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The Pig Adventure Threak - Day by Day - Updated with all four days!!

Korben

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Originally Posted by saint
Truly incredible. I'd love to spend a few days learning how to properly butcher and preserve a hog. I hope you don't have any problems with customs, it'd be a sin to waste that amazing-looking food.

Get a pig and this Book. Thats what I am going to do on several recommendations from friends.
 

kwilkinson

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Originally Posted by Korben
Get a pig and this Book. Thats what I am going to do on several recommendations from friends.

I'd recommend supplementing that by taking a class or watching videos or something. When it comes to butchery, sometimes you really can't learn just from reading. You need to see it done, to see this joint break, to see that bloodline, etc. Unless that book has a million pictures in it that I didn't see.
 

foodguy

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i've take a couple of classes, but i ordered that book. looks like a great one. if you really get into it, look here and here.
 

acidboy

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Originally Posted by kwilkinson
I'd recommend supplementing that by taking a class or watching videos or something. When it comes to butchery, sometimes you really can't learn just from reading. You need to see it done, to see this joint break, to see that bloodline, etc. Unless that book has a million pictures in it that I didn't see.

+1... having seen animals getting butchered you won't learn that from just reading.
 

itsstillmatt

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Originally Posted by Huntsman
I haven't been hanging around much of late, but I would have really not wanted to miss this thread. Matt, seriously man, this is incredible. There is so much to love here, not merely the work, but the honest treatment of the pig. And what I would give for one of you 'elegant sausages.' Thanks, Huntsman
I'm glad that the respect came through. I don't know how it did in pictures, but that was a big part of the learning experience, and was extremely important to the woman who taught us. It's really her tradition we shared, and that made it even more fun. We also spent the day after the pig ended with an Armagnac producer, actually eleveur, and tasted brandies from the entire 20th century. Not every year, but every decade at least. He had a similar respect for his brandies, his land etc. I think you'd have liked it. The cellar smelled like heaven.
 

voxsartoria

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Originally Posted by iammatt
I'm glad that the respect came through. I don't know how it did in pictures, but that was a big part of the learning experience, and was extremely important to the woman who taught us. It's really her tradition we shared, and that made it even more fun.

We also spent the day after the pig ended with an Armagnac producer, actually eleveur, and tasted brandies from the entire 20th century. Not every year, but every decade at least. He had a similar respect for his brandies, his land etc. I think you'd have liked it. The cellar smelled like heaven.


Fwocker.


- B
 

Douglas

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Hey vox - in case you're brainstorming how to one-up this thread, may I humbly submit that you perform a similar rite of butchering and preservation but using FNB instead of a swine?
 

voxsartoria

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Originally Posted by Douglas
Hey vox - in case you're brainstorming how to one-up this thread, may I humbly submit that you perform a similar rite of butchering and preservation but using FNB instead of a swine?

It's not possible to one-up butchering a pig in the French countryside...maybe harvesting whale on a Japanese boat, but that is a no no.


- B
 

HORNS

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Thank you so much for sharing this experience with us. This just reminds me of how much most Americans have lost touch with the meat they eat.
 

Korben

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Originally Posted by kwilkinson
I'd recommend supplementing that by taking a class or watching videos or something. When it comes to butchery, sometimes you really can't learn just from reading. You need to see it done, to see this joint break, to see that bloodline, etc. Unless that book has a million pictures in it that I didn't see.

That would be great. However, no classes are offered around my parts that I can find. It does have some pretty good pictures.

Originally Posted by foodguy
i've take a couple of classes, but i ordered that book. looks like a great one.
if you really get into it, look here and here.


I really does tell you have to take an animal from "pen to freezer." also, if you got the room gives you a nice somkehouse design.
 

foodguy

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i'm sure that's awesome stuff, but $12 a pound for lard? I guess I'd rather see that than $12 a pound for an absolutely useless tenderloin, but still...
 

emptym

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I love it and am jealous.

A friend was telling me today that acc. to Chinese astrology, bad luck during the year of the tiger is counteracted by pigs, particularly for those born in a year of the tiger. She recommended wearing a pig amulet. Not sure what effect your experience might have! But I vote positive.
 

eg1

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Pardon my pig-ignorance, but where is this happening? I am guessing France, but which region? Gascony?

Originally Posted by pebblegrain
envious. everyone should do something like this once, just to get an appreciation of where food like this comes from.

I worked in a meat-packing plant for 4 summers (plus weekends in winter) when I was in high school. Swine/Cattle walked in and went out on hooks or in boxes. Not quite the same thing as this little peasant adventure, to be sure, and precious little about "respect" for the pigs ... that was an education in more ways than one not soon to be forgotten.
plain.gif


Maybe I'm too recently escaped from "the land" (in my case, rural New Brunswick) to see this sort of thing untainted by a whiff of Marie Antoinette in a milk-maid's dress -- but that's a reflection of my own cynical peevishness rather than any failing of Matt's or his family.

Ugh, do our pettinesses ever subside?
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confused.gif
 

ohm

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Originally Posted by iammatt
adventures in pigland

Great thread! I assume you had the ham from last year? Do you know what purpose the ash covering serves?
 

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