Curing Bacon

Curing bacon is one of those things I've always wanted to try but never got round to. 

After the pig butchery weekend I decided it was time to take some of that lovely Berkshire pig to the next level and make bacon! 

I chose three joints that I thought would make nice streaky and back bacon. 

 I made things a little harder for myself by making my own cure, I brought the salt, saltpeter and brown sugar to do the mix.

Unfortunately the book I have only has imperial measurements in and my brain wasn't working well that night so I was really struggling to work out how much cure I needed per lb of meat! I got there in the end but metric or cup measures are so much easier! Funny because I'll quite happily use feet and inches for measurements. 

 I made a salt brine to start with to clean the meat.

The Joints only floating in this for ten minutes then dried off on some chopping boards. 

I then got the salt cure ready and weighed out enough for each joint. 

The joints with the cure rubbed all over then get placed in a freezer bag in the fridge. I think it could have happily gone just in the shed to be honest as it was plenty cool enough when I did it. 

After five days these came out, got washed off and then got hung in the shed for a couple of weeks to let the cure penetrate further in.

I tried them with some trepidation.

 I'd always heard that home cured bacon was far too salty and horrible. Not this though! This was lovely, it certainly had a more meaty taste than we've had for a while and there is a fair amount of fat on it as well (as you can see in the picture!) but it fried up a treat!

So far we've eaten one and a half of the bacon joints. They've only been in the fridge for five days, whilst in the bags curing, and the rest of the time just hanging there with no refrigeration, well over a month old now from when they were butchered out of the pig.

We're so dependant on our fridges and freezers I find it amazing to have meat out like this and it still be completely edible after this time. No dates on this meat, just my senses to tell me if it's okay or not.

Skills like this are useful to learn for off grid living and food preservation is one of the key skills to self sufficiency. I think to read about it is fine but it's far better to put it into practice. I'll be doing this again even if I have to buy belly pork to do it with, I've also been reading about lamb bacon....

Anyone else cure their own meat?

Have any recipes you think I should try?

Sausage Making

This is a rather late follow on post from the Pig Butchery Weekend I posted a couple of weeks ago. 

 As we were split into two groups on the Sunday the second group went and finished the butchery while a few of us set about getting ready for sausage making.
We minced up all the pork we'd trimmed off the animal and the shoulders we'd cut up as well. There was a fair bit.

 We then measured it out and added it to the first rusk and seasoning pack. The first one was easy, 4kg of meat, packet of rusk and water, ready to go.

 The second batch took a bit more thinking about, as we had a packet of plain rusk and had to work out the seasoning quantities and the water. Should have been simple but for some reason we were all scratching our heads at one point!

 The other guys came in at lunch time and we started making sausages. The skins were natural casings and had been soaking all morning, but one lot of them was quite hard to tread on the pipe of the sausage stuffer.

 Alan made it look easy and did the magic twist and tying of the fat sausages as well!

 We all got a good share of sausages and mine went into the freezer as soon as I got home.

They didn't stay there for long though! Looking forward to making some with my own animals one day, great way to use up lesser cuts of meat.

Anyone else make their own sausages?

Pig Butchery Weekend

#####This post contains pictures of dead animals#####

I received a message the other day from a group I'm a member of asking me if I'd be interested in attending a butchery weekend.

The idea of the group is a great one, to share our skills and help each other learn to become more self reliant. 

The weekend would consist of butchering two pigs, one roe deer and some pheasants, we'd be shown how to do it by an ex butcher who grew up doing it, with lots of hands on experience for everyone as well. 

The amazing thing was that the only cost was for our share of the meat that we got to take home at the end. 

The pigs were some beautiful rare breed Berkshire pigs from the smallholding we were staying at and the deer from a local game dealer.

 It was amazing to get some hands on experience, I do a fair bit of butchery but to do it with someones guidance was so much better than a YouTube video.

 I particularly enjoyed the deboning of joints, such a handy skill and so hard to do to start with.

 I also managed to do the butchers knot. Something that I've never been able to do! I must make sure I practice it now and keep the skill in my mind!

There was such a lot of meat on the pigs and plenty of opportunity for us all to have a go. It was also with a great group of lads, lots of laughing and joking around.

We were set up in army style tents and did start to loose light. so we moved outside and then on to using a tilly lamp (I was impressed with how much light they give off!) Here we did the roe deer and the pheasants.

We had a feast that night of meat cooked over a BBQ and then Kevin (the host a different Kevin to me!) made two stews, one pheasant and one of deer as well as a huge tray of crackling! I was stuffed and went to bed full!

Our accommodation for the weekend was the same tents that we'd done the butchery in.
I was surprisingly warm the whole night, although I was the subject of much Micky taking when people realised that I had taken my pillow with me! I might be outside but I will have some comfort!

The next day we went on to sausage making, but I'll leave that for another post!
A great weekend though and I made lots of friends.

BBQ Pulled pork

I decided to make it up to my wife over the trotter meal a few weeks ago. I cook a BBQ pulled pork shoulder.

I'm going to write it here as I was quite pleased with it and it tasted amazing, I couldn't find a recipe I liked so I just made one up, normally this is a recipe for disaster...

Not a great picture but it tasted good!

1 pork shoulder (mine was de-boned)
2 onions,
5 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon of cumin
4 teaspoons of paprika,
1 teaspoon of salt
black pepper
1 teaspoon of mustard powder
vegetable oil
1 carton of Tomato passata
1/2 a cup of cider vinegar

I fried up the onions and the garlic in a frying pan until soft then added them to the pot.

Mix all the spices together and then rub all over the meat, then brown the meat off in the pan.

Put the meat in the pot and then add all the other ingredients. Get a cup of water and deglaze the frying pan with it then add it to the pot as well. 

I cooked mine in a slow cooker for about 7 hours on low, turning it up to high for the last hour. I also removed some of the sauce and reduced this down separately to make a thick BBQ sauce to have on top. The whole shoulder pulled apart with a couple of forks when it was ready to eat.

I served it with roast potatoes and veg the first night, then it went on to make some amazing sandwiches the next day and the following night I fried it all back up, added a tin of red kidney beans and a tin of tomatoes and served it with rice - another great meal! 

Who else likes it when the leftovers are almost better then the original meal!