The pig is now pork and hanging. It was quick and while she was gobbling with delight, which is the way it should be done, in my opinion. She weighed 52.5Kg. The next step is to turn as much as possible into bacon. So any good bacon making recipes will be received with thanks.
She was very fat - which is tolerable for bacon
I'm not too sure which parts of the pig can be made into bacon. I think the hind legs not, and forelegs. I don't want to do hams right now but was wondering about slicing the leg and curing that as sort gammon steaks? I have until tuesday to decide... I will probably cure the hocks and smoke them.
For bacon - belly and cheeks, ordinarily. I don't see why other bits couldn't be used, but also, tasty pork is good!
ReplyDeleteWe basically have done everything barring the shoulders and legs - the legs i have cured with the same cure as gammon steaks, the shoulders as sausage, the ribs as spare ribs.
DeleteI've only made bacon out of the same parts as Cedar mention. Often cheek is called Arkansas Bacon in the south. In the mountains the kin folk would wet cure the ham first. Of course it helped that they butchered in the fall. They'd put the hams in big metal buckets covered with a brine that smelled just like the type I use for my own bacon, with the addition of "pink salt" that the local store would carry that time of year. After about a week the hams would be pulled out and slow cooked. Then hung in the smoke house which was fed smoke by the wood burning stove.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother would make her own hams, but since she did not have a smoke house she would put them in the freezer after cooking. They last quite a bit longer if frozen after cooking.
Late winter butchered ham in Virginia were salt cured. I've never seen it done, but they'd use a ton of salt. I have a special pan just for soaking salt cured(Smithfield)ham. It takes several baths to reduce the salt content to edible levels. However, my grandmother used to keep these hanging in the breezeway for many months. She would get them about a month after slaughter time. They'd be salted and partially cured in a net. She'd scrape the crust...sometimes there'd be a bit of mold...and wrap them in clean, thick paper. Then hang them broad side down. The soaking pan I have was hers.
As for timing. We'd always have the last of the wet cured and frozen ham at Easter unless Easter came very late. I suspect the salt cure had to hang for a number of months. As to why the mountain folk never salt cured was that I suspect Granny didn't like it. When she moved down to live with my grandmother she would never eat it.
The earliest colonists to the New World salt cured everything,and truth be told their skill set was not exactly one suited for self-sufficiency,but it was one thing they pulled off successfully.
I did the dry cure one back in SA, didn't like it. I have kept the lower section and will do a wet cure tomorrow. I did use pink salt for the bacon BTW (you can use it instead of saltpeter). Now we just need to wait...
Deletebacon wiki is your friend http://bacon.wikia.com/wiki/Cuts_of_Bacon
ReplyDeleteconsulted (and not a lot wiser - I needed to know where to cut) :-)
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