Midwestern Regional Cookery: Pork

Because corn is excellent feed for pigs, a good proportion of the nation’s hogs are raised and butchered in the region. Pork is frequently the meat of choice, and this “other white meat” receives much attention in the culinary culture. It is significant that large numbers of people from Germany, Scandinavia, and eastern Europe—all places where pork is an important meat—settled the area. Traditionally, pigs were slaughtered in winter, and headcheese, country ham, bacon, and many kinds of sausage are prepared in kitchens, sheds, and butcher shops across the region. Goetta, a specialty of the greater Cincinnati region, is a mixture of ground pork (and sometimes beef) scraps, steel-cut oats, and seasonings that is cooked, molded, cooled, and then sliced and fried. Like Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple, which it resembles, goetta is German American in origin. Pork roast is the frequent centerpiece of Sunday dinners, with applesauce its common side dish. Whole pigs are spit roasted at community and extended-family events in rural and semirural areas throughout much of the region. For a fee, professionals will come to an event and cook a pig. Some pig chefs split a fuel-oil tank in two, install a spit, and mount it on wheels, making an enclosed roaster that can be towed from one pig roast to the next.