Pork steaks sound a little like an oxymoron: steaks are cuts of meat you cook quickly and serve medium rare, and pork – is pork. It has to be cooked through. Sausages appear occasionally in TV adverts selling not barbecue fuel but A&E facilities – undercook them and you die. If I say ‘pink pork’, everybody will go: PINK PORK???? Whatever next: chicken tartare maybe?
It all comes from the worry of trichinosis and salmonella. But both are very low risk these days in UK due to improved standards of hygiene; in fact Trichinosis is a vanishingly rare disease, with fewer than a dozen cases a year in the US. On top of that, bacteria and parasites alike are killed in temperature as low as 55C/130F. And although I admit rare chicken is simply not tasty, it is time indeed that the old habit of incinerating pork died easier.
It is very much like the sell-by dates area: better-safe-than-sorry health authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have been overstating the recommended cooking temperatures and the risks. Pork steaks, chops or bigger cuts can safely be served pinkish in the middle – even I’m not propagating porc bleu – and be all the better for it. Similarly to lamb and beef, it can be cooked slow and forever and come out tasting wonderful – or cooked not very long at all, ditto.
This recipe is for shoulder steaks, my favourite cut. Loin is too lean, flavourless and boring; it’s best fit to be turned into lonzino; sliced thinly and savoured on a charcuterie platter. Shoulder has fatty bits, so for those who spend their lives cutting off fat, it’s a bit of a challenge – but worth all the knife manoeuvres. Shoulder steaks are also unruly – you need to tie them round with kitchen string and they’ll still buckle on the griddle. Hard to cook, controversial and a brush with death – who says pork is not exciting?