, oh, my God. Look at that. Wild.

Oh, it got away. Uh-huh. But it's really crazy because they're hunting in like an inch of water. Yeah. Like they literally are getting themselves and almost beaching themselves. Well, I don't think people realize that catfish are high level predators. I mean, most of the time they are feeding higher in the water column than you might think. And also for crawfish, minnows, anything. I mean, pigeons. I can't imagine this though. This is so strange.

I know there's other fish that like do target birds. Like I remember reading once about this guy who was hunting for muskies and he figured out how to make like a lure that looked like a duck. So it was like little duck feet moving and he was catching muskies on this little duckling. Like a little wind up bath toy. Yeah, similar. Yeah. And as he was reeling it in, he was catching muskies on this little duckling. Like a little wind-up bath toy. Yeah, similar, yeah. And as he was reeling it in, he was catching muskies. Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of footage out there of little ducklings getting eaten by, I mean, catfish too. Like I said, they get a bad rap for bottom feeders,

but when we were in Arkansas, we were fishing literally a couple inches below. The 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. You know, they're going to eat all over the place. And it was just so eye-opening to see that. You're in this crazy swamp, and we're using soap as bait.

Why soap? They love it. What kind? Like Irish spring? The brand is Zote. Oh, it's a very specific kind of brand? Yeah. I'd actually seen it before in a lake around here.

One of the guides had sworn by it, and I thought it was a one-off. And then I get up there to Arkansas, and he's like, no, Zote soap. And I'm like, oh, shit, you too. Like, really? Zote soap. Why Zote soap? What is it about that soap? It's this pink soap.

It smells like soap, and the catfish love it. Huh. Zote soap is great catfish bait because the fats are in it. It leaves a trail that catfish will follow if it melted down out of a small amount of bacon grease and garlic to it. Then pour it into a container. Garlic seems a weird choice. This bait does not work well at all on rod and reel huh yeah it's just for like lemon limb lines and trot lines i wonder why it wouldn't work

good on rod and reel though does that make any sense to you um it it will probably dissolve as you cast if you have to recast it and like bring it in like that makes sense water friction on it probably make it dissolve yeah soap right like washing your hands i mean you could literally take a piece of it you know that wasn't being used as bait um how long did it take you to write this book uh a decade damn so this is the fruit of many many days of labor yeah it uh it mean, most of it in the last two years. But, you know, it really took a long time. And I'm glad because what it gave me is the data of, you know, dozens of hunting schools and then hog butchery classes of people asking questions. You know, being like, hey, I mean, this is the situation I was in.

You know, the hog looked like this. Or can you eat a pig? Or can you eat the boar that's over 200 pounds or 180 or 120 or 80? Whatever it is. And so getting fed those questions and then able to go through and just really curate the answers to all those questions. time to kind of coalesce this approach that we have to butchering and processing pigs, which is, like I mentioned earlier, it's like four sizes. You have a big boar, a big sow, a medium hog, and a small hog. And then how to butcher each one of those in the most efficient way.

And then the recipes, the subsequent recipes that you can prepare from that specific size. And it kind of trying 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. How did wild pigs get gendered in terms of food value? Like when you go to a restaurant, you always get wild boar. Yeah. It's always wild boar, which is horseshit. Well, right.

I addressed that. So I used to sell at the farmer's market when we first started making sausage. You know, we, I think we called it wild, I think we called it feral hog chorizo. Let's say. The marketability is not good.

You change that to wild boar and then people want it. You know, it's like, and I address that, you know, 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. And you say Russian boar even if it's a sow. And so they, and you say Russian boar, even if it's a sow? Yes. Yes. That covers everything, you know? And then also, but wild boar kind of is very nebulous, but I addressed that in there and I'm like, listen, everybody, I am going to call all pigs boars sometimes. And usually in the title of a recipe right because it's semantics yeah it's like humankind is mankind sure yeah sure like it's it's a boar yeah but it's weird it is no i get it

yeah i get it but it's and i'll i'll be i'll be very uh clear that it is it's a marketability well it's also the way it sounds. Like wild boar sounds delicious. Feral hog does not sound good. It sounds like a gross. It's clinical. Yeah. Yeah. It also just sounds dirty.

Yeah. Dirty little wild piggy. Yeah. You want a little more adventure in your menu descriptor. Yeah. A wild boar. I 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. Agreed.

There's so many of them. There's a low level to entry, a low bar to entry, rather. You basically don't even have a season in most states that have them. You can hunt them 365 days a year. You can get a lot of tags. You could hunt quite a few of them and, um, and they're delicious. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's available, um, online of the first printing sold out, uh, via our Kickstarter campaign and online sales. The second printing is on its way to being sold out and that should be here mid-August, but it can still be pre-ordered. Do you have an ebook? No, we don't.

You don't? Are you going to do that at all? Probably not. We self-published and are self-distributing this book. It is not available on Amazon. It is 100% our, me and the photographer, it's our project. So where would one go to get this? It's easy. It's thehogbook.com. Thehogbook.com. Well, that is easy. How did no one already have that? Congratulations. And St. John's Press? Is that just like a...

It's the first book from St. John's Press. Okay. So thehogbook.com. Go there. Get it. And the end of July people will be shipping out. Well, after this podcast, you're going to sell shit all over again. Mid-August, mid-August, yeah. So thank you, Jesse.

I appreciate it, man, and thanks for having such an awesome restaurant, and I really enjoyed talking to you. Yeah, I really appreciate being here. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Daidue, it's in Austin, Texas. How do you say it on like the URL? How do you spell it?

D-A-I-D-U-E. D-A-I-D-U-E.com? Correct. Okay. Bye, everybody. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Bye.