Sausage, terrine and brains…?

I don’t use my journalism degree too often these days…but I couldn’t help it today. That line–”If it bleeds, it leads…” I think it’s quite appropriate for today’s pig adventure. Thankfully, I am not at all a squeamish sort of person. I was a bit nervous about the outcome of using a sawzall on a pig skull…but everything worked out fine and I got to play with some nasty guts.

The recipe for the headcheese that I plan to make in a couple days says to split the head and remove the brain. So simple and clean on the page…obviously not the case in real life. If I had more time, I think I’d write the author of that book and send him this picture to place next to the directions. I’m holding half the brain in my hand there. I was really surprised that it was so small. It sort of made me wonder about the size of my own brain. *grins*

I will start a new recipe section today so if you’d like to know more about what I’m doing with all these parts, or if you get the notion to try this at home, you have a place to find some recipes and the correct corresponding photos to accompany them. Anyway, I currently have a split pig head (minus the brain and ears and jowls) sitting in a 5 gallon pot of brine on the back porch. I also added 3 of the hocks that will be smoked for future use here in a couple days. Tasty!

Terrine wrapped in caul fat

Today, Scott and I also made a terrine! (Recipe in recipe section) We used about half of our enormous pig liver plus ground up pork meat and some ground veal from Grassland Farm. Scott and Jen found some beautiful old terrine dishes at an antique shop last week. We used one here. It’s stonewear with a deep blue glaze inside. I was definitely inspired to try making one of these next time I sit down at my pottery wheel! Terrine was pretty straight forward. We used a nice piece of the caul fat (the pretty, lacy web of fat that surrounds the intestines and stomach) to line the terrine dish. As it baked in the oven, the fat mostly melted, but you can still see the outline of fatty goodness where it soaked into the meat. And just for the record, the terrine is amazingly delicious. I think I found my new favorite food. Dave tried a little piece and also liked it…Dave’s not big on organ meats, so you can imagine how yummy it must be.

Scott and Dave also used up quite a bit of the bin of sausage meat today. They made Kielbasa and some hot Italian sausage links. I’m planning on doing a breakfast sausasge and an aged sausage with orange zest tomorrow or Sunday. We have farmers’ markets tomorrow…so there’s a chance we may not get around to it once we’re home tomorrow afternoon. I’m planning to cook some cracklin’s and bake them into  biscuits tomorrow night with dinner. Only a few days left and that piggy will be entirely used up!

Stuffing Italian sausages

Dave loves his sausage

Fresh herbs for terrine

grinding the liver

placing the caul fat

We hid jowl meat in the terrine

Terrine wrapped in caul fat

Sausage meat: Fat and Lean

Someone’s in the Kitchen

Smoked Blood Sausage

Someone’s in the kitchen with Piggy… Today we tackled blood sausage as you can see from this beautiful picture. Scott and Dave also made a salami, and began the curing for both pancetta and a Serrano style ham.

I boiled the lungs, which I will cook up in a dish soon. I’m considering them for a recipe I found on SeriousEats…one of my new favorite websites. (See the recipe here) This evening, I enjoyed some rice noodles with fried pig’s ears and a yummy broth I made from boiling the ears. I was nervous as I sliced the ears into strips for frying. The cartilage did not look at all appetizing…it looked and felt like cartilage. But I continued on my quest for fried goodness despite my ear fears. Once fried, they tasted just fine! The cartilage became softer and gave even more of a crispy crunch. The problem I realized was salt…or lack of it. I think maybe next time I will try brining the ears first…? They were fine, but the flavor was honestly somewhat flat. The broth was nice. I added a couple slices of ginger, a few cloves of garlic and a whole onion to the ears during the 2 hours of boiling. Then I added a little white wine, some rice vinegar, a couple teaspoons of honey and some red pepper paste and splash of soy sauce. At the very end, I threw in some snow peas for another type of crunchy texture. I was quite happy with my dinner and will definitely eat pig ears again if given the choice.

Tomorrow I plan on making some breakfast sausage …I think I’ll make patties and wrap them in the caul fat. (Yum!) There’s a very enticing picture of this recipe in one of the books that we’ve all been studying here this week. Dave and I will also be splitting what is left of the pig’s head tomorrow morning. I need to get the brain out before I brine it for my headcheese project on Sunday. We haven’t made any terrines yet and we have a giant liver hanging out in some milk in the fridge. More tomorrow from the piggy kitchen.

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Butchering

The pig we slaughtered is a cross between a Large Black and something else. Scott says you can tell the Large Black because the ears were floppy and folded over,  almost covering the eyes. Dave says they are known for their large jowls and that’s exactly what Dave and I began the butchering process with this morning. He cut one off one side of the face and I cut the other.

jowl

I am much more timid with a knife compared to Dave. My cuts were careful and un-sure. Dave was much quicker, which is good with short days and limited hours of light. As it was, we began butchering around 10:30 this morning and Dave finished up just before chore time at 5 pm. I unfortunately had some cheese business to take care of this morning plus some errands to run this afternoon. I was really disappointed that I didn’t get to do any of the actual butchering. Mostly I helped Dave clean meat off of bones and other hard to reach places like the back of the head. I have a hard time learning anything until I actually do it for myself. Butchering a pig still seems like an overwhelming project to me, but I think if I have the opportunity again, I will make sure to get in on more of the action.

I have learned quite a lot about the different sections and primal cuts on a pig. When to use a saw, a knife or a cleaver. And I’ve also learned that it’s pretty difficult to really screw it up. We had a book with step by step photos to guide us through all the major cuts. The pictures can still be confusing, so there was definitely some guess work on Dave’s part. For the record, Dave has never butchered a pig before either.

Dave starts on the ham

We came away with 2 large pork bellies, a side of “frenched” ribs, a side of pork rib chops, a whole leg to cure as prosciutto, a boneless picnic roast, boneless ham steaks from a section of the ham, two  tenderloin strips, a sirloin roast, and several other roast cuts, plus a whole tub full of meat for sausage that includes the jowls and the upper shoulders (butt roasts).

So tomorrow we continue with sausage making! Again, I have a couple meetings, so I will be out of the picture for awhile. I’m leaving my camera with the guys to see if they can capture some good stuff.

I’m also planning to fry up some pig ears tomorrow with dinner. I also need to get down to business with my Haggis or at least eat the lungs before they go. So much pig! So little time…

Various bits for sausage

Dave cuts out fat to save for later

This will be made into pancetta

jowl

Dave starts on the ham

Pig Slaughter Success

Our 200 pound sow is now minus a head, split in two and hanging about 5 feet off the ground to cool overnight. What a day!

We began right around noon. Today was a cool and wet, drizzly 45 degrees. The temperatures really dropped right around the time we bagan eviscerating…handling a sharp knife and using my fingers to separate delicate parts became pretty difficult! But I’m getting ahead of myself here…

We got down to business right after collecting all the necessary tools for the day: A clean table, a bucket of hot bleach water, several clean wash rags, several clean bins for organ collection, a stick to wedge between the hind legs for hanging, several sharp knives, a sharpening stone, a clean barrel full of scalding hot water, paint scrapers, the tractor and a blow torch. Good list, huh?

As soon as Dave shot the pig and she was down for the count, but before the life had completely gone out of her, we were pulling her out of the pen and preparing to hang her. Scott used a sharp knife to slice the skin away from her rear hocks in order to access the open space between bone and tendon. We inserted the stick and used the tractor to haul her up in the air, head down. I used a clean wash cloth soaked in a moderate bleach solution to clean the whole neck area before Dave used a knife  to make the incision to bleed the pig. The major arteries are in the middle of the neck, not to the sides of the neck like human’s. He missed on the first try, but a second cutting caught the arteries. I could hear the blood rushing. It all happened quite quickly. We collected about a gallon of blood and Scott mixed in about a half cup of salt to keep it from congealing. It’s in the fridge now and we’ll use it to make blood sausage in the next day or two.

The scalding came next. A messy, hairy mess. We dunked the pig, head-first into the scalding hot water for about 3 minutes before using the tractor to lift her back into the air again. Using paint scrapers and our hands, we began pulling out clumps of coarse hair and scraping down the skin. Scott’s paint scraper was very sharp and he accidently sliced into the fat on one side of the belly. We were a bit more cautious after that. Scraping took many dips in the barrel of hot water. We had a 20 gallon pot of water heating up on a propane element that Scott usually uses for beer-brewing. We added to the water in the barrel a few times to keep it hot. Some areas were really easy to scrape. Others, like the forehead and the elbows and the ears took a little more work. All in all, I think scalding and scraping took two hours.  I’d say we got about 90 to 95 percent of all the hair off the pig before firing up the blow torch.

And then we fired up the blow torch. There’s nothing quite like the smell of burning hair. We used the hose to spray down the pig before making the first cuts. We want to keep piggy nice and clean. Dave climbed up a ladder to reach the anus. He used a short and sharp knife to cut entirely around the anus. He had to cut in to the pig more than I thought he would to separate the anus entirely. Once it was free, Scott tied it off to keep everything in so it would not taint the meat. Dave made the incision, starting at the lower end of the anus and slicing straight down the pig’s belly to the ribs. He cut carefully and had to make several slices to get through all the fat. He was also very careful and did not slice into any of the innards. With the pig hanging head down, the offal (guts) easily spill out of the pig once the incision is made. We used a clean bucket to catch everything as it came out.

 

Scott had to reach in to the back of the pig to separate the intestines from the wall cavity.He carefully pulled the tied-off anus or bung through to keep it all in one piece. Everything went surprisingly well for our lack of experience with pigs. As the offal came out, I began separating it into bins, rinsing the desirable parts with the hose. I kept the liver, kidneys, kidney fat (leaf fat), small intestine, stomach, caul fat, heart and lungs. We did discard the spleen, which I just read is edible, so I’m bummed that we didn’t save it as well. I’m keeping the stomach to make Irish Haggis. I’ve read that lungs are absolutely delicious in several dishes, or just boiled and pan-fried. The liver will be used in a terrine or pate, the intestine for sausage casing, and caul fat! Oh I’ve read many beautiful recipes and ideas for this. It’s so pretty– a lacy, delicate, web of pig goodness.

Before finishing the cutting, Scott and Dave took the head off. It was pretty easy except for the difficult part…slicing through the spinal column. Once the head was off, Scott turned it upside down and tried to take out the tongue. We found out that the bullet damaged the back part of the tongue, but I’m still hoping to use the front half.  Scott and Dave finished with a sawzall fitted with a bone blade to cut through all the ribs. They used it to cut the pig directly in two halves.

We hosed her down and hoisted the halves up so coyotes cannot reach the pig overnight as it cools in the open. Tonight’s low will be around 30 degrees, perfect for cooling a pig for butchering. More tomorrow on our great pig adventures!

First post: It’s Pig Week!

Scott got the idea about a month ago to get a pig and butcher it on the farm. Well, we currently have a 200 pound sow out in the barnyard and a stack of books on butchering and charcuterie on the kitchen table. I’ll be using this blog to capture all of our work this week. We plan to make several sausages, including blood sausage, prosciutto, pancetta, as well as several types of terrines, head cheese, etc. Personally, I am most interested in eating the unusual parts of the pig: ears, lungs, tongue, and skin. Did you know it’s illegal to sell pig lungs in the USA? I hear they are quite tasty! I’ll let you know…with photos for proof.

Here’s a rough schedule for the week:

• Monday: Get Pig
• Tuesday: Kill, bleed, scald and disembowel
• Wednesday: Begin Butchering
• Thursday: Butchering, Sausage making
• Friday: Wrap up, more sausage making