Grattons lyonnais
Lyon, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, France
Crisp, salted pieces of pork cooked in their own fat, a Lyonnais snack.
Overview
Grattons lyonnais is crisp, salted pieces of pork cooked in their own fat, a lyonnais snack. Irregular golden-brown pieces with crisp edges and a tender fatty centre. They should smell of clean roasted pork, never stale or oxidised fat. The Codex treats the product as a complete curing or cooking system, not simply a famous name. Raw material, cut or particle size, casing, smoke, fermentation, heat treatment and maturation all contribute to the result. The current legal or quality status is Traditional Lyonnais product : no EU GI. The source tradition and the Curesmith home method are kept separate.
Where it's from
Climate. Lyon and its region.
Altitude. Rhone valley
How to recognise it
Irregular golden-brown pieces with crisp edges and a tender fatty centre. They should smell of clean roasted pork, never stale or oxidised fat. A raw or grey centre, split filling, sourness, greasy purge or broken refrigeration is unacceptable.
- Shape and size
- Small crisp pieces
- Lean colour
- Cooked pork
- Fat and marbling
- Rendered, crisp
- Casing
- None
- Surface bloom
- None
Origins and history
Lyonnais pork scratchings, pieces of pork, sometimes duck or goose, cooked slowly in their own fat until tender and crisp, then drained and salted. Eaten as a snack with a glass of wine, they are a staple of the Lyon bouchon and the charcuterie counter, a delicious use of the fattier cuts. Lyon's pork butchers used rendering to obtain cooking fat while turning the remaining browned meat and connective tissue into a valuable snack. The result became part of the city's mâchon and bouchon culture. Legends and commercial origin stories are identified as such rather than used as proof of the current specification.
Name. Grattons, the crisp bits; Lyonnais, of Lyon.
- Production today
- Lyonnais charcutiers.
- Protection
- Not EU-protected as a general name.
- Tradition vs modern
- Cooked slowly in fat.
- Seasonality
- Year-round.
Serving and cultural significance
Eaten as a snack or aperitif with wine. Keep the product classified as cooked charcuterie rather than dry cured meat. No curing salt is used. it shows how place, material and process create identity. The reader can compare authenticity, legal status and practical home safety without confusing them. Serve freshly crisped as an aperitif with wine, and refrigerate leftovers promptly because rendered fat stales quickly.
Recipe and cure
This is not a finished recipe. It is a window into how this meat is traditionally cured. Before you follow any process, please run it through one of our curing calculators, so the salt, cure and timings are right and safe for your own batch.
Make this — the measured Curesmith version →The cure below is the traditional reference. “Make this” opens the measured Curesmith home recipe, scaled to your batch.
Traditional or protected production
Grattons lyonnais are small pieces of fatty pork cooked slowly in their own fat until rendered, browned and crisp at the edges. They are drained, salted and eaten as a bouchon or aperitif snack.
- Meat
- pork
- Salt (%)
- 1.8
- Curing salt
- None; slowly cooked in fat
- Fermented
- No
- Smoked
- No
- Target aW or weight loss
- cooked, not dried
- Temperature (°C)
- cooked through to a safe core temperature
- Humidity (%)
- n/a
- Maturation
- cooked; eaten as a snack
- Basis
- per 1000 g green meat
- Style
- Traditional, cooked
Ingredients
- fatty pork pieces (base)100% · 1000 g/kg
- sea salt1.5% · 15 g/kg
Method
- Cut fatty pork into pieces.
- Cook slowly in its own fat until tender and crisp.
- Drain and salt.
- Eat warm or cold.
Notes
- This is a cooked product. It must be cooked through before eating. Where a cure is used it is Cure #1 (nitrite), suited to the shorter, cooked process rather than long drying.
In the Codex
What this product teaches, and where to read more.
Temple. Pillar, Meat Quality