Meat Day Results

Sometimes folks ask me "How much meat do you get from a home grown hog?"  The answer is... a lot.

Pork chops... lots and lots of pork chops

For a more technical explanation you can check out this sheet from the Univ of Kentucky. The pork we butchered was about 180lbs live weight so after you get the skin and head off, the guts out, and adjust for the bones and stuff....I'd guess we got over 100lbs of useful stuff. Remember tho that we consider "useful stuff" alot of the trimmings and bones for the dogs. I canned 7 quarts of stock and trimmings and had a couple of gallon bags of bones 'n stuff for the dogs.

This side of pork is tiny compared to the monstrous ones from last year.

I'm not very good at record keeping but I tried to write down the number of packages that I sealed up for the freezer. This is not "by the pound" this is by the package. The only poundage I tracked was the ground meat so I'd have one pound (and a few half pound) packages. I also weighed one pound packages of "stew meat." To be truthful this is not bound for stew - more likely for stir fry and also "Hey I just want meat fried up in a pan."

This shoulder yielded a lot of stew meat, ground pork, osso bucco, and bones for the dogs.

We did a few things differently this time. First we didn't send out the hams or bacons to be smoked by our local guy. Mostly because we'll have bigger and better hams later in the fall and also because the bacons were so puny that I'm going to do them myself. We also want to try and smoke one of the bigger "fresh hams" as a roast. That is, I'm not going to cure it, just smoke it. (If I can keep it lit - stupidest joke ever. Ha!)

Saddest little bacon ever. I'm going to cure it for pancetta.

Also I've stopped writing what some of the cuts are on the freezer bags - instead I write what I'm going to do with them. For instance I had several belly pieces that I designated for char siu. And the cutlets and medallions could be from either the shoulder or the hams... but I'll use the cutlets for scallopini dishes.

Here is my list of freezer packages (not pounds) from our pork:

3    char siu (belly pieces for grilling)
5    riblets  (trimmed and "extra" ribs for snack sized ribs)
1    rack of ribs
12  chops (extra thick from the loin, sirloin, and shoulder)
3    cutlets
10 ground pork  (7 one pound, 3 half pound)
1    medallions
2    Osso buco (hocks and legs, bone-in cut to small portions)
1    pancetta (this is a belly piece but not big enough for bacon)
4    bacons (1 nice sized, 3 small)
4    roast  (3, 4, and 5 pounds boneless and bone-in)
7    stew meat

And this does not include all the pieces that I fried up as the day went along...or what we had for dinner. The cutting took me about a day and then I did the grinding the next morning. I still have a bucket of miscellaneous parts to cook down and also a small bucket of fat to render as lard.  All in all we are very happy with our meat haul.

I use these little "riblets" for making Chinese 5 Spice ribs like this. Delish and easy!

But not as happy as the dogs. Zander and Kai had a front row seat to The Meat Show the whole day. The Bubby's head nearly exploded from watching all that meat....and he was drunk just from the smell of it. It was so bad I had to put them outside in the dog yard for part of the day.

And when I gave him his first real bones...... you'd have thought that pup would have passed clean out. I swear his eyes rolled back in his head.  And now that he knows I am The Bringer of Bones... I assure you that I have his full attention.

That's The Meat Day wrap up everyone!  Any specific questions? I'm still working on getting a new camera but I was able to get a few snaps before it died again.

Happy Friday everyone! Are you eating meat today? I know I am!