1,446 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

Potted meat (rillettes)

Potted meat (rillettes) is cooked long and slow in fat. Rillettes can be of pork or duck. Here is the pork version.

430K 2× 3.9/5 based on 42 reviews

Last modified on: October 3^rd 2019

Keywords for this recipe:

For 1 kg 800 g, you will need:

1 1 kg belly (streaky) bacon (unsalted)
2 500 g ham
3 200 g lard
4 18 g coarse salt
5 4 g pepper
6 50 g lard
Total weight: 1,772 grams

Change these quantities to make:

600 g 900 g 1 kg 800 g 3 kg 600 g 5 kg 400 g

Change measures:

Metric

Metric weight Metric volumes

Times for this recipe

Preparation: 33 min.

Cooking: 6 hours 13 min.

All in all: 6 hours 46 min.

When should you start or finish this recipe?

If you start now, at , you will finish around : ?.Change start time

To finish around 7pm, you'll need to have started before: .Change end time

Step by step recipe

Stage 1 - 10 min.

Remove the rind and any hard parts of 1 kg belly (streaky) bacon (unsalted), cut into pieces.

Stage 2 - 5 min.

Cut 500 g ham into pieces.

Stage 3 - 3 min.

Melt 50 g lard in a large pan over high heat.

Stage 4 - 10 min.

Add the pieces of pork, and leave to colour a few minutes.

Stage 5 - 1 min.

Turn the heat down to minimum and add the pieces of ham and 200 g lard.

Stage 6 - 1 min.

Add 18 g coarse salt and 4 g pepper.

Note that the good ratio is 12 grams of salt + 3 grams of pepper per kilo of meat.

If you use a different weight of meat, you can calculate a new seasoning with this little calculator:

Stage 7 - 6 hours

Cover the pan and leave on very low heat for 6 hours.

Stage 8

After 6 hours, the meat will be reduced to a conserve.

Stage 9 - 3 min.

With a skimmer or wooden spoon, mix the lot. The meat will fall apart into small shreds and form rillettes.

Stage 10 - 3 min.

Mix until reaching desired consistency: not too much if (like me) you prefer to have bigger pieces in your rillettes, more if you prefer the rillettes smoother.

Stage 11 - 10 min.

Put rillettes into jars, removing meat with a skimmer, and cover the top with a little lard.

Leave to cool, then cover, then refrigerate overnight or longer.

Share with friends with a good bread, and pickles or mushrooms in vinegar.

The acid taste of pickles goes well the mildness of the rillettes, and if you also have a good red wine, then you will be kings of all the world...

Remarks

If you like to vary proportions, please try to respect: Half as much ham as fat pork (belly), 12 g salt + 3 g pepper per kilogram meat.

For the duck version, replace lard with duck fat, and ham with duck breasts. It's a very very good idea to use the fat from cooking a foie gras for this.

And to drink?

A good red wine, with plenty of tannins.

Source: Home made.

Nutritional information

Whole recipe
Energetic value	Proteins	Carbohydrates	Fats
9,335 Kcal or 39,084 Kj	193 gr	15 gr	945 gr
467 %	74 %	1 %	143 %

Per 100 g
Energetic value	Proteins	Carbohydrates	Fats
527 Kcal or 2,206 Kj	11 gr	1 gr	53 gr
26 %	4 %	<1 %	8 %

% are calculated relative to a Recommended Dietary Intake or RDI of 2000 k-calories or 8400 k-joules by day for a woman (change to a man).

How much will it cost?

For 1 kg 800 g : 11.71 €

Change currency:

Note: Be careful, these prices are only an estimate, you can consult the table of prices by ingredients used for this estimate.

Some other recipes using this recipe

Rillettes stuffed mushrooms

In this recipe, the mushroom caps are first sautéed, then filled with fried onions and a spoonful of rillettes, then baked in the oven. Here they are served with a quick pickle made from brunoise radishes with tarragon.
35K3.8 58 min.

Fried rillettes

Rilletes formed into thin cakes and fried. This allows the fat to drain off during cooking and leaves crunchy and tasty discs of lean meat which can be served with mashed potato (purée).
119K4.9 29 min.

This recipe uses (among others)

Other recipes you may also like

Millefeuille

Millefeuille is one of the best pastries available, if it is well made, i.e.: 2 layers of light vanilla cream between 3 layers of fine crispy (possibly caramelized) puff pastry.
October 13^th 2010325K4.6 1 hour 42 min.

Caramelised apple pie

Apple pie made with caramelised apples.
September 11^th 2018252K4.3 1 hour 55 min.

Crème brulée

Crème brûlée (burned cream) is quite easy to prepare: it's a simple egg-cream dessert. The only difficulty is in making the delicious crunchy caramel layer on top. The perfect crème brulée (for me) is a cold and soft cream, with on top a nice hot caramel crust. This is a completely new version...
December 31^th 20111.7M 74.3 4 hours 38 min.

Brioche dough

It's a soft and rich dough, with butter and eggs which give a smooth and incredibly tasty brioche. This is the basic recipe for brioche dough, used for all other brioche-based recipes on the site.
September 16^th 2020515K 44.2 14 hours 27 min.

Vanilla sugar

Almost essential in patisserie, you can find it in expensive little sachets of about 10g. It's necessary to distinguish between the vanilla sugar which really contains vanilla, and vanillin sugar, purely chemical which has never seen a vanilla pod. Here is how to quickly make a whole jar full of...
August 12^th 2018410K 15 26 min.

News list of cooking-ez.com

Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.

The 2 comments already posted on this recipe

1) Yes, streaky bacon is 100% pork meat.
2) No because real pork is not fat enough, and there is ham.
3) Yes but instead of ham only, you should keep streaky bacon.
Posted by jh december 12^th 2011 at 14:49 n° 2
In this recipe you do not say how much pork to use. You say 1kg of streaky bacon - is that the pork you mean? Can you not use real pork untreated and unsmoked? And if you use duck do you just substitute a kilo of duck meat? Thanks.
Posted by Lori december 11^th 2011 at 19:51 n° 1

Follow this recipe

If you are interested in this recipe, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the recipe is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.