Category Archives: Pork

Meat, Pork

Pork Cutting: Leg Primal

2 Comments

Having divided the side of pork into primals, we will now deal with each primal in turn.  First the leg.

This is a whole leg of pork.  In the Austrian style, it was removed so that the entire hip bone was left within.  (In North America, the pig is usually divided so that part of the hip remains on the loin.)  Since the sirloin is defined as the loin section where the hip bone is, the entire sirloin is also still attached to this leg.  But we’ll talk about that later.

Whole leg of pork

First we remove the trotter.  The joint between the foot and the hock is a bit funny.  On the lower, hind side of the joint there is a long … Continue reading.

Meat, Pork

Pork Cutting: Primals

4 Comments

This is something I’ve been meaning to write for a while: a series of posts on cutting pigs.

Like many Button Soup entries, the next few posts will be nit-picky, unnecessarily detailed, and lengthy.  Oh: and graphic.

 

Regional Pork Cutting Traditions: American v. Austrian

There really is no wrong way to take apart a pig, so long as you end up with the cuts you want to cook or cure.  There are, however, many traditional methods.  References like Larousse describe the American, British, and French traditions, though there are countless others.  In Canada we use a system almost identical to the American.

When I was cooking in Austria last summer, I came across some fantastic cuts of pork that … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Ham, Meat, Pork

Easter Ham 2012: Brine Injection

6 Comments

Injecting brine into a hamI like roasting large joints of meat.  The largest that I typically cook is the Easter ham, which is the better part of a pig’s hind leg.  This year’s fresh leg was fourteen and a half pounds.

In years past I’ve had problems with brine penetration.  Though I made the brine with the proper concentration of curing salt, and fully submerged the leg for the recommended week, when I carved the ham I found a patch of grey pork in the centre.  The year after that I brined the ham for a few extra days, but it still wasn’t pink all the way through.

This year I bought a syringe for injecting brine from  Hendrik’s.  It holds 2 fl. oz, … Continue reading.

Bacon, Charcuterie, Meat, Pork

Bacon

6 Comments

The word “bacon” usually refers to pork belly that has been cured and then smoked.  An exception is back bacon, which is cured pork loin. “Canadian bacon” is what Americans call back bacon that has been smoked.

Below are some notes on making bacon at home.

 

A Quick Tour of the Pork Belly

Before I started buying pork by the side, I ordered slabs of belly from Irvings Farm Fresh.  A 5 lb slab was typically around $25.

Below is a slab of pork belly.  You’re looking at the inside of the pig; the opposite side is covered with skin.  The right side of this slab would have connected to the front shoulder of the hog.  The left … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Pork, Sausages

Beginner’s Sausage-Making

16 Comments

A detailed introduction to sausage-making at home: ingredients, equipment, theory, and procedures.

What are sausages?

Sausages are ground meat, usually stuffed into a casing, though there are certain sausages that aren’t in casings.  For instance there are sausage “patties” and sausages en crepinette, which are patties wrapped in caul fat.  For now let’s be content to say that sausages are ground meat stuffed into casings.

Why do we grind meat?

1.  To tenderize

Meat is made of fibers that are surrounded by connective tissue, which are then bundled together in more connective tissue.  Highly exercised muscles tend to be higher in connective tissue.  Examples include:

  • on a pig: shoulder, hock, neck
  • on a cow: chuck, brisket, shortrib, shank
  • on
… Continue reading.
Charcuterie, Ham, Pork

On Ham Hocks

7 Comments

A fresh hockTraditionally, in North America the hock is a section of the front arm bone of the pig.  On one end the elbow joint is severed.  On the other, where the arm of the pig meats the body, a cut is made and the arm bone is sawed through.  So on one end of the hock there is a clean joint, and on the other the circular cross-section of a bone.

In traditional British butchery it is the analogous section from the hind leg that is called the hock; that from the front was known as the hand.

Nowadays, whether taken from the forearm or the hind leg, both cuts are considered hocks.  They are almost always processed into ham, that … Continue reading.

Bacon, Charcuterie, Pork

Back Bacon

4 Comments

In the States this preparation is called Canadian bacon, but we usually call it back bacon.  It’s more or less the same process as regular bacon, only done to a section of the loin instead of the belly.  There’s an old style of back bacon from eastern Ontario called peameal bacon, in which a cured section of loin is rolled in peameal (crushed split-peas) before being smoked.  Peameal bacon is still made down east, though nowadays cornmeal is used.

Back bacon is usually made from the eye of loin: the large, round muscle often made into centre-cut pork chops.  You can also use the rib- and sirloin-ends of the loin, which have more fat and flavour than the centre.  I … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Ham, Pork

Bath Chaps, Revisited

2 Comments

A while back I wrote a post on cold-cut Bath chaps: a boned-out pig’s head, cured, rolled around the tongue, tied, poached, and sliced.   While I was extremely happy with the look of those Bath chaps, they were pretty bland.  I figure that the cure leached into the poaching liquid.

I had another go at the chaps with this fall’s pig.  This time, instead of using a whole head, I used only one jowl, cured, and wrapped around the tongue.

After rolling and tying, I seared the meat over high heat.  Once chilled, I vacuum-packed the chaps and simmered them for two or three hours.  This was not proper sous-vide: though the meat was vacuum-packed, it wasn’t cooked in … Continue reading.

Canadian, Pork

Scrunchions

9 Comments
Scrunchions and sea salt

These are scrunchions.  They’re a bit like pork rinds.

“Pork rind” simply means pork skin.  It can refer to the fresh, raw skin cut from a side of pork, but more commonly it means pig skin that has been rendered and fried crisp.  It is actually the same as crackling, though commercially-produced pork rinds are much more delicate than the crackling that develops on oven-roasted pork.

Scrunchions are made by a similar process, but they consist of pork fat, not skin.  I know it sounds funny that deep-frying fat results in a crispy treat, but raw animal fat also contains a good deal of connective tissue that holds the fat cells in place.  When you fry strips of raw, … Continue reading.

Pork

October Kills its Pig

7 Comments

Everybody rejoices when November kills its pig.
-an inscription on the Münster Cathedral

A side of pork from Nature's Green AcresEdmonton gets cold enough to butcher outdoors a bit sooner than Westphalia, so our version of the inscription would have October killing the hog.

This year Lisa and I bought a side of pork from Nature’s Green Acres.  I cut up our meat at Kevin’s, on what he and his family call Pig Day.  While the majority of the pork was wrapped and frozen, there was also some curing, smoking, and grinding, processes that have come to typify the season.

Brine-Curing

Processing a side of pork is made less daunting by the presence of a brine bucket.  Certain pieces can go straight from the cutting board … Continue reading.