I freely admit I have not had the pleasure (yet) of eating feral hog. But I love to cook and there's a cooking method that has not been discussed yet: sous vide.
French for 'under vacuum,' sous vide involves vacuum-sealing meat in a plastic bag and immersing it in a water tub. The sous vide unit will circulate water at a precise temperature set by the user. Being from Alaska, I eat a lot of fish and game, although I admit most game is from others because I'm usually fly fishing or getting salmon in my net.
Salmon and halibut are tremendous if they aren't over-cooked but they unfortunately frequently are. Same with moose, caribou, and sheep. Yes, you can grind up game and put them in chili. Or you can put prime cuts in a sous vide.
The temperature for a sous vide is generally lower than roasting or grilling because the energy transfer from liquid to food is much more efficient than air to food. Further, keeping the meat at a precise temperature ensures that the meat does not go above that temperature. Finally, you do not have to get the meat to 165 degrees because food is frequently cooked far longer in a sous vide. Steaks, for example, are cooked at 130 degrees for an hour. The FDA guidelines for cooking aim to eliminate 99+% of bacteria. If a piece of meat gets to 165 degrees for even a couple of seconds, that will eliminate 99+% of the bacteria. It also makes meat dry and inedible. Keeping that same cut of meat at 130 degrees for an hour will achieve the same sanitation goals but will not dry out the meat (pork and chicken are cooked about 140-145 degrees for taste and texture).
Fish is generally kept at a lower temperature (around 123 degrees) because of the effect on cooking but also because the pieces tend to be thinner. This is important for wild caught salmon because of diphyillobothrium latum, a tapeworm found in cold-water fish. Cooking fish at this temperature for about 45 minutes is enough to kill any parasites found in the salmon. Discovering that you have a fish tapeworm from eating salmon that has not been sufficiently cooked is .... disconcerting. At least, that's what I hear. A friend told me.
Old game animals of any type can get tough and stringy. As the animals get older, they get bigger, which is why larger animals are not as favored for eating. This also happens with halibut. If fishing for halibut, the best eating are around 80 pounds. Much over 100 and the halibut fillets get tough. In all cases, using the sous vide with the lower temperatures has made a huge difference. Particularly for halibut, I'll throw in butter in the plastic bag with the other seasonings prior to sealing. Makes a real difference. For older, tougher game, I will add a bit of lard to the bag, maybe 1-2 teaspoons. After about an hour at 132 degrees, that moose or caribou or sheep will still be more firm than milk-fed veal but it is not tough and stringy and dry.
I keep trying to make it down to TX to hunt some hogs, in part because I want a backstrap that I can season and put in the sous vide and see how it compares to pork loin. If anybody has used a sous vide on hog, I'd be interested in their impressions and see how it compares to game I've cooked in mine. I love my sous vide to the point my daughter jokes that if you stand still long enough in my kitchen, I'll have you sealed in a plastic bag and in the water tub.
