The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: greengumbo on October 23, 2015, 12:13:54 pm
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Having cut our first 1/2 piggy mostly into larger roasting joints I am more confident of doing smaller and more specialised cuts on our next one.
I want to turn this one mainly into cured / dried bits :
bacon
chorizo
salami
air dried ham
nduja
Christmas ham
Guanciale
then also smaller roasting joints for 3 - 4 people and maybe pork chops.
What advice would you give ?
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Wow, no advice as I am planning to do something similar next month. Have you ever made dried meats before, that seems like a hell of a list for a newbie. I have done ham before and this time I am trying Chorizo :yum: Good luck with your curing :thumbsup:
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Not really ! The odd bit. I have eaten a lot though :excited:
I will not be doing curing all at once after the cutting so hopefully will be able to take my time !
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Are you using Ruhlman's books? They're very good.
Bacon: each side of belly in half so 4 pieces per pig, skin off (unless you want to look at nipples), cure each half as and when you need it and leave the rest in the freezer uncured.
Chorizo & salami: make sure you have a decent slab of back fat, as the other pork fat is not suitable (too soft). Use sausage casings and they'll dry properly and within a few weeks. An A4 sheet sized slab will be more than enough.
Air dried ham: we found bone in easier than boned - the fat inside has less chance of going rancid and the ham overall has less chance of being too salty as you don't need to push salt inside. Our best was cutting the legs in several pieces and then curing it - in lumps of say a kilo or two, because once you start slicing the ham it'll dehydrate and become much saltier (meaning you have to eat too much in one go if the leg is left whole).
Never heard of nduja.
Guanciale: best we had was when the cheek pieces were large and roughly triangular. Leave skin on. Delicious.
Also consider pancetta (bacon with pepper and herbs) and lardo bianco (cured back fat). Then there's this shoulder cut, can't remember what it's called but it's in Ruhlman's second book. You can cure pretty much any cut, really.
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Made chorizo and salami last night and they are currently fermenting away in the airing cupboard :) Will hang them in the loft tonight to dry over the next wee bit.
Bacon is going to get started tonight !
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I am doing a butchery, sausage making and charcutery course at the end of the month and have the paul peacock book which covers the basics and also Home Sausage Making by Susan Mahnke Peery and Charles Reevis which has a number of simple sausage recipes.
Can any of you recommend the river cottage charcutery book or one of the Ruhlmans? Also any recommendations for books about butchering lamb?
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I have both Ruhlman's books, couldn't choose between the two. Christmas is coming up, maybe drop some hints? ;)
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I liked the Ruhlman books but found them more interesting than instructive.
I tend to use these two websites to give me ideas, I have some Coppa that is nearly ready and after trying it last year I also have some Lamb prosciutto drying at the moment.
When I do hams I normally break legs down into individual muscles, it avoids keeping bones in but also avoids the problem of having holes in the joint.
http://lpoli.50webs.com/Sausage%20recipes.htm (http://lpoli.50webs.com/Sausage%20recipes.htm)
http://curedmeats.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/lamb-prosciutto.html (http://curedmeats.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/lamb-prosciutto.html)
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On Saturday I put a couple of bits of loin into a dry cure for bacon and 2 nice pieces of leg into wet cure for gammon. Added to the wet cure was some cider, bay leaves, juniper berries, peppercorns, cloves and brown sugar.
I am going to add some maple syrup to the bacon in a couple of days time.
I've never done either of these before so :fc:
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I did the River Cottage course with Steven Lamb, very knowledgeable and very very enthusiastic a really good day out. Not cheap, but the 'samples' and lunch made it very special. Anyway in terms of investment well worth it as subsequently we've cured about 10 gammon joints (two in at present) two air dried ham, much bacon so it doubles the value you get from the pig. :pig: :pig:
I do the gammon much the same way as Bionic and always comes out lovely.
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Chorizo and salami are up drying in the loft now. Look excellent !
Bacon was fantastic. Wrapped it round some of our male quails that needed off'd and roasted them. Superb.
Home made bacon rolls for brekkie after a hangover is pretty special.
Air dried ham going to go in soon. Then need to think about a christmas ham as well.
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Yum, my pigs are back tomorrow so the next few days will be spent chopping and curing :excited:
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I am doing my course with Yorkshire Choriso tomorrow and really looking forward to it. I have got some dry cure, hog casings, rusk, salami skins etc so I am looking forward to practicing when I get home. I dont have any pork to practice on but have lots of lamb in the freezer so the lamb prosciutto sounds like an interesting idea.
Do you butcher / process all our products from your chilled carcass? Or do any of you freeze joints and then defrost them for cured or air dried products?
I bought the Steven Lamb / river cottage book on smoking and curing. Do an of you use a vac packer and which one / what bag sizes?
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Spent 5 hours today with the other half butchering our pigs, only got through 1.5 pigs, wow it takes more effort than I realised but the meat looks great.
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Buffy, I went to a very interesting talk on how to make the most of your pigs at the spring festival at Builth Wells. The man giving the talk is apparently well known and there were pictures of him with Prince Charles, amongst others.
Anyway, my question was "can you freeze and then cure" he said it works very well freezing first as the freezing process means that the fibres in the pork start to break down and accept the cure better. The joints that I currently have in cure were frozen first, albeit only for 3 weeks. Once cured and dried for a couple of days I intend to freeze again before I cook them for New Year's Eve. I haven't done it before though so can't vouch for the results yet.
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Spent 5 hours today with the other half butchering our pigs, only got through 1.5 pigs, wow it takes more effort than I realised but the meat looks great.
Yup, it's sooooo time consuming! We did one ourselves - took a whole day! We got a butcher friend to come and help with another - it took him less than 40 minutes to do an entire pig and we had less than a bowlful of waste... Still took the best part of 4 hours to weigh, package and label everything though ::)
I just let the butcher do it now, he's spent years doing it and has a level of skill I'll just never be able to achieve - worth his weight it gold :thumbsup:
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Thanks,
Bionic. I did my sausage making yesterday and have made some simple sage, salt and pepper ones and some coverdale cheese and ale ones using a fruity traditional beer from a micro brewery.
I also have some drycure cheek in the fridge and some drycure panchetta with it. I plan to make a fre scotch eggs with some of the mince too.
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Thanks,
Bionic. I did my sausage making yesterday and have made some simple sage, salt and pepper ones and some coverdale cheese and ale ones using a fruity traditional beer from a micro brewery.
I also have some drycure cheek in the fridge and some drycure panchetta with it. I plan to make a fre scotch eggs with some of the mince too.
I like the sound of the cheese and ale ones :thumbsup:
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Pancetta curing tonight. Looks a bit fat on the belly but I am sure it will be fine.
I froze all cuts after butchery and then take them into fridge to defrost and then cure them.
Still not plunged into the air dried ham yet -not sure if I need to lard it all over or not / curing salt etc etc.....so many choices.
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I had some pancetta that was quite fatty but if you cook it slowly the fat renders down quite a bit.
When I did my air dried ham I didn't have a clue what I was doing but it turned out well. I just used ordinary salt and made sure every little bit was well covered in salt.
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Air dried ham: we also use ordinary salt and the lard is smeared on every little bit of exposed flesh (so none on the skin).
Worked out really well.