What's your next Meat Project?

[bocephus]

salmonmaster Very nice job, they look really good. I am going to try some with jalapenos this fall when I can get them locally grown. I used to grow them myself and pickle a lot of them but with the cost of water here going up every year it is hard to grow a garden.

[salmonmaster]

samspade it was a long day, just got up, I’ll cut it open in a while and see how it came out.

[salmonmaster]

bocephus that really sucks about the cost of water keeping you from gardening.

[bocephus]

salmonmaster I guess when you live in the desert that is one of the consequences. I used to grow a garden every year and had 4 fruit trees. Now I just have one granny smith tree. Quite a change from MN where water wasn’t a problem.

[processhead]

chippewa said in What's your next Meat Project?:

processhead ohhh that makes sense. So bacon and ham is the same if they are cooked all the way through? I have never smoked a ham but have made a lot of bacon.

In theory you should be able to eat bacon cold after it has been hot smoked to the correct temperature.

A lot of the flavor development that we know as bacon happens during frying though, so a piece of fried bacon tastes totally different than a piece of unfried bacon, that is one issue.

Then think about the amount of fat in bacon compared to ham, and how that fat tastes when its unfried. A little bit might be good but that much cold fat usually doesn’t appeal to most American palets.

It’s a little different in other parts of the world though, there is pancetta which is just dry cured pork belly that is seasoned but unsmoked and eaten uncooked like salami. Pancetta is very rich with a lot of fat and Italians love it, but it is mostly fat like our traditional bacon is before its cooked.

[Deepwoodsbutcher]

My sister in law asked me to show her how to cut up whole chickens. Just so happened I had 4 in the fridge, so we did a little butcher class. She did great! I sent her home with a brand new boning knife and her favorite cuts of chicken. Always great when someone decides to try something new and has fun with it.

[bocephus]

Deepwoodsbutcher Always nice to pass along knowledge to someone else.

[Deepwoodsbutcher]

bocephus especially when they want to learn and use that knowledge later

[bocephus]

Deepwoodsbutcher That’s for sure!

[dawg]

It was another hog butchering weekend. Did 5. That’s 15 down and 10 to go yet. I did miss last week end due to illness but I wasn’t needed. Start at about 0830 and done and cleaned up by 1400.

Picture of 3 of them hanging and swore I was going to take more pictures but once my hands are dirty, I don’t get my phone out very much.

[samspade]

Looks like a snap shot from a scarry movie!

[kyle]

Deepwoodsbutcher did you video tape it for your YouTube channel so we all can learn?

[Deepwoodsbutcher]

kyle Not this time. I’ll do it when I don’t have a student. These chickens were excellent, so I’ll be getting more soon. In the meantime, there are much better chicken butchers out there then me

[processhead]

dawg I get that, sometimes the work is so messy you don’t want to pick up the phone or camera.

[bocephus]

dawg When you’re that busy, you almost need someone not involved do the camera work.

[calldoctoday]

salmonmaster Even here in SE Alabama the local community has pulled that on us & getting $140 water bills does not help with the reasoning for gardening in the first place.

[calldoctoday]

Deepwoodsbutcher Make sure she gives you a penny, great job!

[bocephus]

salmonmaster Luckily we do have a few farmers markets nearby that has good produce in late summer and fall.

[salmonmaster]

calldoctoday 140$ for a month?

[salmonmaster]

bocephus I can get it pretty cheap at different places in season too. But it just fun, and gives an old person something to do