Porky pork pork pork

[greenstorm]

Huge relief: the butcher says he can come on the 29th, when Josh is here. This means I have some time to select who goes during the week before, then it'll be cold enough to do a bunch of butchering for the several days after. I want to can a bunch, then do a bunch of butchering for cuts for folks, and then maybe a round of charcuterie.

Tonight I should taste the canned al pastor I did, to see if I want to do more of that.

I should schedule the piglets in to smithers.

Comments

[amazon_syren]

Fantastic!

(What kind of charcuterie do you want to do?)

[greenstorm]

I'm on the fence about that. Typically I separate the back legs into two or three muscles and do those three as "prosciuttini" and then do the back-of-neck muscles (the coppa), so that's a bunch of whole-muscle cures. I've also been collecting jowls (guanciale) to cure but have only done a couple so far; the rest are in the freezer. Those all need to be in a cool space in the cure, though, and I really need to decommission my charcuterie fridge because the noise is really bothering me.

Another alternative is to do dry sausage; if I cure, smoke, and dry it then it doesn't need fridge space and can either live in the freezer or outside in a box until spring (it's cold out there). In the past I've had issues with dry sausage going rancid fairly quickly, like at 4-6 months: pork fat is pretty delicate if exposed to air and light. Smoking them should prevent that somewhat, as should keeping them in the freezer in a black bag.

I would really like to make a canned-- I don't know, spam-type thing I guess? Ground smoky thing, maybe terrine is a nicer word for it? Where I can invert it out of a jar in one piece, slice it and fry the slices, or cut it into cubes for hash. I can't find a safe canning recipe for that, though: ground meat should be canned loose or in patties, it sounds like, and neither of those appeal to me.

As for flavours, right now I'm really into sichuan peppercorns, wild madagascar peppercorns (neither of those are actually related to either black pepper or capsicum), and calabrian peppers (actually are capsicum!). Also a big fan of juniper and black pepper.

I was also thinking of trying a riff on corned beef, but haven't got super far on that one.

I... am not the biggest fan of the bacon off these pigs, or maybe it's just that I never actually fry up bacon if it's just me. Too much work. So I need to come up with something to do with pork bellies.