How to butcher and process a whole pig

[vagabondat02]

Oh yeah, and eat a freaking pork chop for dinner! I grilled mine, along with some baby yellow squash, and plopped it on top of some buttermilk mashed red potatoes.

 

[mendozer]

...Damn you....

 

[vagabondat02]

Ok. I'm all out of uploaded pics, and I should be in bed. Coming up soon: 30# of sausage- fresh, smoked, and blood, headcheese, and lard! Thanks for the attention so far folks, I hoped some of you would dig it! @ temptd2 - now you have to wait till Monday, but I'll have some cool pics from the event I'm working @ WilEcoyote - if you just go ahead and get a half pig, you'll have chops to freeze, home made bacon, and a ham to go with some BBQ from your inaugural shoulder It's a lot cheaper in the long run, all of it is freezable and you're running a smoker anyway... @ mendozer - Polyface is a bit of a haul from my corner of VA, but the folks I get my pigs from send product to a few super legit places from NYC to Birmingham AL. They raise a pretty rare heritage cattle breed as well, and all of their beef tenderloins go to Le Bernadin, so... I make some decent charcuterie products, but I have to say, after a week in Seattle I'd love to be able to eat at Salumi every day, so if I can crash at your place I'd be happy to return the favor. My Salumi isn't hand rubbed by Batalis though...

 

[mendozer]

My Salumi isn't hand rubbed by Batalis though...

Sounds like a one liner from an Italian Porno

 

[vagabondat02]

Time for some more porknography! I forgot to take pictures of the lard rendering process, because I was working on other parts of the pig, and It's really just a "back burner" step. All of the soft fat went into a pot with just enough water to cover it (pic 1). Bring the pot to a boil and reduce it to a hard simmer, stirring frequently. Over the next hour or two, all of the water will evaporate, leaving you with a bunch of rendered fat. The liquid will clear drastically when the water has all evaporated, and basically transform from a boil into a deep fryer. Reduce the heat and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until all of the chunks of fat turn into little crispy things that look like overcooked bacon. Strain the liquid into a heat resistant container, and let it cool. Lard is great for baking pie crust and biscuits, and I like to use it for skillet fried chicken. The chunks are now called "cracklins" and are considered to be one of the finest salty/crispy snacks off of the entire animal here in the south. Next I removed all of the skin, meat, ears, and tongue from the skull and strained the broth.

 

[vagabondat02]

I'm making two types of headcheese from this head. An aspic set Vietnamese head cheese for bahn mi sandwiches and scrapple; which is a Pennsylvania Dutch, cornmeal set, breakfast meat that gets pan fried until crispy and covered in maple syrup. I sorted through the head meat and discarded all of the glands, connective tissue, and vascular structures. I then coarsely shredded the meat and skin, thinly sliced the ears, and cut the tongue into chunks. I only really need one headcheese hanging around at a time, so half of the mix went into a loaf pan that had been lined with plastic wrap, and the other half went into the freezer for later. I then put a plate in the freezer and began reducing the broth with star anise, cinnamon sticks, coarse black pepper, a little brown sugar, and fish sauce. When you braise a head, it produces an astonishing amount of gelatin, by reducing this liquid you increase the gelatin to water ratio until you get the consistency you like. Once the liquid was reduced by about one third, I poured a spoonful onto the frozen plate, and it set into a sliceable gel that wasn't too firm, which is perfect. I adjusted the seasoning in the liquid, going a little heavy on the salt since this will be served cold, and strained it into the loaf pan. Once it cooled a bit, I wrapped the plastic over the top and put it in the fridge to set.

 

[vagabondat02]

There are a few different ways to cure, hang, and smoke a country ham. In Virginia, we are rightfully proud of what I'll call a "Smithfield style" country ham, after the biggest company that makes them. A Smithfield ham is cured with salt, sugar, and sodium nitrate, cold smoked, and then hung in a low humidity environment until it is completely dried out. When you want to eat it, it has to be soaked in water for a couple of days to rehydrate it and rinse out the excess salt, and then cooked. I already have one of these hanging in my basement, and I'm way more into raw hams anyway, so I'll be making what I call a "Benton's" style ham after the most notable producer of this style. If you haven't ever had Allan Benton's country ham or bacon, you are living in an empty and meaningless world, devoid of true joy and happiness. Go here http://shop.bentonscountryham.com/ immediately, change your life, and thank me later. The cool thing about Benton's hams, is that they are aged more like a Proscuitto or Iberico ham, so they can (and should) be eaten thinly sliced and raw. The process for making these hams is curing, cold smoking, hanging in a high humidity environment from six months to however long you can stand to wait, and cold smoking again. I made the following cure:
300g kosher salt
150g brown sugar
15g cure#2 (sodium nitrate)
20g coarse black pepper
I rubbed as much of the cure into the skinned ham as it would hold, especially around the ball of the femur and the exposed shank. then I put it in a pan, covered it, and put the pan with the curing bellies and jowls on top of it to weigh it down. I will flip it and drain off the liquid ever couple of days, apply another round of cure at the halfway point, and let it cure for two days for every pound of green weight. 10.5# ham = 21 day cure.

 

[vagabondat02]

I rubbed the coppa that I removed from the butt and rubbed it liberally with garlic. Then I packed as much of the following cure on it as it would hold.
110g kosher salt
65g sugar
6g cure#2
10g coarse black pepper
10 crushed juniper berries
3g fresh ground coriander
1g allspice
1g mace
Then I jammed it into a gallon sized ziplock, squeezed out all the air I could, and put it in the fridge. I will reapply cure after a week, then let sit another week. I'll post more about it when it's time to hang.

 

[vagabondat02]

In between these curing projects I was having a fresh sausage marathon with some of the trim I collected. Sausage is pretty well covered on this forum too, so I'll skip the process, and just list what I made. Spicy Italian, knackwurst, kielbasa, hot breakfast, maple breakfast, and Mexican chorizo. All of these were 2.5# batches which yielded about 12 links each Italian and knackwurst, three "Hillshire" sized ropes of kielbasa, and fifteen 1/2# packs of loose breakfast sausage and chorizo for patties or crumbling. The remaining 10# of trim is getting wrapped and frozen, and will be used for fermented and dried sausages later.

 

[vagabondat02]

Blood sausage has not been covered on here from what I've seen, so I'll go into some detail. There aren't too many pictures of this because it is really messy, and I didn't want to kill my phone. I made Irish black pudding and Spanish Morcilla De Burgos from the following recipes:
Black Pudding
500g pig blood - freshly whisked to break up any clots
250g fatback - ground through a large die
250g cooked steel cut oats - NOT rolled oats
50g diced onions - sweated in lard until soft
21g kosher salt
2g black pepper
2g coriander
1g mace
Once the oatmeal and onions are cooled, whisk in blood and seasonings. Tie a very firm knot in one end of a hog casing and fit the other end over a funnel. Ladle the mix into the casing, only filling the casing about 2/3 of the way. Tie the other end of the casing after removing as much air as possible from the inside. Lay the sausage out flat, and portion links by tying with string. Poach the sausages in 180 degree water for about 45 minutes. Any sausages with air pockets in them will float and need to be punctured with a needle or sausage pricker. When the internal temperature hits 160 degrees transfer the sausages to an ice bath. The oatmeal and blood will expand considerably during cooking, it is imperative to not over stuff.

I used a slightly modified version of the Morcilla recipe from Charcuteria, which is an outstanding book about Spanish charcuterie!
1,000g pig blood
1,000g diced onions - sweated in 300g of lard until soft
1,000g rice - mixed with onions and lard and left to sit overnight in the fridge
4g black pepper
2g cloves
2g anise
1g nutmeg
15g smoked paprika
5g cayenne
Once the rice is done soaking up the lard and onion mix with spices and blood. Use the same filling technique as above, but only filling the casings a little more than halfway. You may need something to poke the rice through the hole in the funnel. This is traditionally stuffed into hog casings and tied into foot long rings, or beef middles. Poach the same way as above.

 

[DrunkleJon]

You Butcher!

Hah, sorry I couldn't help myself. You are a machine. I am jealous of your pork supply. Not to mention the place we buy a hog every year to roast up always steals the cheeks. The jerks.

 

[vagabondat02]

Onion and oat mix with a container of blood, mixed Morcilla ready to stuff, and finished black puddings. I think the Morcilla could have used a bit less rice, maybe 850g or 900g. I like my blood sausage just a little softer...

 

[vagabondat02]

Here's some Mexican chorizo with peppers and onions hanging out with some fried quail eggs and homemade tortillas, salsa, and guacamole.

 

[vagabondat02]

And that leaves us all caught up with the project so far. I'm off today and tomorrow, so I'll be working on a few more things. Coming up: Frankfurters, liver pate, and Gio (Vietnamese chicken garlic "sausage") I'll also be baking some baguettes and pickling some carrots and daikon radish so I can really live the dream and have a bahn mi for lunch every freaking day next week!

 

[Temptd2]

I am officially and completely jealous, but thankful that you took the time to post all this. You, sir, are a gentleman and a porkly scholar!

A heartfelt THANK YOU from me.

 

[bgeek]

This is an awesome thread. Thanks for sharing.

 

[vagabondat02]

I finished up all of the prep for Bahn Mi mania and smoked my bacon and ham hocks yesterday morning. Even though this had nothing to do with the pig, I figured I'd post. The Gio is a made from chicken, fish sauce, tapioca starch, and garlic blitzed into a paste in the food processor. After it's processed it gets wrapped in banana leaves, and foil or plastic wrap to make it watertight. I then poached it until it hit 165 degrees, and chilled. This same process is also how I make bologna and mortadella, I just sub the leaves for parchment paper. I figure there's no use buying a casing that just goes in the trash if I can rig one out of things I already have on hand. I also made of chicken liver pate with onions, garlic, vermouth, butter, and cream. Finally we have a picture of my freshly smoked swine bits and some just out of the oven baguettes. Sorry about pic quality, my kitchen gets blasted with sun in the morning.

 

[vagabondat02]

Here's today's lunch! There's some pickled daikon and carrots, cilantro, and jalapenos on there, along with the Gio, headcheese, and liver pate.

 

[johngaltsmotor]

Man, I feel like a (jealous) City Slicker Slacker right now.
I've broken down whole venison for charcuterie and sausage but never gotten a full pig. Yet... that might have to change soon. I'm especially jealous of being able to make fresh blood sausage.

 

[Temptd2]

Banh mi is my latest craving and that one looks AWESOME!

I never even HAD a banh mi until this week. Now I've had three! LOL!

Can you tell me how you're using parchment paper for your bologna? I've been making it in a loaf pan but would like a ROUND one without buying casings!

 

[ChefRex]

Thank you for the awesome thread, Except for the issue of me now being extremely hungry!

 

[pumpkinman2012]

Great thread, amazing craftsmanship!

 

[vagabondat02]

Holy food coma! Today' we had an old school Irish "Full Breakfast". Bacon, black pudding, baked beans, sauteed tomatoes and spinach, over easy eggs, and toast (from an old whole wheat and rye loaf I found in the back of the fridge). All fried in the same skillet, in the glorious rendered fat from aforementioned bacon.

 

[vagabondat02]

To prepare any kind of sausage paste, braised or cured meat, or seafood into a log using parchment paper, cheesecloth, or plastic wrap is called "Au torchon" in fancy Frenchie culinary talk. It's a popular way to prepare foie gras and headcheese, and there are tons of videos on you tube about it. The gist of the process is to take a roll of plastic wrap and lay out a base layer on your workspace. Any sort of liner (cheesecloth, parchment paper, or banana leaves like I did) should be placed on top of the plastic. I like having the liner if I'm actually cooking something in the plastic, but if I'm just making a torchon of already cooked head meat I don't worry about it. Place your meat paste in a line the center of the liner material and gently roll into a log of your desired thickness. The motion here is kind of like rolling sushi, with the parchment and plastic wrap replacing the bamboo mat. Now take your log by each end, and twist the parchment and plastic wrap in opposite directions on each end to tighten. I just kind of alternate hands as I tighten the end in my right hand away from me and the end in my left hand towards me. Tie off each end with butchers twine, leaving some excess string. Take the excess string and wrap down from the knot, into the loaf, to tighten further and tie again on each side. You can steam, poach, or boil the torchon from here, or if you're just shaping already cooked meat this is where you put it in the fridge to set. I hope that was a clear explanation, but a video is worth a thousand words...

 

[kstone803]

Wow. You have some skills man. Great thread. I though I was ahead of the curve butchering my own deer and pigs but you take it to a new level.

 

[vagabondat02]

I got the pancetta, guanciale, and coppa hung this morning. I took the half belly that I didn't smoke and the jowls and rinsed off the excess cure. I then rubbed them liberally with black pepper, crushed red pepper, and herbs. I cut a hole in the top of each jowl and ran some butchers string through it to hang. The belly got rolled up and tied like a roast. The coppa got rinsed, rubbed with red pepper and paprika, and tied.

 

[vagabondat02]

Here's a pic of everybody getting cozy in their new home. When you dry meat in a refrigerator, there's a lot of air movement from the fan - which is good, but it kills the ambient humidity - which is very bad. I've fooled around with humidifiers with sensors and shut off switches, and they work really well, but they're kind of overkill. I just have a pan filled with salted water (salt to discourage mold and microbe growth) and a couple of towels to act as wicks, sitting in the bottom of the fridge. Whenever the pan goes dry, I'll add more water - easy peasy! If anyone's worried that that isn't complicated or reliable enough, rest assured, I've dried hundreds of pounds of salami and whole muscle applications (including a proscuitto I aged for 18 months) this way, and never had an issue with case hardening or rot. Besides, it's good to remind ourselves (while we're playing with Ph sensors and thermostat controllers) that these techniques were invented by people who didn't have refrigeration, sanitizer, or any clue what lactobacillus and pediococcus are. Anyway, I also have some beer in there, so the corny kind of gives you an idea of the size of these guys. Hopefully I'll have time to get some salamis going this week, fermenting meat is a whole new ball game on this thread, although I'm stoked to see a couple of people on the forum are doing it. :rockin:

 

[vagabondat02]

Oh, and thanks for all the compliments, exitement, and encouraging words! If anyone has any questions about this stuff, please feel free to ask.

 

[kstone803]

You ages a prosciutto 18 months!? I've always wanted to try dry aging meat like that but TBH it kinda scared me. I make jerky and bologna and the such but stuff like that has been over my head for now. Maybe I need to give it a shot. I have a spare mini fridge in the garage that isn't getting any use right now.

 

[Homercidal]

We just bought a half a hog (Well, it's a whole hog, but we are splitting it up between our house and my sister's house). I wish I'd seen this before. I'd consider butchering it up myself and saving some $$.

Of course I'd be the only one doing it since my wife is not likely to be anywhere near a dead pig or have any part in cutting one into small tasty pieces.

I don't know what half the things are you showed yourself making either!