Do you butcher your own pigs? How do you store the meat?

[Cornish Heritage]

It turned out real nice! We just had a delicious ham for Christmas dinner and have been enjoying lots of sausage and bacon!

So glad your hard work was worth it.

Liz

 

[andrew6d9]

cure ham in all in one peice

 

[Cornish Heritage]

cure ham in all in one piece

As far as I know you can only cure the hams in one piece if you use nitrates. If, like us, you do not want nitrates then you need to cut them up smaller.

Liz

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

Liz, I know this is an old post, but can you not just cut the ham and freeze it? You have to either brine or use nitrates?

Thanks a bunch for your expertise!

 

[Cornish Heritage]

can you not just cut the ham and freeze it?

Absolutely! BUT it is not really ham then. The brining/curing is what changes its flavor & of course if you use nitrates that is what enables it to stay "pink." Roast Leg of pork is scrumptious but it will not taste like ham. We normally cut our hams into steaks but this time on the small pig we left the leg whole for roasts.

Liz

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

Gotcha! Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Hillsvale]

Hi there,

We butcher & process our own pork on a regular basis & LOVE it! Until this year we have always waited for the weather to cool (flies gone) before processing & hanging in a cool place but this summer we invested in a large commercial refrigerator. What a blessing that has been! Now we can process at any time of the year

We have found that pork is better if left to hang for at least 4-7 days - it will then melt in your mouth. SO what we do is kill, skin, gut & hose off the first day. We also cut the carcass into quarters. This is new for us this year but we have found that quarters are SO much easier to handle than halves. Those halves can be heavy!

After the hanging time we bring the pork in & cut as we want it cut. The roasts etc get wrapped & put in the freezer. The "scrappy" bits get put in a big pot ready for making into sausage. We tried links one time but what a pain. It's a lot of work & really not worth in in our opinion. SO we now grind up the pork, add seasoning, put through the grinder again & then wrap in 2lb packages.

DON'T forget the lard! This is one of the best fats. It is very easy to render if you put it through the grinder first.

Bacons get brined for 5-7 days. We do not do nitrates of any kind so our bacon is just brined in salt water. We take it out of the brine, rinse it off, let it cool & then slice.

Due to us not wanting any nitrates in our meat hams were a challenge & this is a word of caution to all out there. If you are going to keep your hams whole you MUST use nitrates & MUST inject the solution all the way through. If you do not, you will have a problem. We used to cut our hams into smaller pieces & brine them the same way as our bacon but just didn't like the results. We now cut our hams into gammon steaks which is much to our liking

I know nothing about dry curing.

We have smoked the meat in the past - smoker broke so have to build another one - but smoked is GOOD!

Liz

Geez its not to hard to pic out the brits in amoungst this whole lot!

We have our pigs commerically killed and processed but we also cut all our hams into the gammon steaks as well.

 

[Cornish Heritage]

Geez its not to hard to pic out the brits in amoungst this whole lot!

Hee Hee! Richard likes to proudly say that we are 100% British - pedigrees If you ask most people what they are they say they are half Irish, half Scot etc Not us! Just pure Brits enjoying living life in the USA

 

[Hillsvale]

Geez its not to hard to pic out the brits in amoungst this whole lot!

Hee Hee! Richard likes to proudly say that we are 100% British - pedigrees If you ask most people what they are they say they are half Irish, half Scot etc Not us! Just pure Brits enjoying living life in the USA

Yes my Simon is from Herne Bay, my family from Blackpool... Simon arrived in Nova Scotia after a 12 year stint in Denmark...

 

[Royd Wood]

Hello Blackpool - Manchester calling - any pork pie around your way