What does "high on the hog" mean?
What does "high on the hog" mean?
To eat high on the hog originally meant to eat the cuts taken from the loin and leg—ham, chops and loin—that were generally considered to be the best cuts of pork.
The phrase has come to denote eating well in a more general sense. One can be said to be living high on the hog during prosperous good times, but the phrase is also used to describe someone living extravagantly or beyond one's means.
Recipe: Pan-Roasted Pork Chops With Mustard-Caper Sauce (Cookthink)
Recipe: Pan-Seared Pork Medallions (Cookthink)
Reference: What is Boston butt? (Cookthink)
Reference: How to tie a pork tenderloin (Cookthink)
(Image courtesy of Wessels Living History Farm.)
By far the most popular type of beer in the world, lager tends to be crisp, nonchalant and easily swillable. If you've had a pilsner, bock, marzen or Colt 45, then you've tasted lager.
What's the difference between a lager and an ale? German for "storehouse," lager refers to the cold rooms where lager is fermented (using bottom-fermenting yeast). Ales are made with top-fermenting yeasts that prefer warmer temperatures.
Lager predates Christopher Columbus, but by the 19th century, the U.S. had developed its own style of lager. Based on the Czech pilsner, the taste of American lagers are generously characterized as "flavor neutral."
Every year, Munich celebrates lager with Oktoberfest.
Deglazing is a fancy term for using the flavor-packed brown bits stuck to the bottom of a pan to make a pan sauce or gravy.
To deglaze, just skim excess fat from the pan you've just used to cook meat or poultry. Then add a small amount of liquid -- such as wine, stock or water -- to the cooking juices and boil quickly over high heat, stirring constantly to dislodge the brown bits and evaporate any added alcohol.
From here, you can reduce the liquid to a desired consistency, then maybe finish it off with a touch of cream, a knob of butter or a squeeze of citrus juice. After you take the pan off the heat, you can sprinkle in some chopped herbs and last-minute seasonings. Or if you want to be very French about it, you can finish by straining the imperfections from your sauce.
Vegetables can also be used to lightly "deglaze" a pan to which you have just browned a bit of meat. Water from the vegetables (especially onions) will have the same dislodging effect. And deglazing to make a flourless gravy for poultry can be as simple as removing a chicken from a roasting pan, straining excess fat, adding water and stirring vigorously until the liquid is uniform and slightly reduced.
Reference: What is a pan sauce? (Cookthink)
Recipe: Pan-Roasted Pork Chops With Mustard-Caper Sauce (Cookthink)
