Making traditional English brawn

*Warning*: if you're not comfortable with detailed descriptions of cooking animals, this thread is not for you!

I had a couple of firsts over the holidays: cooking a whole pig and sheep on spits was quite the engineering challenge, especially as the pig was longer than the spit...
And brawn. In order to fit the pig on the spit, we had to remove its head.
No way am I wasting a perfectly good head!
I think brawn's generally called 'head cheese' in the US, which has very unfortunate connotations over here. Let's call it brawn.

Brawn recipe
Approx 4 hrs cooking, plus maybe 3/4 hr finishing, and setting time

On a large square of muslin lay:
a handful of fresh thyme
some rosemary
about 1/2 a tbsp peppercorns
1 tsp coriander seed
mace or a cinnamon quill
Make the muslin into a bag shape and tie it all up.
I went "nah, it'll be fine", but the thing about brawn is it's full of natural gelatine, and everything stuck to everything else. Next time, I'd bag it.

1 whole ( I'm talking eyes, ears, nose...) clean pig's head
2 trotters
4 onions, quartered,
a few bay leaves
maybe a couple of celery sticks
Put everything in a big stainless steel stockpot and just cover with water
Put a lid on and bring to boiling point, but don't actually boil it .
I did this outside: to me, a house shouldn't smell like boiled meat
Skim off scum a few times and leave to simmer for ages, turning the head about halfway through.
When the meat's starting to fall off the bone, pull out the head/trotters.

Clarifying the stock
Not something you have to do, but it's fun, and makes it look heaps better!
This works to clear nearly any cloudy stock. It's basically for looks, but a clearish jelly is pretty important in this dish.
Beat a couple of egg whites till stiff. whisk into the stock pot to form what's called a 'raft': there should be a layer of beaten egg-white completely covering the stock.
Strain the stock through a sieve into a clean pot.
Put the pot back on the stove, but off-center, so it's hotter on one side.
Bring to boiling point, but try not to actually boil. The idea is for the raft to absorb the stock's impurities.

Dig a gap out of the 'raft' at the hot spot with a ladle and cook the stock for 1/2 an hr or so. The egg white will become gross and discoloured, with weird egg threads through the stock. It may not look like much is happening, but it is, I promise.
Dump the spices etc out of the muslin and lay it in a collander. Tip the stock through it. Don't squeeze; let it run through.
Bring it back to the boil and reduce to about four cups or so.

dealing with the cooked meat
My tolerance for meaty stuff is pretty high, but I felt a bit traumatised after this....
Pull the meat, gelatinous goo and skin off the bones and cut up. Apparently, there's a lot of meat on a pig's head!
If the tongue's there, peel, chop and add it to the mix.

Finishing the brawn

Finely cut plenty of flat leaf parsley and stir it into the meat, along with lemon juice and salt and pepper.
Add the reduced stock, check the seasoning.
Line a couple of bread tins, or terrine moulds with plastic wrap (with plenty of spare to fold over), ladle mix in, fold wrap over and weight down. Firewood, bricks....
Leave for a few hours and slice. Serve with bread and pickles

I haven't eatten this in years and never made any (our friends did). Your recipe sounds delicious! We only spitted the occasional party pig or goat...never any left overs.

Head cheese and Souse meat are traditional here in the Appalachian mountains where I live, but I don't know anyone that still eats these.
Obviously there are some though as you can get it in the local grocery stores.


I bought some once, and tried to fry it. fell apart. tasted like bacon.

I guess the idea is you slice off a slab of congealed meat stuff, and smear it on bread?

Seems to be eaten cold in most cultures. If you warm it up, the gelatin goes soft and it's just meat soup.

I Romanian friend told me about preparing meat in gelatin... pigs ears were the main ingredient, if I recall correctly.

I was introduced to head cheese when I lived in South Carolina. As I remember it had peppers in it. The look reminded me of a Christmas fruitcake an I was a bit squeamish about it.

Cris Bessette wrote:
I guess the idea is you slice off a slab of congealed meat stuff, and smear it on bread?

Mmmm. Slab of congealed meat stuff. When you put it like that...
It sets into a firm jelly, so no smearing. It's eaten like a terrine: a slice, served with pickles and stuff.
The scary/ugly factor's why I bothered with the cheffyness of clarifying the stock; and the slices looked really quite pretty!
I'm not likely to have a pig's head lying about the place very often, let alone the fiddling about, but it was one of those food things I've always been curious about.
I'm Leila and I am a food nerd.

Hi Leila   i have made pork brawn for many years, dont worry about a pigs head, just ask your butcher for a pork hock including the trotter
and dont use any fresh ingredients, dried herbs are best, and plenty of ground black pepper and salt
remove the meat from the bones and chop finely, put back in saucepan give it a stir and put in moulds
dont throw anything away
Enjoy        

We can buy pigs heads from our local butcher.  A well made brawn is fabulous, and full of flavour.  Our local supermarket has started stocking both pork and beef brawn in its delicatessen and it is going great guns.  My mother used to make pork brawn because the butchers used to just about give the heads away.  My great uncle used to have chooks so mum used to boil eggs and put in the middle of the mold.  We would have a 13 mm (1/2") slice of brawn with salad in summer.  It was cheap to make, good protein and relatively low fat.  Mum and dad were very good at making a lot of great food with not much money.

I just posted about a similar process that I am familiar with. I had never heard it called "Brawn"

Hog Head Cheese

https://permies.com/t/165826/kitchen/cooking-cows-head#1315392

For the Recipe

https://www.seriouseats.com/the-nasty-bits-breaking-down-a-pigs-head-offal-headcheese-ramen-recipe

I also make it, though I use pork hock or even soup bones to make it as heads are not available. here it's called "Sylte" which literally means Preserved (Syltetøj is jam and syltede agurker are pickles) The Danish version tastes exactly like the British brawn, but it is much more common you can always buy it in the shops.
If you cut the meat up very small and use as little stock as possible you get a very nice bread topping that is spreadable. It also freezes acceptably.

Thought that you might like to see our pork brawn.  There were no heads available so trotters and hocks had to fill in.  Our eggs from our chooks.  Just so fabulous.

Do you keep the skin or discard it.

Imran Ismail wrote:Do you keep the skin or discard it.

Welcome to Permies Imran.  Thank you for your first post.  We discard the skin as it is very fatty and use it in the garden, to give to the cats and chooks as a treat.
Cheers