Pork (or wild boar) pâté: my ultimate, no-frills recipe
A deliberately minimalist pâté — meat, fat, a little rind, salt, pepper, pink peppercorns — built to showcase the taste of the meat rather than hide cheap cuts. From mincing to jar sterilisation, every step and every safety point, for a big homemade batch.
📋 At a glance
| Yield | ≈ 30 jars of 350 g (for 10.5 kg) |
| Hands-on time | ~ half a day for 10 kg (cutting, mincing, filling) |
| Rest | 24 h chilled before filling the jars |
| Sterilisation | 3 h at 100 °C, then 24 h cooling in the water |
| Before tasting | 10 days minimum |
| Key gear | mincer, 350 g jars, large pot, powerful burner |
There are two schools of pâté. The one that sees the terrine as an elegant way to use up fat and cheap cuts, and the one that treats pâté as a dish in its own right, where the meat plays the lead. This article belongs firmly to the second. No ready-made “pâté seasoning” here — those powders that give every preparation the same vague taste of cheap cat food. Simplicity, quality ingredients, and a subtle balance between very few spices.
📌 Before you start
Making pâté is long and a little technical. Honestly, making 2 or 3 kg isn’t worth it — and since it’s made to be kept, you might as well make the effort count. Once you’ve got the recipe down, go for big batches: 10 to 12 kg at a time is the right rhythm.
The philosophy: the meat, and a single spice
Most traditional recipes hover around 35-40 % meat. Here we flip the logic: the meat dominates, almost three times more than in a classic terrine. Everything else follows from that.
| Element | Share | Example for 10 kg of base |
|---|---|---|
| Meat (pork and/or wild boar) | 50 to 60 % of the base | 5.5 kg |
| Fat (pork jowl or belly) | 40 to 50 % of the base | 4.5 kg |
| Rind | + 5 % on top of the base | 0.5 kg |
| Total preparation | ≈ 10.5 kg |
The maths is deliberately simple: meat + fat = 100 % of the base (adjust to what you have, boar or pork), then add the rind at 5 % of that base. Its only job: bring the collagen that sets the jelly. A little is enough — too much, and the pâté turns rubbery.
And the fat isn’t there by default: even with a very meaty recipe, you need a meaningful share for richness, texture and flavour. We’re after balance, not lean, dry meat.
Pork, boar, or both? In the boar version, the game should not exceed 40 % of the meat — 60 % for the truly devoted, but no more: beyond that, the pâté turns too strong. Always keep a share of pork meat and pork fat, otherwise the gamey taste takes over and throws off the harmony. The boar gives the perfume, the pork tempers it and brings the richness.
✦ Variation — with liver
You can enrich the pâté with liver, boar or pork. I prefer wild boar liver: quality pork is hard to find (or expensive), whereas boar, a wild animal, is in far better health than farmed pork — and it has the huge advantage of being free when you hunt it yourself. Liver has a powerful taste: start modest (around 10 % of the meat weight, as a substitution) then adjust to taste. Insist on it being very fresh — liver spoils quickly.
Seasoning, pared back to the essentials
| Seasoning | Rate | For 10.5 kg |
|---|---|---|
| Salt | 18 g/kg | ≈ 189 g |
| Black pepper (ground fresh) | 3 g/kg | ≈ 32 g |
| Pink peppercorns | 2 g/kg | ≈ 21 g |
Salt. You often read 23 g/kg, but I find the result too salty — those recipes are usually fattier, which probably explains it. Since we’re after a very meaty pâté, 18 g/kg is plenty.
📌 The role of salt, no misunderstanding
In a sterilised preserve, what ensures keeping is the heat treatment and the vacuum — not the salt (unlike drying or curing). Dropping the salt below 23 g/kg is therefore entirely safe for storage: it’s purely a matter of taste.
📌 A colour, not a flaw
Without curing salt (nitrite), the pâté comes out grey-brown, not pink. In France — especially the South-West — that’s the colour of traditional pâté (and of most industrial ones too); it’ll seem obvious to many. For readers used to the pink of industrial pâté, though: it’s normal, intended, and rather a good sign.
Black pepper is the other must-have, both for taste and for that familiar “pâté” note. It lifts things just enough while staying neutral: seasoned this way, the pâté becomes a base that anyone can flavour to their liking (thyme, bay, armagnac, allspice, Espelette pepper…).
Pink peppercorns, finally, are my signature touch. No need for much: 24 g for 12 kg is enough, they’re that aromatic.
✦ Anecdote
The pink peppercorn isn’t a pepper at all: it’s the berry of a shrub, the Schinus, with no botanical link to the pepper plant. It’s often paired with pepper for its resinous, faintly sweet note — but in large amounts it can be hard to digest, hence the light hand. And just as well: the rates given above are plenty, taste-wise, to keep a lovely harmony on the palate. No need to pile it on.
🧮 Tool — quantities & jars
| Meat | — |
|---|---|
| Fat | — |
| Rind (+5 %) | — |
| Salt (18 g/kg) | — |
| Pepper (3 g/kg) | — |
| Pink peppercorns (2 g/kg) | — |
| Total pâté | — |
| 350 g jars | — |
Requirements & equipment
Before you start, make sure you have everything — a batch begun half-equipped quickly turns into a headache.
✔ The gear
- A stainless-steel hand mincer with a coarse (Toulouse-sausage) plate.
- One large container to mix the whole preparation.
- A mortar for the spices.
- 350 g jars (Le Parfait type), with new rubber seals.
- A large pot: tall enough to submerge every jar + 3-4 cm of water on top.
- A powerful heat source matched to the pot — an outdoor gas burner on a tripod is often needed to come up to temperature fast.
- Cloths (to wedge the jars), a timer, and ideally a cool room.
Why a stainless-steel hand mincer? For its durability, and because it won’t contaminate the food the way some plastics or aluminium can. For personal-scale use, an electric model isn’t really justified.
📌 An honest aside
On a 10 kg batch, the hand mincer is a workout. If your wrists cry for mercy, an electric mincer is a perfectly valid option — what matters is elsewhere: the quality of the meat and respecting the cold chain.
Cutting and mincing
Cut the meat, the fat and the rind into pieces or strips fine enough to feed the mincer. Then mince coarsely, with the Toulouse-sausage plate: we want a non-uniform texture that preserves the character of the meats rather than a smooth paste.
⚠ Cold chain
The meat, minced or not, should spend as little time as possible out of the fridge. Don’t hesitate to cut and mince in several goes, chilling between them. A cool, even air-conditioned room is ideal for working calmly.
✦ Anecdote
In the Middle Ages, pâtés and charcuterie were mostly prepared from late November, for two reasons: to take advantage of the late-autumn and winter cold, with no modern cold room; and to eat fresh meat just as the stores of grain and pulses began to run low.
Seasoning the preparation
In the mortar, pound the coarse salt, the pepper (whole) and the pink peppercorns until you get a fine powder. Work it into the minced meat.
Ideally, gather the whole preparation in a single large container so you can mix it evenly. If the volume forces you to use several containers, then split the proportions from the start (meat, fat, rind, spices) in each one: that way you avoid any imbalance in the recipe from one container to the next.
The rest: 24 hours chilled
Let the preparation rest 24 h in the fridge, in its container. That pause isn’t idle: the salt draws out the meat’s juices, which are then reabsorbed, and the salt evens out through the whole mass. That’s what gives the pâté its cohesion and roundness.
Filling the jars
I go for 350 g jars: the sweet spot for a pâté to share at drinks with friends or to give away, and the sterilisation that follows is easier to control with small volumes. For 10 to 12 kg, it’s also the right balance between jar size and jar count.
A few rules to follow:
- Don’t overfill: the jars have a fill line you shouldn’t go past.
- Keep the rim clean and smooth: don’t knock it, don’t scratch it — the slightest nick can ruin the seal.
✦ Anecdote (and a friendly rant)
Technically, I should call this a verrine: a terrine is cooked in an earthenware pot (terre = earth), a pâté in pastry (pâte = dough — yes, “pâté en croûte” is a pleonasm)… and mine sits in glass. But I’ve always said “pâté”, so “pâté” it stays as long as I please. It’s my blog, I make the rules.
Sterilisation
This is the trickiest step, and the most important for your safety. We don’t cut corners.
⚠ Safety — read before heating
A jarred pâté is a low-acid meat preserve: the risk is botulism. Let’s be clear: sterilising at 100 °C (212 °F) does not destroy the spores of Clostridium botulinum (only a pressure canner at 116-121 °C guarantees that, which is what professional rules require). The home method below is the one recommended by the jar maker; it works provided you:
- work cleanly and respect the cold chain;
- come up to temperature fast (to limit bacterial growth);
- keep the jars fully submerged the whole time;
- check the vacuum and the seal after cooling (see below).
At the slightest doubt, don’t taste — bin it: a jar that’s bulging, leaking, hisses oddly on opening or smells off goes in the trash. Better to lose a jar than take a risk.
Jar size. The 3 h applies to 350 g jars; a larger format needs more time. Don’t take any risk here: follow the maker’s recommendations (leparfait.com).
Altitude. At altitude, water boils below 100 °C (roughly −1 °C every 300 m), so sterilisation loses effectiveness and must be extended. Above about 1000 m, boiling water is no longer enough to make a meat preserve safe — switch to a pressure canner. Health authorities recommend pressure canning for any low-acid meat preserve in any case.
References: Le Parfait (jar processing times) · altitude & canning — healthycanning.com.
Step by step:
- Place the jars at the bottom of a large pot. If it’s tall enough you can stack them — slipping a cloth between each layer so they don’t knock together while cooking.
- Cover with 3 to 4 cm of cold water: every jar fully submerged, with margin.
- Cover the pot and come up to temperature as fast as possible (hence the powerful burner). The lid limits heat and water loss; the jars must stay submerged from start to finish.
- At a boil, reduce to medium heat: keep a steady boil, without a rolling boil (which would overflow and rattle the jars needlessly). Now start a 3 h timer.
- 3 h at 100 °C is the time recommended by the jar maker — not a number pulled from a hat. When in doubt, extend it a little: better too much than too little here.
- Turn off the heat and let the jars cool for 24 h in the water.
🧮 Tool — sterilisation time by altitude (indicative)
| Estimated boiling point | — |
|---|---|
| Adjusted indicative time | — |
Purely indicative (a simplified thermal-equivalence model): when in doubt, extend it, and rely on the official sources above. The “base time” is the one the maker recommends for your jar size (180 min for 350 g).
Checking, then patience
Once the jars have cooled, time to check — the step you never skip.
- Did the vacuum form? On jars with a rubber seal and a glass lid (Le Parfait type, the ones I use), a properly sealed jar won’t open without first pulling the seal’s tab. If the lid lifts on its own, the vacuum didn’t form.
- Is there pot water inside the jar? It can happen, and it’s the sign of a faulty seal. In that case, bin the contents: don’t eat them.
Inside, you’ll normally see two layers: a watery layer at the bottom, topped by a fatty layer. Depending on the residual temperature and the room’s, they may still be liquid or already set — it’s the rind that sets the watery layer into jelly.
Store the jars somewhere cool and dry, and wait at least 10 days before tasting. For a clean turn-out, with the jelly well set, give the jar 24 h in the fridge before serving.
✦ Make it yours — seasoning ideas
This pâté is a base: it’s yours to personalise. A few leads to test on a small part of the batch before committing:
- Herbs: thyme, bay, rosemary, a touch of sage.
- Spices: allspice, juniper, nutmeg, Espelette pepper.
- Spirits: a dash of armagnac, cognac or port into the mass.
- Garnishes: pistachios, hazelnuts, dried figs, orange zest.
Note your trials (and their doses): that’s how you end up with your recipe.
And there you have it: a plain, meaty base, ready to enjoy as is… or to become the starting point for your own variations. That’s the whole appeal of a pâté that doesn’t try to hide the meat: it still has something to say.