The Whole Hog Two Day Course

We have just finished our latest course - a two-day course on pork - its butchery and charcuterie. We had 10 people attending, ranging from pig keepers, chefs, foodies and people looking to keep pigs.

Dan took Day 1 when he butchered a whole hog - one of our large kunes that had been grown on to 12 months so there was plenty of fat. Fat is essential for good charcuterie and this pig had plenty of it. The carcass weighed in at 86 kg. Once butchered, the belly, loin and legs were cured, using either a dry or wet cure. Everybody got to cure their own piece of bacon too. The belly was so large that we got 3 kg of pancetta as well as some streaky. A spicy cure was used on the cheek to produce guanciale. Later in the day we cooked the head for brawn, or to give it a more appealing name - pork terrine, and slow cooked some shoulder to make rillettes.

Day 2 was taken by Marc who started off with his superb hot water pastry for the pork pies. Then a sausage-making session with bangers and chorizo. Some of the pork and liver was used in a pate which was cooked in small terrines. Finally, each person made their own mini-pork pie which was cooked ready to be taken home.

The course looked at what could be made from a single pig, so we started with 86 kg carcass and produced the following:
Leg - three joints with were placed in a sweet wet cure, second leg was cured whole
Hocks - dry cured
Two tenderloins
One loin was cut into two joints, a rack of loin and a French trimmed loin
One loin was cured for back bacon
One belly was made into pancetta and the other streaky bacon
Shoulders were boned and diced ready for processing into sausages (12 kg of trad. breakfast sausage and 11 chorizos), pate, pork pies and rillettes, plus a couple of kilos of mince for making into other products such as burgers or faggots.
Spare ribs (eaten for lunch!)
Head was cooked together with one of the tongues and the meat used in pork terrine
Pluck - liver was used in pate, and the rest made into dog biscuits

Everybody had a lovely time and went home with a large bag of goodies. Best wishes to Louise and Mark Earl who are off to Bulgaria to start a new life as smallholders, and to Maureen who is starting up a new sausage and pie making enterprise in Jamaica.

There will be a three-day butchery and charcuterie course in October.