[ RadSafe ] Austrian Versus Texas Wild Boar Meat

[franz.schoenhofer at chello.at]

Doug et al.,

To my knowledge there are no feral pigs in Europe, at least not in Middle Europe. Since according to Wikipedia wild boars were domesticated about 9000 years ago, there most be quite a difference between these two branches of pigs. And, believe me, there is! Look at pictures of both of them, look at pictures of differernt races of "sus scrofa domistica" and their descriptions. For gourmets: You can find on google even extensive descriptions of their culinary characteristics. The flesh is according to gourmets extremely different even in the genus "domesticus". The real wild boars have a completely different taste, but obviously depending on the part of the animal you use, how you cook it, which herbs you use etc. Well, thats to be treated in the science of cooking! For instance you could not make a Wiener Schnitzel from wild boar, it would result in a completely different taste. 

Also in Austria farmers do not like wild  boars, because they think that the farmers plant corn and other green plants for their pleasure. Wild boars have multiplied some time ago, when there was a ban on shooting them because of the contamination. Now the contamination seems to be higher and probably because of the horror news nobody wants to buy the meat....... I have not looked actively for this meat, but have not seen any on the market place. It used to be very expensive anyway. Last autumn I was in France and in Southern  France I had a wonderful "pate de sanglier" (Wild Boar Pate) and when I noted to the host "Un sanglier moins!", (one wild boar less) he laughed heartly.