Paul meets with Brandon, Jocelyn and Richard to discuss pigs, butchering and charcuterie.
Paul talks about the 3 videos that you can find on Brandon's website and how he appreciated watching them because of their art, humor and poetry talking about how you can best use pork, starting from the pig in the field to home charcuterie.
He talks about how people get disconnected from their food, and how the need for love and care to the animals can extend to eating them.
Then they go on talking about Brandon's videos compared to a DVD called 'Pig in a Day' that they just watched prior to the podcast.
They talk about butchering technics and pig division and how it is all connected to regional culinary practices.
They go on discussing Hot Dog manufacturing which leads to a major part on sanitized meat versus the need of bacteria for good quality meat processing.
Brandon gives his thoughts on the 'pig in a day' DVD and talks about his love for small scale butchery, and the beauty in traditional practices. Nitrates in meat is discussed with curing and fermenting techniques for the meat.
Then they examine the killing and butchering of the pig step by step, with some anecdotes from Paul.
And finally they end the podcast with a list of notes from Paul :
Legal practices to harvest your pigs
Drying meat in the sun
Brandon traditional services he offer to small scale farmers
Pigs flexibility to thrive in different environments
Barbed wires fences
Tools to use and sharpening technics dvd
Jocelyn discovering Rillette, and Brandon describing the process of making Rillette
and more ...
Richard sum up with the importance of ethical treatment to make the pigs happy for a better quality meat.
Resources
Information on how to get the DVD can be found here
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Adrien, consider providing a link to amazon's pig in a day DVD so that Paul can get a kickback.
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Adrien Lapointe
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I created a thread for the DVD.
Cj Verde
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I just finished listening to this and it is definitely ranks in the top 5 all time best podcasts!
Granted, while listening I was eating self cured bacon from an on farm slaughtered pig harvested a month ago so it was all very topical. Not a podcast for infecting new brains. More like permaculture candy for those already severely infected.
May interest those curious to have some visual on Hot dog making.
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Adrien Lapointe
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Cj Verde wrote:I just finished listening to this and it is definitely ranks in the top 5 all time best podcasts!
I agree. This is one of my favourites podcast too. Especially the part where they talk about making charcuterie without nitrite or nitrate. When I started to explore charcuterie few years ago, I did not really find much information about how to safely make nitrite or nitrate free sausages, bacon, salami, ham, etc. Well, with the exception of dried cured meats. Perhaps I did not look hard enough, but anyway, now I have heard the information thanks to Paul.
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The charcuterie portion of the podcast fascinated me. It created an obsession for me to learn how to make salami the old-fashioned way. Can anyone point me in the direction of a source for a good procedure (I haven't looked yet, so that's a lazy question. I'll be researching this weekend)? I was particularly interested when Brandon discussed that salami is actually fermented. I've been having fun with creating fermented foods and incorporating them into my diet. So far I've tried Kim chee, Saurkraut, pickled beets, pickled daikon and carrots, dill pickles and komboucha (I have a continuous brew komboucha going). I'd really like to add salami to my repertoire.
All the pork that I eat comes from local pastured pork, so I think I have a decent source of raw material. I even have 8 pounds of back fat in the freezer if I need to grind some in with the meat to get those luscious fatty spots in the salami...
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That is definitely one of my all-time favorite podcasts. And I mean from anyone anywhere. It had the odd assortment of curiousity, knowledge, story-telling, and passion with an ensemble cast that just clicked--just like charcuterie.
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Cj Verde
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If you like the podcast you need to check out Brandon's video:
http://vimeo.com/32367993 Incredibly high quality.
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I loved Brandon's videos. They were entertaining enough to keep my 6 year old enthralled through 2 and a half of them. She was in no way fazed by the pig harvesting footage (of course, she's seen us cutting up hog halves multiple times, and her older sister is the one who said "It's too bad for pigs that they taste so good!" when she was 3).
I'm intrigued by rillettes.
When I made prosciutto, I used nothing but sea salt (and later lard to coat the cut surface and coarse black pepper to coat the lard) and those 2 hams hung in my basement for up to 2 years. When I make bacon I do use some "pink salt" and I do it for aesthetic purposes--I like the flavor and color of meat cured with a little nitrites. Similarly, since we're still working on consuming the second prosciutto (a whole leg from a 200 lb hog is a hell of a lot of prosciutto) I turned the legs into American style hams, brined instead of dry cured. I used pink salt in that as well, and after the brining we smoked the hams in our psuedo big green egg. OMG that ham is amazing.
I worry a little bit about what almost sounded like magical thinking, in that if the pig is of high quality there can be no bad bugs. It's true that traditional food preparation kept the species going, but small numbers of people died/die every year from botulism. It's a thing. A rare thing, but still a real thing. The clostridium bacteria is in soil--it's not like the evil H157 subtype of e.coli that has evolved to handle unhappy acidic cow tummies and thus is not killed by human stomach acid (meaning--the risk of e.coli H157 is increased in feedlot beef versus pastured beef). (Also, sadly, that bad e.coli is getting all over the place, and organic farmers can use manure from non-organic cattle, so sticking to organic won't necessarily keep you far enough away from that bug.)
I loved the idea of the butcher's hands and wooden cutting board holding the lactobacillus needed to make good salami. I am now inspired to try making salami with my next hog! I've been doing vegetable fermentations, but not really any meat fermentation. Curing, yes but not actual fermentation.
I really like this podcast, and I intend to listen to it again.
I'm with some of the others where do we learn old school charcuterie mostly the salami that was talked about.
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. - Masanobu Fukuoka
Cj Verde
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I was able to get my hands on Pig in a Day. Having watched it I was surprised that there was no mention of avoiding those grey glands you come across when breaking down pork. I was also surprised this omission wasn't mentioned in the review but then again Brandon's videos don't mention them either. The pig harvesting workshop I took stress that you want to cut those glands out. Are they not that big of a deal?
Julia Winter
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My understanding is that those are lymph nodes, and they have a funky taste. When we butcher hog we seek those out and remove them. Luckily, the cat loves them.
This podcast was beyond awesome! Not too long ago I discoverd a local pig farmer who raises happy, healthy pigs and the taste of the meat is incomparable to any commercial pork product. After hearing Brandon's explanation as to how meats are cured in America along with how bad quality the meat is, I'm glad to know its not all in my head!
I had already seen pig in a day and really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the anatomy vids and after I listened to the podcast, well I had to go break into the duck rillettes that I had made for a special occasion. Today was that occasion.
In my waffling between vegetarianism and meat eating I find that vids like this and good pastured or wild sources lean me more one way than another....
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Excellent podcast! So much new information. Makes me wish for the 1000th time that my own mini-homestead will be large enough to raise pigs, which it sadly will not. The intersection of artistry and frugality and efficiency and, yes, even spirituality that exists in these highly skilled people who raise and process their own animals is such a beautiful and fascinating thing. Of course, we can only glimpse their lifestyle and philosophy in a one-hour podcast, but still there can be no doubt: they grok animal husbandry! And so much new to learn about butchery and charcuterie; I would never have guess that there was so much to know.
And even more evidence yet that those of us who were raised on industrial food just can't even begin to know what we have been missing, nor begin to suspect how badly our nutrition has been ill-used, until we delve into the world of real food. It's depressing, really.
At the same time, I am glad that someone out there had at least a slight reservation about some of the things said...
Julia Winter wrote:I worry a little bit about what almost sounded like magical thinking, in that if the pig is of high quality there can be no bad bugs. It's true that traditional food preparation kept the species going, but small numbers of people died/die every year from botulism. It's a thing. A rare thing, but still a real thing.
@Julia - Thank you for voicing this opinion. I myself am not knowledgeable enough on the subject to have an opinion. But I did have the same instinctive reaction at that same point in the conversation: that I was hearing oversimplification at best or wishful thinking at worst. Don't get me wrong: I have been completely won over by the mounting evidence, much of it conveyed here at Permies, that the mainstream, fear-based attitude about food safety is totally full of @#%#. In recent months I have managed to locate for myself local sources for pastured pork and beef and eggs and even raw milk (thank goodness I live in SC where it is both legal and inspected!). I have visited these small farms myself, and I have confidence in the fact that their food is safer for me because their animals are healthier, exactly contrary to what the mainstream attitude would have me feeling.
And I am sure if I visited Brandon's operation I would be even more impressed. But I still think it suspect when he seemed to suggest that raising healthy, natural animals equals a guarantee of safety. There are no 100% guarantees of anything. Ok, maybe death and taxes, as they say. I am sure the meat he cuts on his wooden blocks is as safe as industrial meats or even much more so. But that is still not the same as 100%, and I wish that he hadn't suggested otherwise. I also think it is important to point out that part of the 99% safety, I will call it, that he touts comes from the fact that this man is an artisan, not a backyard amateur. He KNOWS his pigs, and how to raise them, and how to cut them. That is an achievement. Now, what one man can achieve, another man can achieve ...but not every man will achieve.
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Matthew Nistico
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Cj Verde wrote:Adrien, consider providing a link to amazon's pig in a day DVD so that Paul can get a kickback.
Is this necessary? I thought that if you used Paul's Richsoil page to link to Amazon, and then in the same session bought something else unrelated, that he would still get a kickback. I have actually blast-emailed the address of his page with those instructions to my friends and family. Was I wrong?
Please, somebody follow up on this and provide clarification, because I would hate to think that I've been misleading people about this. And I would love to know how to really help support The Empire if what I've been touting doesn't get it done...
Cj Verde
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Not necessary but which is easier:
Leaving permies to go to rich soil to go to amazon to find the dvd
vs
clicking on the specific link to the dvd from this thread?
Anyway, the full dvd is now apparently available on youtube.
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@Cj - Cool then, thanks for clarifying. But you misunderstood me: I wasn't questioning the logic of posting a link here in this thread; rather, I worried that perhaps your mention of doing so implied that the kickback could not occur any other way. It was the nature of the kickback mechanism that I was interested in.
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I'll be researching this weekend)? I was particularly interested when Brandon discussed that salami is actually fermented. I've been having fun with creating fermented foods and incorporating them into my diet. So far I've tried Kim chee, Saurkraut, pickled beets, pickled daikon and carrots, dill pickles and komboucha (I have a continuous brew komboucha going). I'd really like to add salami to my repertoire.
