Veal: Good,
Lamb Chops: Good,
Why not eat young pigs as a dish?
Granted they’re not a large as a calf, but there is not much meat on a lamb either. A mother pig makes a lot more offspring per birth than a lamb too. Why isn’t baby pig a common food?
What, you’ve never had suckling pig? It’s yummy! You just have to shop in the right places, or go to the right restaurant!
Cubans have a way of grilling a young (not fetal, but about 2 - 3 feet long) pig, wrapped in banana leaves and basted frequently with criollo sauce, that is just divine. Cooking takes the better part of a day when done this way, but the wait is worth it.
Clearly you have never been to South Asia.
Haj
Never heard of a hamlet?
I’ve seen little pigs being roasted on a stick over an open fire in Greece, in what seems to be looked at as a “little pig only”-barbeque event and I got the impression this custom is overthere as common as a barbeque in the USA.
Babypigs prepared in different ways are also on the menu in other nations I know of (Not in mine :)…)
Salaam.
Roast suckling pig is a very popular dish in Spain. Not sure that Hamlet is that popular outside of Shakespeare (or any small town) however.
Whole suckling pigs aside, the reason you don’t see cuts of meat from young pigs like you see veal:
It might be a matter of economics. Pigs grow remarkably quickly[sup]1[/sup]. In 10-12 weeks after birth you have a 40 or 50 pound “feeder pig”, and at about 6 months of age they are ready to become pork chops. The beef you buy in a store was probably from a 12 to 18 month old steer, and sometimes cattle are held to an older age than that.
Pigs are much more efficient converters of feed into meat than cattle are. Historically, they had a large advantage in being able to grow fat eating garbage - a small farmer could keep a couple pigs and feed them mostly on waste from other parts of his operation.
Given these factors, there’s not much incentive to slaughter the pig before it’s full grown.
[sup]1[/sup] - In fact, when the movie “Babe” was shot, they used 48 pigs, partially because the ones they started with grew visibly during the filming.
Or so they claim. Notice that the cast and crew all gained a few pounds during the filming.
Grilled suckling pig is also fairly common in Croatia.
Is there much of a taste difference in the meat, between baby and grown pigs? I know that lamb and veal are significantly different from mutton and beef.