Rillettes

The rillette , more commonly called the rillettes , is a Pâté of streaked aspect.

It is about meat (more usually of Porc) overcooked in fat, crushed with the hand or the machine, with salt, pepper, aromatics, spices and possibly of the wine and other alcohols, condiments and flavors.

Practices and easily tartinables, they are often consumed in sandwich. They are sold out of pot with a fine layer of grease on the surface, or to the cut in pork-butchery.

Most current are the Rillettes of pig, although there exist also Rillettes of duck, Rillettes of rabbit, Rillettes of goose, rillettes of chicken and even of game the Rillettes or fish with the Rillettes of salmon, the Rillettes of tuna or the Rillettes of trout.

Born at the 15th century in Indre-et-Loire (Rabelais speaks about the “brown jam of pig” ), it is with the Mans in the the Sarthe that the rillettes took a rise while there being produced industrially as from the 19th century. The distinction between rillettes of Turns and rillettes of Mans held in the preparation: the mancelles ones were generally fattier than the tourangelles ones where the meat is chopped.

Nutritivement, the rillettes bring mainly fat and proteins, they must thus form part of a balanced food.

Each year, the contest of the best Sarthe-native rillettes proceeds in March with Mamers, the Sarthe. In 2007 in fact the Gorronaises rillettes gained the gold medal.

Alternatives

• Rillettes comtoises: manufactured with slightly fume meats.

• Crickets: prepared starting from cubes of pigmeat removed rind (ornaments of throat, breakdown and chest) and cooked fats with soft fire.
• Let us scrape: composed of an appreciably equal mixture of hard fats in cubes and pieces of thin pig (shoulder, skirts), possibly treated in salting. Then, the mixture cooked in an open container before being drained.
• Let us sinter: specialities of South-west, composed of solid fragments resulting from the cast iron of the fats (bardière, breakdown, ratis) as well as heads from pig, kidneys and heart cooked in the lard.
• Chichons, Will lubricate: specialities of South-west (Pays Basque, Moors and Béarn), where fat and thin of pig, goose or duck chopped cooks in grease being used to cook the crystallized one. The addition of garlic is frequent.
• Creton, rillette of Quebec