The Home Brewed Chef

[spiderwrangler]

I think Adam needs his own show on The Brewing Network!

'How to Dismantle a Carcass', with your host, GentleCuntPunch.

[Adam]

I think Adam needs his own show on The Brewing Network!

'How to Dismantle a Carcass', with your host, GentleCuntPunch.

I was going to have step by step pics and video to share, but my wife was watching the kids, so I was limited to the pics I could take. The nice thing about butchering your own animal is you get the cuts you want. For brevity you can separate the muscle groups into "roast" size cuts and deal with them later, giving you the option of having a roast or cutting into small steaks once thawed. I took one ham (thigh) and broke it down to the top round, bottom round, and sirloin tip. I took the other one and just boned it out as a whole ham. In the spring when maple syrup runs, we are going to hang it above the outdoor stove we have to render the syrup, so all that syrup vapor goodness is constantly surrounding the ham and being absorbed into the meat. Then roast it.

For the backstraps, I first removed the front quarters and boned those out for sausage and burgers. Then I cut the backstraps out but included the neck meat all the way down to the sirloin (top of the ham down by the pelvis). The backstraps were essentially about 3.5 feet long. I took one and cut in in thirds for roasts, then took the other one and made chops out of it. Mix of thin cut and thick cut, like 3 inches thick. Then I can butterfly the thick chops and stuff them or use them as a serving dish. I like to use the wide base to stand them on a plate with the open part facing upward, like a pair of labia. Then stick some little smokie sausages wrapped in bacon in there and drizzle a brown ale or Oktoberfest rendered into a sauce all over it.

The ribs were "redneck" style. Instead of separating the baby back ribs, short ribs, making cowboy pork chops (chop with a small bone to hang onto), I just grabbed the reciprocating saw and cut the slab of ribs off at the spine. This gave me two full slabs of ribs, which I cut each into thirds for space and serving considerations.

[spiderwrangler]

Have you done the ham over the syrup thing before? If not, I have concerns about it turning out as well as you imagine...

[Adam]

Sure did. Gave the flavor of maple syrup dripped gently over a ham steak, but was much more balanced as it was infused in the meat itself. When it's roasted, the outside gets a caramel flavor that is very complimentary to the natural sweetness of pork. We've bought the hams from the store in the past and did it, but this year it's from our own farm raised pig that I slaughtered and butchered. Just makes it a bit special.

Mine was a very small pig, the runt, and I got 61 lbs 11.5oz of meat divided as 38 lbs 5.3oz steaks, roasts, and chops with 23lbs 6.2oz of "scraps and fat" for sausage and burgers. For me, my wife, our 6yo son and 1.5yo daughter, that's plenty for the winter. Enough for a winter ration of pork until the next batch of pigs are ready for slaughter in the spring.

Here's one half of the meat. I bagged it up as I butchered, tossed it in the fridge to cool it, then processed and trimmed it. Cold meat is easier to cut and meat below 38 degrees keeps bacteria away for safety. It also makes for cleaner cuts so they look more presentable.


Here's the 23lbs of scraps and fat I have for burgers and sausage meat.


Here's a chunk of backstrap that I cut up for pork chops. I ended up trimming the top right part along the fat line away, then squaring off that tapered right side to square it up.


Then made my cuts for chop thickness. These are the thin chops. Not a lot of marbling in the meat, but I didn't grain the pig* before slaughter.


*Graining the pig means to change the diet to grain cereal right before slaughter. This week or two long diet allows the pig to bulk up and really fatten up, since the starches are stored as fat. This marbles the meat. Fat is flavor. The edge fat in a cut is important, but if you can marble the meat a bit, you'll get a bit more flavor.

[Adam]

Here's the ribs on the grill.


My wife's grilled with homemade BBQ sauce using the stock from boiling the meat off the bones.


Mine seasoned and grilled as is. I'm with Justin in that I like a dry rub or just simple salt seasoning instead of BBQ sauce.


Yes, that's a can of the red rocket. That's my macro swill I use to gauge cooking times on the grill. Put the meat on, drink one beer, flip, drink one beer, and done.

[spiderwrangler]

You curing your ham first? My concern was that the steam off the syrup isn't going to give you much flavor, just drip pork drips into your syrup...

[Adam]

Yeah, I cured it first, then did the syrup thing. Trying to figure out the best way to make it work. We had the ham close to the syrup and had a cover over it so the vapors would stay around the ham longer.

I got the idea from some TV program I saw about some restaurant in Canada that got their syrup from the trees around the place and processed it themselves. The owner hung a ham roast in the syrup boiling shed and let the vapors surround the ham while they were reducing the syrup. Said it tasted great. I had to try it. I realize he had a lot more syrup boiling than I did and certainly for a longer period of time that me.

[snowcapt]

Roast the carcass and mak a huge batch of stock.
That rules!