Rillettes de Tours

Appearance & taste

Rillettes de Tours are an even light golden yellow to golden brown. They are fibrous and contain clearly visible, thick meat fibres 2 cm long or more as well as pieces of meat. Because the defatted product has at most 68 % moisture, the texture is dry. They taste of roast meat. The fat content is at most 42 %, the sugar content below 0.5 %.

They are sold in small pots, terrines, preserving jars or on bread. In pots and terrines they may be covered with a layer of pork fat so that they keep longer.

Production

Meat from pigs of registered breeds is used; where the animals come from is not specified. The pigs are at least 172 days old at slaughter, and the warm carcass weighs at least 85 kg. Ham and loin (only the rack and centre cut) make up at least 25 % of the lean meat; the rest comes from the shoulder, neck and belly. At least 75 % of the meat is delivered fresh; the producer may freeze meat for at most one month, and buying frozen meat is prohibited.

The meat is cut into cubes with sides of at least 6 cm and slow-cooked with pork fat for a long time in a wide, open pan. Cooking salt is added, not curing salt, and optionally pepper, the colouring E150a or a flavouring. It may be seasoned with white wine, made only from the Chenin grape variety, or with brandy.

Cooking traditionally has three phases: first the meat is browned for 15 minutes to an hour at 95 to 115 °C, then cooked for five and a half to twelve hours at 65 to 95 °C, and finally heated again for 10 to 20 minutes at 95 to 115 °C. Browning brings the taste of roast meat. The pieces fall apart through cooking alone and are not stirred or pulled apart, so long fibres remain. The open pan with its large surface and the burst of heat at the end make a lot of liquid evaporate. According to the specification, this means the rillettes need no preservatives. Preparation, browning, slow cooking, resting and final cooking take place in the area of origin.

Origin & history

The area, with Tours at its centre, roughly corresponds to the old province of Touraine. Outside it a different rillettes recipe is used; the forest of Bercé between the departments of Sarthe and Indre-et-Loire forms a natural boundary. The climate is mild but fairly damp. According to the specification, air-dried meat products like those of southern France therefore could not develop, and meat was preserved by slow cooking. The area’s important winegrowing has also influenced the seasoning.

Farmers in the Touraine were already making rillettes in the Middle Ages. At the beginning of the 19th century butchers took over the farmhouse recipe and passed it down from generation to generation. Instead of meat scraps they used proper pieces of meat, and open cooking lowered the share of fat and raised that of meat. Balzac, who came from the Touraine, praised rillettes in 1835 in his novel “Le Lys dans la Vallée”; the preparation is mentioned in specialist books only in 1865. The dry texture made them keep well enough to be sold outside the Touraine too. To this day the producers are mostly craft businesses that pass their recipe on to their apprentices.