Progressive Pig Pickin'

[The Nid Hog]

I got invited to a pig pickin' on Memorial Day. That's not so unusual, but this is different than any of the other ones that I've gone to. My friend got a bunch of people together and we butchered the pigs Wednesday night and last night. Both nights, we finished up with all of the different cuts laid out on the table. You could pick what you wanted, take it home and make something to bring to the party. Guys snapped up the ribs and the picnic pretty quickly, but I decided to take the belly. While we were picking through the cuts, one of the guys rolled out a vintage sausage maker that he had restored and knocked together a bunch of sausage meat too. So I came back with a nice big slab of meat and a bag of sausage.

Another one of the guys there is a chef at a high-end Italian restaurant. He gave an inpromptu class on curing pork, so maybe I'll give that a try the next time we do this.

 

[redwing]

mmmmm future bacon.....

 

[Jim]

My grandmother talked about hog killing day and the party atmosphere and sense of community it built.
The experience of animal to food is one that is diminishing rapidly in society, the distance from the land to the plate has grown.
I am very encouraged by some recent trends like your experience and the field to table movement/eat local. Whats your plans for the belly?
Enjoy the party.

 

[The Nid Hog]

I'm going to simmer it in sake, soy sauce and brown sugar. It's a great dish that I came across in Okinawa. I often substitute something like country ribs when I make it, but it should really be made with the belly. Here's a recipe that I posted a while ago:

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php?t=138048&highlight=okinawa

Part of the idea was to get people to bring something other than BBQ (although that would be plenty for me!). I'm eager to see what other people bring.

Jim, you would have been impressed by the knifework of the guy who hosted the get-together. He is the head man at a very old local slaughterhouse. Absolutely unbelievable.

 

[Obsessed]

When you say "butchered" does that mean you guys actually slaughtered the pigs?

 

[The Nid Hog]

When you say "butchered" does that mean you guys actually slaughtered the pigs?

Yep. One of the ideas behind the whole thing was to give budding locavores a chance to see how the meat gets from farm to plate. I wasn't there for the actual slaughter, but the guys who were there then did it just like you would if you raised it yourself. By the time I got there, they had scalded him and removed all his bristles. I wished that I had gotten their earlier because I had hoped to make some blood pudding.

 

[professorchaos]

Pork belly is delicious. It would have been my first choice.

 

[Obsessed]

Yep. One of the ideas behind the whole thing was to give budding locavores a chance to see how the meat gets from farm to plate.

Wowie kazowie! And all this time I thought meat came from the supermarket!

 

[WastedResources]

Sounds like a cool experience. Perhaps we would all be a little less "piggish" if we understood how our food got to our table. I'm jealous.

 

[The Knize]

Wow, another side of The Nid Hog revealed! What a cool thing to do for Memorial Day.

Pork belly is fantastic.

It is a good and spiritual thing for us to truly participate these kind of thing. It is the source of what we eat. There is a great book that talks about honoring the source of our food through butching and through the preparation of seven different dishes from one lamb--Francis Capon "Supper of the Lamb." It influenced my cooking and thoughts on food in all respects!

Good stuff!

 

[DFrancis]

Pork belly is delicious. It would have been my first choice.

+1 so very good

 

[an0nymous]

That sounds fantastic
Too bad there's not time enough to do the cured meats
...mmmmm...lardo

 

[DavyRay]

That is a very cool idea for a pig picking. I've not heard of anyone doing it that way. Let us know how the party goes.

 

[The Nid Hog]

Well, I went to the party today and it was pretty cool to see what everybody else made. From pasta to pozole, people came up with some nice ways to use their share of the pork. One of my friends made a fantastic pate that was kind of like a pork haggis. My simmered pork belly turned out pretty well too. A good time was had by all.

 

[Jim]

Sounds like a great time!

 

[Copycat]

Pork belly is delicious. It would have been my first choice.

+1 as well, belly gives the BEST Crackling, IMO anyway, hell I just love Crackling in general.

 

[luvmysuper]

+1 as well, belly gives the BEST Crackling, IMO anyway, hell I just love Crackling in general.

When you get to be my age, you don't say things like this, because it means something else entirely.

Sounds like a great time was had by all.
Used to do the spit roasts over wood fire in the Philippines quite frequently, but never did one like this.