After I had my first batch of rillettes in the fridge, I wondered how to eat them besides spooning them directly into my mouth. I did a little research and decided to share that with you by writing a helpful post on how to eat rillettes. Mmmmm!

How do you eat rillettes?

Rillettes are typically eaten on slices of bread or toast, including sourdough bread, crostini, baguettes and Melba toast. Rillettes are also eaten on sandwiches and open-faced sandwiches, on crudité and used as pasta stuffing. Non-bread ways to eat rillettes are limited only by your imagination.

There’s more to know about eating rillettes than putting “Get bread” on your to-do list. What if you don’t eat bread but you still want to enjoy rillettes? What else goes well with rillettes, including wine? Keep reading if these questions are also on your mind!

All about eating rillettes!

Rillettes are a cooked and shredded meat spread that has a chunky texture. That might sound not sound appetizing, but if you doubt how delicious they are, just look at what they’re made of.

Rillettes are made with:

• Pork and another meat.
• Fat such as fatback, pork belly, duck fat and/or lard.
• Salt, spices and aromatics.
• Stock, wine and/or water.

There are many types of rillettes to eat, including:

• Pork rillettes.
• Rabbit rillettes.
• Duck rillettes.
• Chicken rillettes.
• Game meat rillettes.
• Veal rillettes.
• Seafood rillettes, made with salmon, trout or sardines.
• Vegan rillettes made with tofu, jack fruit, mushrooms, etc. (Plants aren’t our focus here, but we can still delight our veggie friends when they come for dinner.)  

Rillettes are a rich dish which is why most people don’t eat it straight from the jar. Let’s look at other foods that complement the richness of rillettes: starchy foods, rabbit food (ha ha), other animal foods and a Korean-inspired dish.

Starchy foods to eat with rillettes include:

• Sourdough bread.
• Crostini.
• Baguettes.
• Melba toast.
• Sandwiches.
• Open-faced sandwiches.
• Any bread from an artisanal bakery.
• Wonder Bread (non-fancy people can also enjoy rillettes).
• Slices of homemade cornbread.
• Pasta that needs to be stuffed.
• Crackers of any sort.
• Mini waffles.

[For some reason, as I was writing this list, the idea of spreading rillettes between two Krispy Kreme original donuts came to me. I don’t eat sweets anymore but, even so, this sounds like a good invention. If you try it, let me know how it works in real life.]

Vegetables to eat with rillettes include:

• Sliced crudité like cucumbers (as rillettes are too firm to dip vegetables into).
• Mini peppers (fill them with the rillettes).
• Celery sticks (filled with rillettes to make a meaty ants-on-a-log treat)
• Mixed greens salad (garnish the salad with a couple of chunks of the rillettes).

Other animal products to eat with rillettes include:

• Cracker-sized pieces of hard cheese.
• Sliced cold beef or chicken.
• Cheese crackers (crackers made entirely out of cheese).

You can also do rillettes Korean-style with rice and kim chi. (Special thanks to the Chowhound commenter, Ipsedixit, for sharing this innovation in eating rillettes, “I know for a fact I really like it on top of rice, with some kimchi mixed in.”)

Now, you’re probably not here because you believe in a low-fat lifestyle. But even so, you might be wondering if rillettes will be too much for your digestive system to handle…

Can I still enjoy rillettes if too much fat makes me queasy?

As I said, rillettes are fatty. In his Art of Eating feature called Rillettes de Tours, James MacGuire says, “The underlying proportions [of rillettes] … are two-thirds lean to one-third-fat.”

But in rillettes, the meat and fat are mixed until they become one. There’s no puddle of fat separate from the meat (except the protective layer of fat on the top of the jar of rillettes). This makes rillettes seem rich, not fatty. And, since you’re eating it with other ingredients, you probably won’t overdo it. If you’re sensitive to fatty foods (poor dear), eat your rillettes with a fresher base like sliced cucumber and see how it goes.

How to eat canned rillettes

You can eat canned duck rillettes or any type of canned rillettes the same way you eat non-canned rillettes. Until today, I didn’t even know canned rillettes existed! I learned about them by reading about someone who bought them in Paris (ooh la la!) and brought them home to America. But really, since rillettes last a long time in the fridge or freezer and it’s easy to make them, you don’t need to worry about not being able to find canned rillettes in your home town.

Bread-free but bread-like options to eat with your rillettes (keto, carnivore, Zero Carb)

If you want to enjoy the rillettes-and-bread experience but traditional bread doesn’t agree with you or is not part of your way of eating, there are some keto and animal-foods options you could try out. Including the chaffle, which is cheese turned into a waffle—ain’t life grand?

Grain-free bread-like options (friendly for keto and carnivore/Zero Carb* people)

Recipe name	Ingredients	Recipe or where to find the recipe
Oopsie bread (aka: cloud bread)	Eggs, cream cheese, salt, cream of tartar (optional).	Low Carb Yum
CarniLoaf	Pork rinds, cream cheese, water, eggs, salt.	Carnivore Rx
CarniLoaf (no dairy)	Eggs, water, salt, pork rinds.	Eileen Lowers, on the Carnivore Rx site says about this recipe, “The Lite Version of CarniLoaf was only slightly different, eliminating the cream cheese. You separate the yolks and whites, beating the whites until they are fluffy and carefully folding it into the pork rinds, salt, water and yolk mixture.”
Chaffle	Eggs, cheese.	Wholesome Yum
Chaffle/pancake	Eggs, cream cheese.	Basic mix is two ounces cream cheese and two eggs. Put in frying pan or waffle maker.
Chaffle	Cheese	Just put cheese in your mini Dash waffle maker.
Bacony carnivore womelettes	Bacon, eggs, spices.	Ketovangelist Kitchen

*Zero Carb refers to the group of people who eat only from the animal kingdom Not technically zero carbs, but zero plants. Except water that’s run through the mighty coffee bean.

I haven’t tried all these recipes but the cheese-only chaffle is tasty (and crunchy) and the two-and-two cream cheese and eggs mix works well too.

What can I serve with rillettes?

Though you could just put your rillettes on your favourite rillettes-delivery food, you’ll probably enjoy it more if you had a few other things on your plate.

Sweet treats that pair well with rillettes:

• Fig jam or your favourite jam.
• Cranberry sauce.
• Pickled fruit.

Savoury items that pair well with rillettes:

• Pickled vegetables such as onions, asparagus and peppers.
• Pickles or gherkins.
• Olives.
• Cheese.
• Nuts.
• Hard-boiled eggs.

What goes well with rillettes are ingredients typically found on a charcuterie platter. And when you come home after a long day at work, you might wonder if making yourself a rillettes platter counts as a real meal. I say yes. And so do the British, who call this type of platter a ploughman’s lunch.

What wine goes well with rillettes?

I don’t drink wine but I know a lot of people enjoy wine o’clock so I figured I might as well finish up my research with wine pairings.

Wine to pair with pork rillettes:

• Pinot Noir as it “has enough acid to cut through the fat of an herbaceous garlic fatty pâté, according to Elephant’s Delicatessen in Portland. They say this about pork pâté but I’m guessing it applies equally to pork rillettes. Forgive my wine pairing ignorance!
• Sauternes, Assyrtiko and Albariño are the way to go according to VinePair’s The Definitive Guide To Pairing Charcuterie and Wine.

Wine to pair with duck rillettes:

• Pinot Noir.
• Beaujolais.
• Lambrusco secco.

Wine to pair with salmon rillettes:

• A Sauvignon Blanc wine which is dry.
• Any wines that are white (including sparkling) and medium to full-bodied, without any oak flavour. The Wine Review Online say, “A heavy wood influence, we discovered, will make the rillettes taste too fishy.” In their article, WINE WITH…Smoked Salmon Rillettes, they provide five specific wines to enjoy with salmon rillettes.

To cleanse your palate after eating rillettes, James MacGuire in the Art of Eating suggests drinking a glass of sec or demi-sec Vouvray (a French wine made with chenin blanc grapes) or a dry everyday wine.

And I know this is about pairing wine and rillettes, but I’d also like to share one tip for beer fans. Alexian Pâté and Specialty Meats in Neptune, New Jersey, suggests pairing duck rillettes with brown ale. And Les Canardises, a Quebecois company specializing in fois gras and confit from free-range ducks, find that beer and rillettes go so well together that they put beer in their rillettes. I’m guessing drinking beer with beer-enhanced rillettes would work. Maybe you can test that out and let me know how it goes!

Conclusion

Okay, there you have it. Now that you know how to eat rillettes and what to eat and drink with them, why not make a batch this week?