In our effort to use every last bit of the pig (and my new found passion for smoking meats) we decided to try a couple new things this year.
No not together, that would be gross, but if you don't have a passion for home made goodness and pork you might find this post a little gross anyway.
We used the "good" bones for smoking and made lard with the excess trimmings.
I'll start with smoking the bacon bones.
Now the "good" bones were those which still had a bit of meat left on them and lots of joints. I'm mainly talking about the spine but there were some others that just had the right feel about them.
So I started by cutting them to the right size that I was after and we added a bit of all purpose seasoning to them with some brown sugar for sweetness. We had never done this before and were too tired to do much research so we were really just winging it.
I put them in my new smoker once the temperature had stabilised at about 140 C (not so much the target temperature, but this was what the smoker happened to stabilise at).
Now this was at the end of a long day of tying sausages, and what better way to spend a wintery Saturday night than sitting outside in the backyard in the dark watching bones smoke. A nice scotch and cigar always helps the cause though!
After about an hour they looked something like this. I'm still learning to use this smoker so I had to keep repositioning the bones to make sure they cooked evenly.
After 2.5 hours we thought they were done after they seemed cook. This was determined by the wife and I, through the scientific process of tasting, looking blankly at each other and muttering "I think they are done".
Well for a first effort I was very pleased with them although next time I'd like to get more smoke into them. They were then bagged individually and frozen to save for future meals.
The next process was another new one for us. While my parents had done this many times with my Nonni (grandparents) many years ago, we have never tried this at home. This is one I do recommend you try at home though.
Making Lard.
Now after we made this and joked about how healthy cooking pig fat within pig fat was for us I did do a bit of research into the benefits of lard.
Surprisingly lard in itself isn't that bad for you, and probably better than a lot of the processed stuff we put in our bodies. Before I get carried away and turn this into a research paper, I'll just save myself the time and just say; Google it.
We start with all the excess fat we didn't want in our sausage meat, skin and bones.
This is all poured into a big pot and cooked on low for about 5 hours. It's not something you can rush as the fat simply needs the time to render down. Importantly constant stirring is required otherwise it will burn and stick to the bottom of the pot.
After about 5 hours of slow cooking you end up with something looking like this.
While the idea of slow cooked pig fat might not sound - or possibly even look/smell appetising - this is a great time to get some bread, pull out a few bones and get your cardiologists number ready on speed dial.
Once you are over the guilt then you need to get that liquid gold out of that pot and into some jars.
Make sure you strain it first as you don't want little bits of meat mixed in the lard.
And of course once it cools it looks like the product we are familiar with.
So while we were new to these two processes both of them came out a big success which we will definitely be repeating next year.
The last part of the pig weekend was making the capocollo and pancetta which were just hung up on the weekend. Post should be up soon.
Not Your Average Joe
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