Righteous Pork: Breaking Down a Hog
One early Saturday morning. Five women. Nine men. A brewery in an industrial part of San Jose. A pig. Some salt. A few spices. A lot of sharp knives. Some band-aids. These were the elements of one grand "Big Pig Day."
Periodically throughout the last nine months I have gathered with more or less a dozen people to learn the culinary art of charcuterie. It has been one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. Our first class covered fresh sausages and terrines. We moved on to confits and salt cures (as in homemade bacon). In our third class we made dried and fermented salamis (and started a blog to discuss our success/failure/questions: www.meatclub.org). And finally on Saturday we came together again for the epic and extraordinary breaking down of a whole hog.
The pig was raised in Hollister by Sandy Dietzel, who joined us for the day. It weighted over 300 lbs (live weight). On Thursday the pig was slaughtered, scalded, bled, and gutted. It was sawn in half from nose to tail and delivered in two beautiful, clean, pristine pieces.
Our teacher, Peter Licht, gave a brief demonstration on the first half.
He removed the tenderloin (right above his left hand in the picture), part of which we made for lunch and the part of which was used for lonzino. Next Peter showed us how to extract the leg. Sandy noticed that the color of the meat was very rosy which is a good sign that the animal was humanly slaughtered. She explained to us that pale "white" pork is a sign--especially in Berkshire and Hampshire breeds, which have a "stress gene"--of anxiety and stress in the animal at the time of slaughter. "White" pork tends to be chewy and flavorless.
After the hind leg was removed we moved to the foreleg (picnic ham) and separated it from the midsection. Peter showed us the large belly area, while we stood drop-jawed dreaming of bacon.
At this point, we broke off into small groups or as individuals and began to tackle the finer tasks. Once the foot was removed, I prepped one of the hind legs for prosciutto. I removed the aitch bone and cleaned up the meat and fat around the ball joint. I was pretty focussed on my dream job, so I didn't get to see too much of what others were doing, but I know they were breaking down the other half of the pig; separating the lean meat and the fat for the sausage we were to make later in the day; cutting up chucks of belly to prep for bacon; cutting chunks of backfat up for lardo and smaller pieces of fat for sausage; removing jowls for guanciale; and putting aside ribs, head, skin, and feet to take home. The one other thing I helped with--no, I mean watched two other people do--was search for the elusive coppa. "Real" coppa is made with a whole muscle from the shoulder. It is difficult to find and remove intact. The process was one of the most hilarious mini-meat-adventures I've ever witnessed.
Here's Peter pointing out the general vicinity of the muscle in the shoulder.
Yep, it's somewhere in there.
In the end Jamie and Pierre identified 3 or 4 pieces that were "definitely" it. One of those was (accidentally?!) sliced in half.
Once everything was trimmed, we got busy seasoning the whole cuts that would be cured: prosciutto, lardo, bacon, and guanciale.
The prosciutto was weighed,
and salted.
We then put both legs in a big, lidded plastic tub covered in salt. To follow our prosciutto adventures go to The Meat Club Charcuterie site.
We bagged all the lardo, bacon, guanciale, and coppa. Then we took a lunch break. To describe our lunch would involve a whole post in and of itself. But briefly, it included lots of meaty delights, including bacon (raw & cooked), rillettes, pork terrine, poultry pâté, seven-year-old boar prosciutto, goat sausage, duck prosciutto and all manner of salads and side dishes. Of course we ate the fresh tenderloin, cooked to perfection, and drank Peter's awesome beer.
After lunch we made all of the sausages: 25 lbs of fresh garlic sausage, 25 lbs tuscan salami, and about 15 lbs of genoa salami. We bagged it all, cleaned up, and split the spoils! I came home with coppa, 2 large tuscans, a genoa, lardo, guanciale, bacon, garlic sausage, leaf lard (for pastry), and a pig's foot. When you can't find me in the closet under the stairs in my garage ogling salami, you'll find me at Jim's house volunteering to babysit prosciutto..and drinking one of Peter's beers.
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