[Welshlad]

Pigs will be ready in October and now thinking of paying my butcher to cure and make gammon steaks? From say a 100kg pig, roughly how many gammon steaks could i get from 1 leg on average?

[Black Sheep]

May be a better question for your butcher.

In case it is useful though I will share what we got back from our three pigs recently. They were Tamworths; two were around 80kg and the other around 90kg from our estimates based on girth squared x length. They got to this weight faster than we had been led to believe they would, so things were a bit rushed but the cutting list we gave him after some discussion was:

These are our fist pigs so we will also be guided by what you think would make the best use of the carcasses – for example the type of bacon or which bits to use for sausages and which as joints. As a rough guide we were thinking of:

Heads

All into sausages

Shoulders

Perhaps one shoulder made into ham
A small amount of gammon

Then,

Approximately half into sausages
Of the remainder around 500g of lean diced pork per shoulder, presuming this leaves enough meat for some joints
The remainder as a mixture of boned and rolled joints suitable for 2 or 4 people

Legs

Approximately half into sausages
The remainder as a mixture of boned and rolled joints suitable for 2 or 4 people

Loins

Tenderloins separate, three kept whole, three in halves
As much back bacon as feasible, thin cut
Remainder into chops and steaks

Bellies

As much streaky bacon as feasible, thin cut
Remainder into sausages

We got back:

• 5.8kg chops
• 2kg diced pork
• 2.1kg fillet/tenderloin
• 0.4kg kidney
• 10.7kg leg joints (11 items)
• 5.3kg ribs
• 26.2kg shoulder joints (22 items)
• 4.5kg steaks
• 1200+ sausages (pack of 6 being approx 320-350g)
• 26.4kg streaky bacon (78 packs of 10 rashers ranging from approx 230-370g per pack)
• 21.6kg back bacon (68 packs of 10 rashers ranging from approx 250-400g per pack)
• 6kg gammons (2 items)

[Alex_]

That is really helpful thanks black sheep