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Choosing cuts of pork


CtznCane

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We are looking at buying a whole hog. I know with buying a side of beef there are multiple choices ie: steaks vs roasts, etc.... If you buy a whole hog are there many options? What are the options? Also I don't want to be wasteful so will probably need to be on guard to tell them not to waste anything. Ideas?

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You shouldn't need to waste anything, really. With the head you could make brawn, a couple of different cured meats, slow-roasted cheeks or several other things. The neck is a very versatile cut: use it in braises or slow roast it. Fergus Henderson has a lovely--and much-copied--recipe for mustard-crumbed pig tails, so you can even use that.

On one of the River Cottage DVDs there's a hour-long video called 'a pig in a tail'--that has all sorts of handy information.

Chris Taylor

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Will you buy it precut? That's how I got mine and I just went with the suggestions. In hindsight I'd probably try to customize, I got some odd cuts (country steak or something like that) that were really not all that useful. I'd probably even just ask for an initial breakdown into large pieces and then butcher myself.

Also worth noting, all my meat was frozen at the processing plant and I got odd size packages that were either too small or too big for our dinner purposes, good idea to check into that and specify particulars if you have any.

If you do get the head and feet, they are a lot of work, but worth it. Also check if you get it skin of or off, my place had no facility to take the hair off the pig, so everything was w/o skin, which I wasn't too happy about, but it seems to be pretty common.

And make bacon with the belly! Easy, fun, and oh so yummy :-)

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