I am very inspired by Essex Farm, in New York state. Every week they send out a note from the farm and one photo. The first week of January this year they sent out a note that included a scrapple recipe. I am making it now for the second time. I only use a half pig head, as opposed to he four whole heads she calls for, so the recipe can scale as you like. I also don’t have a grinder, so I dice the meat instead. Here is a direct quote from Kristen Kimball’s 2020 Week #1 notes from the farm. Subscribe on the Essex Farm website to learn more about their farm, or read Kristen Kimball’s two memoirs about starting the farm: “The Dirty Life” and more recently, “Good Husbandry.”
“Begin with four skinned pigs’ heads. This alone is a noble and dramatic way to start a year. It makes me happy to make delicious use of every bit of a pig, and there is something about a head that insists on acknowledging where it came from, which I think is a healthy thing to reflect on. Remove the eyeballs (interesting dog treats) and ears (wax is bitter) and quarter the heads with a bandsaw. Soak them in salted water for several hours, drain and rinse. Next, add to your heads four pig hearts, four pig tongues, eight hocks, a large hunk of liver, and any pork scraps that have not yet found another purpose. Cover with water and simmer until you can easily separate the meat from the bones. Reserve the broth, and grind the boned meat fine. Add the meat back to the broth, weigh it, return to a boil, and stir in a 4:1 mix of cornmeal:buckwheat flour at a rate of 7 parts meat + broth to 1 part grain by weight. Watch for lumps. Simmer, stirring constantly for 20 minutes or until the mixture begins to pull from the sides of the pan, as in polenta. Add salt, pepper, sage, marjoram, bay leaf, and onion powder, and stir, and taste, and correct seasonings. Then pour into a high sided pan to cool into gorgeous gelatinous sliceable slabs. That is scrapple. To prepare it, cut into slices, and fry in a little lard until it is crisp on the first side, then flip and repeat on the other. I like it best with maple syrup on top and an egg on the side.”
