Rillettes

Rillettes (also potted meat, rillette) are meat simmered for hours in fat until it falls apart into fibres, then packed into pots under a layer of fat. The best known is Rillettes de Tours: a PGI since 2013, made from pork cut into pieces of at least 6 × 6 cm and cooked for 5.5–12 hours in pork fat in an open pot.

Balzac mentioned rillettes in «Le Lys dans la vallée» back in 1835, and the Tours specification quotes Rabelais too. In Touraine they were made on farms from the Middle Ages, whenever a pig was slaughtered, and in the 19th century craftsmen took the farmhouse recipe into their shops.

For Tours rillettes the pig or sow must be slaughtered at no less than 172 days, with a carcass of at least 85 kg. Neck, shoulder, belly and at least 25 % ham or loin go in, plus hard fat and leaf fat. Only the fat may be minced, never the meat. Salt is compulsory and added water is forbidden.

Ham and loin are cut into pieces of at least 6 × 6 cm. First they are browned at 95–115 °C for 15 minutes to an hour, until the fat melts. Then comes slow cooking without a lid at 65–95 °C: short, 5.5–7 hours, means hotter, longer means cooler, up to 12 hours. The meat is stirred but not torn. At the end comes the «coup de feu», 10–20 minutes at 95–115 °C; excess fat is removed until the fibres surface, and the rillettes go into pots while still above 65 °C. The kettle is round, shallower than it is wide, in cast iron or stainless steel.

Finished Tours rillettes range from golden blond to golden brown, with thick fibres over 2 cm long, a dryish texture and a smell of roast pork.

Tours rillettes differ from those of Le Mans in area too: the Sarthe canton, which makes rillettes du Mans, is excluded. The defatted product may hold up to 68 % moisture, against 70 % for Label Rouge «Rillettes pur porc» and 72 % for ordinary rillettes. Pâté differs in structure: it is minced, while rillettes show their fibres. Confit, in turn, sits in whole pieces on the bone.

On the label look for «Rillettes de Tours» with the PGI mark. They are sold in a pot, a terrine, a sterilised glass jar or as a loaf cut to order, sometimes topped with a layer of lard.

Keep chilled Tours rillettes at 0–4 °C; the maker sets the use-by date, but no later than 29 days. A sterilised jar has a best-before date and lives in the cupboard. Per 100 g, according to Ciqual 2025, they give 522 kcal and 50 g fat. The wider family is on Pâtés, rillettes, foie gras and confit, and the raw material on pig.

Why this matters to you: fibres you can see in the jar are the mark of proper rillettes; under the Tours rules the meat is never minced.