This might be a very silly question, but I'm sort a pork newbie.
Anyway, I recently went to the butchers and bought a big slab of pork belly, to make crackling.
Immediately, I noticed it had a very "farm-y" smell. I rinsed the pork belly but the smell was still there, mostly in the skin. I prepared it by steam cooking it in the oven for about three or four hours. But the smell made it impossible to eat, as the barn yard stench permeated the entire pork belly. It was nothing like what I'm used to when eating pork belly in a restaurant for example.
My question then is: Did I screw something up in the preparation, or did I get a bad piece of meat or what happened?
Best Answer
just seen this, I know it's a few years on but better late than never. The smell is probably testosterone because the pig was male over 60 kilos and had not been castrated.