A New Arrival

They sure are cute little buggers. Which is why I want them to have the most humane existence (and death) possible. We owe them that much, and the livestock farmers I’ve talked to feel the exact same way. It’s just the right thing to do.

But on to the business at hand…

We have ordered our first whole hog for butchering, not a situation to be taken lightly since it will be a lot (probably days worth) of work, and we don’t even have a chest freezer yet, let alone all the tools we will need to break down and package the meat. So there’s much to do to prepare beforehand.

In addition to the whole hog butchering class we took, we also have a couple books that show step-by-step how to make all the cuts, but that is a far cry from being an experienced butcher who has thorough knowledge of the task learned through lots of repetition. We expect to make some mistakes, especially because the experience we had isn’t exactly the same circumstances we will face with the hog we are getting. For one, our hog will still have the head/legs/tail on so we will have to remove them. Ours also will still have the skin on, which we will be removing for some cuts. And lastly, our hog will not already be split down the middle lengthwise, so we’ll either need to do that (hacksaw) or plan how we will work around it. So there are some challenges. (As an aside, the head will remain whole either way. I do know of a very romantic recipe for half a roasted pig head, but we won’t be doing that this time around.) 

I am encouraged by some butchers who say not to worry about errors since it’s all “just meat,” but at the same time, I still feel there is a lot that could go wrong resulting in spoiled meat, wasted money, much sorrow and despair. So I will get some refreshers via YouTube to hopefully give me a better shot at success.

We also will have to decide how we want to butcher the animal (the old adage on multiple ways to skin a cat is appropriate here), and this is decided by what we ultimately want to do with the meat. I have recently developed a strong interest in dry curing Italian style (prosciutto, pancetta, etc). So our plan is to butcher half of the hog the traditional Italian way, to create the kinds of cuts that are common for Italian dry curing. That leaves the other half of the hog, which we will butcher American style for chops, ribs, ham, loin, sausage, and ground pork. I am still debating whether there will be enough meat on the head for head cheese if I remove both jowls to make guanciale (kind of like bacon but from the meat and fat of the cheek), but for the most part, this detail is settled. A lot more on these differences in a future post.

Then there are supplies. A scale to weigh meat and salt (LOTS of salt), butcher’s twine to wrap and hang meat , wicked-sharp cutlery, the hacksaw (which I already mentioned), a meat grinder, and a boatload of other items. Oh, and a freezer to store it all in. Can you say Craigslist? Whew!

The first day will be a bit of an endurance test. We will pick up the hog, which will have been slaughtered the day before, from the organic hog farm in Columbus, Nebr., called Erstwhile Farm and break the animal down enough to get it all refrigerated. The second day will be all about breaking down the animal further and salting the Italian cuts to get the curing process going. The third day will be about processing the American cuts so they can be packaged and frozen. The American-style cuts can be eaten immediately, whereas the cured meats will disappear into the curing room for between two to 18 months, two vastly different approaches with vastly different results. There are more things that can go wrong with curing, mostly resulting from things going wrong at the butchering stage, and since the wait is so long for the end product, sometimes more than a year, I have a genuine case of the nerves as I head into this.

Fingers crossed!