Meat Church In Texas

Collards and Red Beans, Too

Photo by Sneaky Head on Unsplash

Collards

There’s nothing as good as red beans
When eaten with some collard greens.
Cook cornbread until it
Comes out of a skillet.
Unless you had rather sardines.

There is a part of a hog called a ham hock. People cook them with red beans and collards. I use a little bacon fat, but I learned not to use neckbones — too many little bones to take out when everything’s cooked.

I’ve seen 15 or twenty hog’s heads lined up for sale in the supermarket that caters to those who celebrate Christmas that way. There is an old Boar’s Head Festival from medieval England, during which the head was served on a platter at a feast to symbolize the triumph of good over evil. Celebrants in Texas are not medieval, just hungry.

In Texas, people make six to eight dozen tamales with a pig head. They go hog wild in Texas over wild hogs. One estimate was 2.6 million feral hogs here. Even with the domestic pigs sold in civilized stores, one must cook pork well. When the meat is as hot as 170 degrees, all parasites are (hopefully) gone.

The Texas woods are cathedrals of meat, although loaves and fishes are available elsewhere.

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