A Weekend of Pork

Yesterday, we collected our half pig, which had been raised by a friend, slaughtered last Monday, and butchered this week. We'd specified our butchery requests, and it was ready on Saturday. The half carcase went into a number of components:

• 96 sausages (from the trimmings)
• 1 fillet
• 3 shoulder joints
• 2 belly joints
• 8 chops
• 1 loin joint
• 2 belly cuts
• 4 leg joints
• liver and kidney

We froze the bulk of it, with the exception of six sausages (for Saturday's dinner), and the belly and leg. The belly is destined for streaky bacon, and the leg for boiling/baking hams. Today, I've mixed up a dry cure for the bacon, rubbed it in, and put it in the spare fridge in a big Tupperware. Then we made a simple wet cure brine for the hams, weighted them down (another sealed Tupperware filled with water), and put them in a big bucket, also in the fridge. The value of keeping the spare fridge is suddenly deeply evident. The rest of the meat has gone into the chest freezer, and there's still plenty of space!

We decided to stick with a basic bacon cure: next time I might play with some flavourings. Ultimately, I'd like to build a smoker, and smoke some/all of the bacon, but that's a little way off yet. As for the hams' brine, it's also a simple one: again, next time I might try some beer, treacle, vinegar, apple juice, or spices. We'll see: I didn't want to overcomplicate our first go.

They'll be ready next weekend: the bacon will need draining, and more cure rubbing in every evening, and then we'll rinse, slice and freeze it. The hams should also be done on Saturday, and we'll freeze three, and try the fourth.

Reports on our success will follow...the sausages were extremely good, so we're working from good raw materials: any fault will, sadly, be our own.